English cottages and farm-houses

There= are few corners of England with which Mr. Warren is not familiar, and it may be that his delight in the English scene is all the keener because he is familiar, too, with many other countries both in the Old World and the New. In this account of English farm-houses and cottages he describes buildings of all kinds, from the granite farms of Cumberland and Cornwall to the thatched half-timbered cottages of the Essex villages, and he shows how the varied character of rural architecture was largely determined by local materials. By the judicious selection and description of just those details which give to farmhouse and cottage, both inside and out, their distinctive quality and character, the author builds up a picture of a way of life which has survived practically unchanged for many generations. Henry Warren has been called the Richard Jefferies of to-day, and like Jefferies, a new uniform edition of whose works he has just edited, he can, for all his attachment to the country way of life, be strongly critical of its shortcomings. He is himself the author of several books on country matters, including England is a Village and the recently published Adam was a Ploughman.