Town and Country.

ONE of the questions which newly-married couples whose income is derived from the husband's work in London most commonly put to themselves is, whether they shall go and live in the country. Railways, and the untiring enterprise of suburban builders, have made it easy for them to do so if they like. There are houses of every degree of capacity to be had in all directions round London; and, as regards getting to business in the morning and home again in the afternoon, the train puts the dwellers in them nearly on a level with the inhabitants of Tyburnia or South Kensington. It is practically as easy now to live in the country as it is to live in London. Indeed, were it not for this, the subject would hardly be worth discussion. A generation ago men who chose to settle themselves twenty miles away had to submit to very appreciable sacrifices in point of comfort. The railways only came to the outskirts of London, the service of trains was very incomplete, the distance between the station and their home was often considerable. Men who submitted to the small but constant annoyances which this state of things implies had usually some solid reason for living out of town. They had a real love for the country or a genuine dislike to London. It was only when the facilities for the two modes of life became pretty equally balanced that the question which to choose came to be a matter of serious debate. Before that time it was a question that settled itself. It does in some cases still; and as the object of this paper is to render to those who are debating it such aid as can be given by a fair statement of the advantages on each side, it will be convenient first of all to mention what these exceptional cases are. The most obvious are those in which considerations of health point decidedly to one alternative or the other. There are some women and more children to whom London air or London ways seem positively hurtful; there are some men who are made ill by constant railway journeys, however short. There is no room for nicely balanced argument here. It is better to be well in a place you do not care for than to be an invalid in a place you like. Another class of cases is those in which the husband's occupation takes him away from home at night. The editor of a morning paper, for example, unless he can afford to have two houses going at once, has no choice but to live in London. There are people, again, with exceptionally strong tastes, who are in much the same position-people with a passion for their garden which makes them feel homeless in the best appointed house if there is no lawn or greenhouse into which they can step from their drawing-room window;

people with a passion for music which makes concerts, public and private, almost a necessary of existence. There is no doubt where either of those classes ought to plant themselves. In what follows it will be taken for granted that no preponderating reasons of this kind come into play; that, so far as those who have to decide the question know, they will be well enough to enjoy life, either in town or country; that the man's work is done in the ordinary working day; that the pursuits whether of the husband or of the wife admit of being adapted without an overpowering sense of loss to the circumstances in which they are placed. The persons addressed are not those who know what they want to do but have a difficulty in doing it, but those who have a difficulty to decide what it is they want.

Probably the point which soonest presents itself when people seriously set to work to weigh London against the country is the comparative cost of living. They wish to ascertain how far their income will go in each case. As often happens this, though it is the first question to be asked, is usually the last to be answered. Before a man can determine what his income will do for him in one place, and what it will do for him in another, he must have decided what the things are that he most wishes it to do for him. After all, that is the cheapest place to live in where you can satisfy the largest number of wants and yet make both ends meet. A mere comparison of prices tells very little upon this head. It may be said generally, however, that every year tends to equalise the cost of living in different parts of England, and this process naturally goes on fastest in the immediate neighbourhood of London. As regards food, meat and bread command pretty much the same prices everywhere. Dairy produce may sometimes be had cheaper in the country, because small producers will sell it to local customers at a slight advance on the price which they can get from the London dealer, and the cost of carriage and the greater part of the middleman's profits are thus saved. Against this, however, must be set the additional cost of groceries and all goods that come from London. If the consumer has them down at his own expense this increase takes the form of railway charges; if he makes his purchases at the local shop it takes the form of higher prices or lower qualities. In the matter of rent the apparent advantage is on the side of the country, unless the situation happens to be exceptionally pleasant. But then in the country there are certain charges which have no exact counterpart in London, and are really of the nature of A season-ticket on the railway is one of these; the cost of labour bestowed on the garden is another. It may be said that this last ought to be charged to service; but, inasmuch as it is the only point in which more service is required in the country than in London, the addition is in effect an addition to rent. Supposing that 100l. a-year in the country will command as good a house as 150l. will in London, but that, other things remaining the same, the owner of the former has to pay 201. a year for a railway ticket, and 301, a year for keeping his garden

rent.

in order, the result is to put the cost of the two houses exactly on a level. In the year's account, of course, the garden will stand for a great deal more than 301., but this will represent optional rather than necessary outlay, and ought therefore to be set against money spent in furniture or pictures or amusements. A few good conifers, a new rose-bed, or a little more "glass," may cost as much as a marqueterie cabinet, or a new set of drawingroom curtains, or a dozen stalls at the Opera; and if the former are to be included in rent in the country the latter have an equal claim to be included in it in London. A further addition to the expense of living in the country is the cost of a pony-carriage. Anything else you may have in this way is no more necessary in the country than it is in London; but without a pony-carriage a lady living in the country is decidedly worse off than a lady living in town. She has no underground railway, and the "gondola of London" does not come at her call. Unless she is an unusually good walker, she must be content only to visit her distant friends in the solemn and occasional fly; and in a district so much built over as the neighbourhood of London the chances are that the walks she most cares to take are separated from her by a long stretch of dusty roads and dull garden palings. Against this virtual increase of rent in the country may be set the greater costliness of dress-at least of ladies' dress-in London. The wear and tear of clothes in the latter case is immense, and a lady cannot, as she can in the country, keep a spare gown for all rough work. Smoke, which is a Loudoner's worst enemy in so many ways, respects occupations no more than persons. In the evening the full force of this difference of cost is not so much felt, because, though each dress lasts a shorter time, there is less need for having a number of dresses at once. Except in a kind of society in which money is not an object, a lady may go out a good many times in London and not meet the same persons twice; but in the country the elements from which social combinations have to be evolved are very much fewer, and each is consequently reproduced a good deal oftener. It may be contended, no doubt, that a lady ought to be above any dislike to being seen in the same gown, and that, so long as it is not too old to be worn anywhere, it is new enough to be worn everywhere. But in practice, as most women will admit, even rigid philosophers shrink from the application of this extreme test, and the persons who come for information to such a paper as this have probably stopped a good way short of rigid philosophy.

