English cottages" has, at least in some districts of England, passed away, or Sir Walter Scott's knowledge of English cottages was very partial and imperfect.
Arthur Young, travelling in France before the Revolution, and walking up hill, bridle in hand, overtook a poor woman, looking sixty years of age though she was not twenty-eight. She said that she and her husband had seven children, a farm with one cow and one little horse. Their cow helped them to support their children, but the rent and taxes they had to pay for their little farm crushed them down. She said she had heard that somewhere, in some manner, something was to be done for the poor.
I met with cases in that inquiry showing how what has been turns up again in this world whirling round its old axis. To call this "strange!" would be a foolish saying, we should rather say "strange!" if it were not so. A new lacker of more or less brightness in its polish is every now and then laid on the surface of the old machine. But the machinery within goes grinding on in its old way. In a melancholy majority of cases the hearts of men are hard and their brains soft, whereas the chances would be considerably better with softer
