We are persuaded that many absentee landlords are ignorant of the sort of cottages which already exist, and still continue to be erected, on their estates. It is difficult for us to persuade ourselves that the wives, who are perhaps mothers, of these men of wealth, are aware of the large families that are born and live together in one square room, open to the roof, with no division but that formed by wooden bedsteads, and with no floor but the earth. We cannot believe, for example, that the Duchess of Buccleugh, whom we know to be highly cultivated, and who has the reputation of being kind-hearted and charitable, ever entered any one of the fourteen cottages lately erected on one of her husband's estates, not far from his magnificent palace of Drumlanrig, in Dumfriesshire.
