Cottage Gardens. - By these we understand the gardens attached to cottages in villages, or to the humbler class of dwellings scattered through the country. In the agricultural district from London towards Warwick they are small and poorly cultivated, in comparison with those around Birmingham and the other manufacturing towns. The cause is too obvious to require explanation. We are not sure, however, that the culture of flowering shrubs against the walls of cottages is so general in the manufacturing as in the agricultural districts. We expected greater progress to have been made among the gardens of the miners in Derbyshire, where we found, indeed, in Middleton Dale, and at Castleton, some cottages without gardens. We recommend this subject to the Duke of Devonshire's agents, and to Mr. Paxton, who might distribute plants and seeds among them. We disapprove, in general, of compulsory laws in matters of this kind; but, if we were to admit of more exceptions to the rule of non-interference than that of compelling parents to have their children educated, as done in some parts of Germany and in America, it should be that of preventing any one from building a cottage or a house who could not add a certain portion of ground to be unalienably attached to it. Before such a law is stigmatised as tyrannical, let us, at least, get rid of the game laws.
