Thus, a certain degree of coarseness and homeliness of dress and manner may be said to have hitherto characterised the British labourer, as contradistinguished from the British gentleman. A romantic writer would, therefore, make use of these characteristics; and a poet or a sentimentalist would probably regret their disappearance, and the gradual assimilation of dress and manners between the labourer and the gentleman. The fault of the architect is, that he has too closely followed the painter and the man of literature; forgetting that his art, being founded upon and guided by utility, ought to embrace all improvements, not only in architecture, but in the uses of buildings, as they are brought into notice. The fault of the landlord is, that he has thought of little except the outside show of his cottages; but it is surely as much his interest to encourage whatever will raise and elevate the character of the people who live on his land, as it is the duty of the architect to consider, not what a cottage has hitherto been, but what it is capable of being made. Putting a servant into a handsome Gothic cottage is like putting him into a handsome suit of livery: but there is, unfortunately for the servant, this difference, that the faults of the dwelling, if it does not fit, cannot be so readily perceived as those of the coat; and nobody may know, but the occupant and his family, how little comfort sometimes exists under a gay exterior. For our own part, we have seen so many ornamental cottages and lodges on gentlemen's estates, both in England and in Scotland, small, damp, and badly contrived within, that we are compelled to consider them as much badges of slavery as a suit of livery. Let us hope that another generation will effectually simplify and improve the former, and entirely abolish the latter.
