Rural England Cottage and Village Life

The love of country life is a plant of recent growth in the minds of dwellers in the city. On those who live amidst the fields and lanes of rural England it has always shed its fragrance but we are so accustomed to its perfume that we rarely stop to consider whence this sweetness springs. In this book we have tried to understand why we admire the beauties of rural scenes of the cots by the wayside and in what their merit consists and so to enable ourselves to appreciate more fully their charming character. The artist Mr. Quinton has depicted some of the most beautiful examples of rural homes that England affords. These I have tried to describe to discover the secrets of their attractiveness and to compare them with modern dwellings which lack their comeliness. – from the Preface