A SUDDEN CONTRAST of Girtford. This began well with pretty cottages roofed with homely thatch; then passing a wayside public-house with the uncommon title of "The Easy Chair" (a sign that we do not remember to have met with before), the village ended badly, in a picturesque point of view, with a row of uninteresting cottages of the modern, square-box type, shelters for man rather than habitations—commonplace, alas! and unsightly. The sudden contrast from the old to the new was an object-lesson in ancient beauty and modern ugliness.
The progressive nineteenth century, by the mean and hideous structures it has erected over all the pleasant land, has done much towards the spoliation of English scenery. It has done great things, truly. It has created railways, it has raised palaces, mansions, huge hotels, monster warehouses, tall towers, and gigantic wheels of iron; but it has forgotten the way of rearing so simple and pleasing a thing as a home-like farmstead; it cannot even build a cottage grandly. Yet how well our ancestors knew how to do these. Still, the wanderer across country now and then sees signs of better things, a promise of a return to more picturesque conditions, and this sometimes in the most out-of-the-way and unexpected quarters. Thus, during our drive, have we chanced upon a quaint and freshly-painted inn sign done in a rough but true artistic spirit, supported by wrought-iron work of recent date, worthy of the medieval craftsman; and in quiet market-towns and remote villages have our eyes occasionally been delighted by bits of thoughtful archi-
