breadth, squares and boulevards already planted by God's hand with
majestic trees; and then leave the great design to be hewn out of
the wilderness, street after street, square after square, by
generations yet unborn. That too is a magnificent ideal; but it
cannot be ours. And it is well for us, I believe, that it cannot.
The great value of land, the enormous amount of vested interests,
the necessity of keeping to ancient sites around which labour, as
in Manchester, or commerce, as in Bristol, has clustered itself on
account of natural advantages, all these things make any attempts
to rebuild in cities impossible. But they will cause us at last,
I believe, to build better things than cities. They will issue in
a complete interpenetration of city and of country, a complete
fusion of their different modes of life, and a combination of the
advantages of both, such as no country in the world has ever seen.
We shall have, I believe and trust, ere another generation has
past, model lodging-houses springing up, not in the heart of the
town, but on the hills around it; and those will be--economy, as
well as science and good government, will compel them to be--not
ill-built rows of undrained cottages, each rented for awhile, and
then left to run into squalidity and disrepair, but huge blocks of
building, each with its common eating-house, bar, baths,
washhouses, reading-room, common conveniences of every kind,
where, in free and pure country air, the workman will enjoy
comforts which our own grandfathers could not command, and at a
lower price than that which he now pays for such accommodation as
I should be ashamed to give to my own horses; while from these
great blocks of building, branch lines will convey the men to or
from their work by railroad, without loss of time, labour, or
health.