top and bottom. It is nearly a square, and
the only thing that interrupts this cube-like
outline is a row of chimney-pots, which they
are now placing upon it. This is no ordinary
cottage or lodge; it is what is called a good,
substantial, brick-built, eight-roomed house.

As to any such thing as "design," the
builder has evidently no more thought of it
than if architecture had never existed in the
world, and men had always made houses
simply to "cover them." It is as though we
were living in a primitive state of nature, in
respect to house building, while possessing
all the materials of art and civilisation.

A second house is rapidly rising, like the
first; a third is commenced; the ground for a
fourth and fifth is being levelled. Each one
is exactly like the other; placed, without
further foundation, upon the bare damp clay.
Square brick box after box, they rise, and Mr.
Roomy rubs his hands as he speculates on the
rent he shall demand, and their speedy
occupancy by a tenant desiring a nice airy
residence on the outskirts of London.

But now for the "garden." The ground at
the back of the house was levelled and
enclosed by walls, in the shape of the house, as
nearly as possible. It would have been a
square by choice, but circumstances have
caused it to be somewhat too long. In short,
it is of that well-known outline, called a
"strip," being, of all others, the most difficult
to deal with for the picturesque or graceful
laying out of a garden, even when the dimensions
are of some extent; but when small,
needing the greatest exercise of ingenuity to
prevent ugliness and awkwardness, or the
hardest lines that can offend the eye. But
what is the gardener about? He has got a
bricklayer's line, and is drawing it along
parallel with the wall, for the formation of a
long border, thus repeating the hard outline;
and instead of carrying the eye away from it,
or endeavouring to conceal it, he is literally
forcing it into the most rivetting attention.
Gardener did I call him?—no, it is one of the
bricklayers, assisted by a hodsman. Several
cart-loads of mould are now brought into the
garden, and shot down, and to work they go
in "laying-out."

Each strip of ground is separated from that
belonging to the next house by a long wall.
The wall of the first one is only half finished,
and a bricklayer is at work upon the other
side, while the gardening bricklayer on this
side is laying down the mould for a border.
Numerous pieces of broken and chopped-off
brick, with corresponding dabs of mortar,
consequently fall over and are mixed up with
the border mould, which the bricklayer on
this side carefully buries, and then proceeds to
make the border very fine on the surface. A
path is next measured off by the bricklayer's
line, parallel with the border, thus again
repeating the sharp outline of the wall; and this
path is covered with brick-rubbish and stones,
and well trodden and beaten down, so that it
would be no small trouble to change the
form and direction of the path, if any
tenant had the taste and moral courage to
attempt it. By way of making this laying
out perfect of its kind, a long central bed is
now marked off, and covered with mould,
parallel with the previous lines, and being an
exact counterpart of the outline of the entire
strip, only some sizes less.

The gardening bricklayer manages his spade
very assiduously, and neatly too, considering
it is not his proper tool,—in fact, from his
general handiness, I conjecture him to be an
Irishman; and also, I must add, from his want
of forethought: for this morning I perceive
he is about to finish the top row of the wall
bricks, to do which he stands on this side, thus
trampling down all his fine surface of border-
mould as he goes, besides strewing it all over
with a second fall of fragments of brick and
mortar. By night he has done. Next morning
he is there again; not with his trowel, but
his spade, carefully burying all the bits of
brick and rubbish, and once more working
the surface of the mould very fine to look at.

Morning after morning have I watched
these various operations during three months,
and now, finally, I behold, a long row of new
square brick-boxes, set upon damp clay—
drained on an old and very bad system, and
having in other respects, the most inconvenient
arrangement—a succession of dust-holes
close under the kitchen-windows, and in a
line beneath the back dining-room window—
and I am presented with a succession of some
eighteen straight walls, enclosing straight
strips of garden, each lined out by the
bricklayer, in parallel lines, as a bricklayer
naturally would do, and each one being the exact
counterpart of the other. The whole set are
made neat and sightly for letting, by the use
of the broom to sweep out all manner of
rubbish from the houses,—and the spade to
bury it carefully in the garden beds and
borders.

Some poor woman, a bankrupt laundress, a
servant-of-all-work out of place, or a
charwoman with her family, is put in to "mind
the house," and open the door to those who
are looking out for a house. The rubbish
and refuse she and her family will accumulate
during her stay, perhaps of one month,
perhaps of six, must not be thrown into the
dusthole, for that has to be kept tidy for letting;
she therefore gets a man, or her husband when
he comes home in the evening, to bury it
"somewhere" in the garden.

The extreme ends of these garden walls are
met by the ends of other garden walls on the
opposite side. I turn my gaze on them very
often while sitting at my dressing-table, but
gain little consolation from what I see. On
this side, the outline of the garden walls is
nearly the same as those I have been describing,
and the laying out displays no better
taste. Several of these strips are laid out
in three round puddings of beds, one after