In my opinion about one half of this universal rhapsody is due simply to the fact that every cottage has a garden. The American is used to seeing ugliness everywhere — wooden buildings, no national style of architecture, billboards, big advertisements, and houses without gardens. When he goes to England he sees beauty everywhere — houses built of brick and stone, a national style of architecture, no billboards, shop signs relatively small and modest, and every foot of ground cultivated to the utmost. These general conditions are enough to put the American in an enthusiastic mood, and enthusiasm rises to ecstasy when he finds that even the labouring people live amid beautiful surroundings. Every cottage is built of permanent materials and every cottage is surrounded by fruits, flowers, or other forms of living beauty. It all seems too good to be true, because American labourers generally live in big tenements or else in monotonous rows of wooden cottages, which are temporary and subject to disastrous fires, while the yards are usually bare and shabby or foul with weeds and rubbish. Therefore, I say the infinite number and variety of English cottage gardens is enough to explain five tenths of the American tourist's enthusiasm.