There is good reason to suppose, therefore, that in weighing the relative advantages of town and country the question of cost need not enter largely into the calculation. One mode of life is not appreciably more expensive than the other. If this is denied it will usually be found that the challenger is subject under one set of circumstances to some special temptation to spend money which does not apply to him under another set of circumstances. When a man complains that his garden runs away with a little fortune, or that now he lives in town his wine merchant s bill is as much again as it was when he lived in the country,

it only means that gardening or giving dinners is a special hobby of his, and that the more opportunities he has of riding it the more costly the process becomes.

The considerations which reasonable people have most in view when they are sketching out a mode of life are principally three under what conditions they will do the best work; under what conditions they will do their work with most ease; and under what conditions they will have most enjoyment of life. These three questions cannot be answered independently of one another, and not one of them can be altogether left out of sight. The best work, for example, is ordinarily the work which is done with most ease, and in the performance of which there is the keenest sense of enjoyment. But it would not be true to say that when once a man has ascertained under what conditions his best work is produced he need make no further enquiries. It sometimes happens that men work their best under the stimulus of excitement or pressure, but that the exhaustion thus produced is fatal to any high average of good work. In this case the conditions under which work is done most easily become of great importance. On the other hand a man may find that amidst certain surroundings his work goes on smoothly enough, and yet he may be conscious that, though it gives him so little trouble to do, it gives him even less satisfaction when it is done. It is true, again, that there are few greater pleasures than the sense that you are working with your full strength, and on this ground it may seem needless to ask whether a mode of life which ensures this ensures a fair share of enjoyment also. But a nature which finds its highest pleasure in hard work may easily come to find no pleasure except in work, and there is too much to be got out of leisure and recreation to make this exclusiveness healthy. It will be well, therefore, for a man to consider how the choice between town and country affects ease of work as well as quality of work, and enjoyment of life apart from work as well as enjoyment in work. This is hardly a matter, however, upon which general advice can be given. It would be necessary to take the whole individual character and temperament into account before offering any opinion which would be worth acceptance. No attempt will be made here, therefore, to discuss how the fact of living in town or country will affect a man's professional or business success. It will be assumed that the main work of his life will go on equally well in either case. But this main work may be indirectly affected by the development of the intellectual character generally, and this is formed by other agencies than work, strictly so called. What these other agencies are is largely determined by the surroundings of home, and to this extent even the question which has now been put aside may be indirectly affected by what follows.

Perhaps the most obvious difference between life in the country and life in London is that there is more repose in the former and more stimulus in the latter. The merely physical accidents of the two modes of life are an apt illustration of this difference. Take the case of a man

who leaves chambers at four o'clock on a July afternoon and goes down to his home twenty miles off. When he gets there he finds his wife sitting under a tree on the lawn, and his first act after he has got off his black coat is to lie flat on his back upon the grass, with the pleasant consciousness that, except of his own free will, he need not get up again till dinner-time. If he does get up again it is probably only to move from the lawn into a boat-not to row, few men who are not training for a race think of rowing in July-but just to paddle to the nearest shady reach, and there watch the fish leaping, or the cattle standing in the shallows, until the hot haze of the river meadows seems to grow a part of himself, and to impart its quivering indistinctness to his very thoughts. Or else he has the ponycarriage brought round, and his wife drives him far away from the village with its faint flavour of town, and the late afternoon fades away in slow saunterings through country lanes, or frequent halts wherever the hedges or the trees break away and open out one of those large and level landscapes of which the home counties have so many. After dinner, if there is still light enough, comes the stroll round the garden, and the unexciting speculation whether the pears on the wall need pruning, or whether the new roses will prove the continuous bloomers which the catalogue described them; and last of all the smoke in the verandah in the fragrant air of the summer night, which in the country is never too hot, because it has none of that radiation from pavements and walls which gives the London atmosphere its indescribable dryness-a dryness which can be felt and tasted. Compare with this the case of the Londoner who leaves chambers at the same hour on the same day. also feels that he wants fresh air, and he finds it in a stroll in the park, or on a chair near the blazing flower beds of Rotten Row, or beneath the shade, not yet all departed, of Kensington Gardens. But wherever he goes the world is with him. If he tries to outstay it it does but change its character. The fashionable pleasure-taking world of the afternoon becomes the working class world of the evening. As he goes homeward the crowd of carriages carrying people back to dress becomes mixed with the first droppings of the later crowd that will carry them out to dine, and this fact probably reminds him that he too must soon be off on the same errand. There is no need to describe a London dinner party in July. It may be pleasant or dull, a scene of animated talk or politely suppressed yawns; but whichever it be it does not suggest repose. This is the Londoner's notion of a lazy afternoon, and the contrast will be all the more marked if he prefers to spend the same hours in some more strenuous manner-in a crush at the Academy or at a flower show, in the buzz of an afternoon party, in a hurried journey to Richmond or the Crystal Palace. Even the country, when visited for an hour or two, seems to borrow the bustle of London. It is impossible but that two modes of life so different in themselves should in the long run exert a perceptible influence on the minds subjected to them. The nature of this influence will depend on the character of the mind. What is repose to

He