13. Again, there are the railways. Notice how little townships have grown up round the railway-stations, especially on the main lines in districts near a big town. Houses spring up for the hosts of people who, like streams of human ants, hurry to the station to catch the early morning trains, and, as the afternoon wears into evening, come again from the station to snatch a few hours' rest at home.
14. We have said nothing of
"The beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea",
and the part they have had in the making of our towns and villages. This subject would require a book all to itself, and then we shall only just have begun to think about it, and to find out how little we know and understand of the things which go to make up our daily lives.
15. Yes, the life of our towns and villages is a very interesting subject. Nature and Man each works for and with the other; both are full of mystery, life, and beauty, if we could only use our eyes to see, our intelligence to understand, our hearts to sympathize, and our hands to work.
Summary.—The earliest farmhouses began as settlers' huts in such forest regions as the Weald. Squatters gradually got little holdings near lonely heaths and commons. Separate farms, with farm-buildings and labourers' cottages attached to them, date from about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the old common fields began to be enclosed. Fields and hedgerows and country lanes, as we see them now, mostly began then. New hamlets sprang up by main roads as coaches came into use: an ale-house and a forge were usually the first buildings.
New towns have sprung up in manufacturing districts and round railway-stations.
[FOOTNOTES:]
[ [1] Also between Hitchin and Cambridge, at Clothall, in Herts, in the Chiltern Hills, on the steep side of the Sussex Downs, in Clun Forest, in Carmarthenshire, and in Wilts.
[2] Spinneys are plantations of trees growing closely together.