But though I shall soon see some of these villages, tell me in a word or two what they are like, just to prepare me." "Perhaps," said he, "you have seen a tolerable picture of these villages as they were before the end of the nineteenth century.

Such things exist." "I have seen several of such pictures," said I.
"Well," said Hammond, "our villages are something like the best of such places, with the church or mote-house of the neighbours for their chief building.

Only note that there are no tokens of poverty about them: no tumble-down picturesque; which, to tell you the truth, the artist usually availed himself of to veil his incapacity for drawing architecture.

Such things do not please us, even when they indicate no misery.

Like the mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright; as people always do when they have any sense of architectural power; because then they know that they can have what they want, and they won't stand any nonsense from Nature in their dealings with her." "Besides the villages, are there any scattered country houses ?" said I.
"Yes, plenty," said Hammond; "in fact, except in the wastes and forests and amongst the sand-hills (like Hindhead in Surrey), it is not easy to be out of sight of a house; and where the houses are thinly scattered they run large, and are more like the old colleges than ordinary houses as they used to be.