being laid with mortar, and the space between filled in with rubble. This is the way to have dry walls; and, when once warmed through, a dwelling impervious to cold, as far as the walls are concerned. The work must of course be good. The case is just that of an American log- house. If the filling-in between the logs is pro- perly done, no dwelling is so warm in winter and so cool in summer: but if crevices are left, there is nothing to be said for the comfort. In the same way, I know some cottages on a hill-side which are as comfortable as any mansion in the county, while within a few yards are others in which the surgeons cannot carry their patients through an illness, on account of the bitter cold from the ill-compacted walls.
Where the soil is rocky the roofing is of slate; and much of the flooring also. In such districts the kitchens, cellars, yards, and back passages are floored with slates: and no material can be better for dryness and cleanliness, though a bit of carpet is needed in winter evenings.
A house thus built, whether palace or cottage, is secure from damp, provided the walls have not been saturated with wet in the course of erection; that every loose slate on the roof is immediately replaced; and that the spouts are watched and kept in good order.
In some parts of the country thatch still exists, and is even renewed when cottages, farm-houses, and barns need a new roof. Elsewhere, tiles are the materials. Tiles, formed to carry off rain to the spouts, and well laid, are unexceptionable. Thatch has every fault that roofing can have. It rots with the wet, and admits it to the ceilings: it harbours vermin, and it is liable to fire. Any one who has seen how, in certain Dorsetshire cottages, the family huddle in the comers to escape the droppings of stinking thatch, needs no convincing of the superiority of any other kind of roofing.
As for the next condition — Air — the main point is to have a constant circulation of it throughout the dwelling, without draughts on the person. The circulation should therefore be underfoot and overhead. The underfoot provision has been noticed. As for the other, the case has no difficulty in it; and no expense is involved which need place the poorest tenant at a disadvantage.
There must be a door and windows back and front. There must be a back-door, if any neatness is to be preserved in the front; for the washing and other domestic business Bhould be done in the rear; the stairs should have some opening to the outer air; and if there are three bedrooms (and no family house ought to have less), one at least must be at the back. There is therefore a free course for the air through the house.
Next, each separate room should have an equally free circulation. Sash windows, which open at the top as well as the bottom, are better than lattices; for you can always open them more or less without letting in rain; which you cannot do with lattices. Moreover, lattices, when not perfectly new, let in wind at every pane: so that the c&ndle flares and wastes, and you sit in a draught; whereas the inch or two open at top of a sash window gives you plenty of air overhead at pleasure. In every room there should be a fireplace — for ventilation at all times, and in readiness for days of sickness. Every room should also have a slit over the door, or an opening high up into the chimney, or both. There will thus be a perpetual flow of good air into the room, and of spoiled air into the chimney, without any sensation of cold to those sitting below, who will feel that glow of health which cannot be matched by any heat obtained by stifling means.
Under the head of Air comes the consideration of drains: of those drains which carry away the sewage. Not a foot of such drains should pass under any part of the house. The arrangements should be so planned, that everything noisome should be kept outside, and at once carried away. In the humblest cottage there should be a bit of roof behind, — a lean-to, or a roofed morsel of yard where the dish-washing should go on, and the cabbage -water be poured away into the drain. If there is to be health, there must be no muck -heap — no spilling of evil-smelling things upon the ground; and, if possible, no cesspool. Sooner or later, the soil about cesspools becomes foul, and mischief arises. Some natural slope must carry away all refuse to a safe distance: or an artificial one, with proper channels, must be created.
It is of great importance that some place should be provided for drying the household clothes. In the country, where land is not of such unconscionable value as in some towns, it is really no appreciable sacrifice to the proprietor to afford with the cottage a slip of ground in which potatoes may grow below, and shirts, and petticoats, and blankets dry in mid-air. In towns there will soon, we may hope, be wash-houses and drying-closets for all housewives who can bring their twopences, — the small insurance against bad washing, damp, and illness at home. It would terrify us to know how many persons of all ages have sickened and died from the atmosphere of rooms where half-cleansed clothing has been hung up to dry, day and night, in the midst of the family. The drying-room in towns, and the garden in the open country, ought to preclude such mischief in future.
This consideration of space comes under the head of Air, in regard to all dwellings. It is difficult to understand why the rooms of houses in rural districts are ever made too small, though the reasons for that evil in towns where every foot of space is an expensive commodity, are clear enough. It makes a difference of so little money in building a cottage, whether the enclosed area is three or four feet longer and broader or not, or whether the rooms are six feet or eight feet high, that there ought to be no hesitation, when it is once understood that the due supply and renewal of air depend on that addition to the space.
While considering the supply and quality of the Air in a habitation, we naturally think more of the town than the country. It is true that a labourer’s cottage may be infested with bad smells, if slops and refuse are thrown down near the house, and if the windows are not opened, and the bed-rooms have no chimney, and the place is in bad repair; but still the town seems to be the natural place for closeness
and foul air. It is so; but we must not think only