some of their buildings having defied the elements for seventeen centuries, and their mantle, as to brickmaking, has fallen upon the Dutch.  They were found among the ancient Peruvians, and the Chinese made beautiful the outside of the temple by giving a porcelain finish to the brick.  Still I fancy they have always been more famous for their use than for their beauty; but their utility is beyond all question.  If our modern experience doesn’t prove it, read this inscription from an ancient brick pyramid of Howara:—­

“Do not undervalue me by comparing me with pyramids of stone; for I am better than they as Jove exceeds the other deities.  I am made of bricks from clay, brought up from the bottom of the lake adhering to poles.”

Notwithstanding these claims to veneration, there is but little poetry about them, and therefore, I suppose, but little progress.  Compared with other materials, they have undergone slight changes with us, in color, shape, or modes of use.  A block of wood or stone contains, in the eye of the artistic workman, every possible grace of form and moulding; but a brick is a square, red, uninteresting fact, and the laying of them the most prosaic of all work.  By common consent we expect no improvement in their use, but rather sigh for the good old times when work was honestly done and the size of the brick prescribed by law.  We associate them with factories, boarding-houses, steam-chimneys, pavements, sewers,—­whatever is practical, commonplace, and undignified.  Yet there are charming, even delicate, effects possible with these unpromising rectangular blocks.

[Illustration:  Cottage cornices.]

In your efforts to unite beauty and brickwork it will be well to begin modestly, merely aiming to avoid positive ugliness.  Do not feel bound to enclose your house by four straight unbroken walls,—­brick are no more difficult to build in irregular shape than anything else,—­and do not, on any account, make square-topped openings, as the builders of the old-fashioned brick houses were wont to do.  Doubtless you have read Mr. Ruskin’s vigorous protest against this particular architectural sin; if you have not, by all means do so, only he proves too much, and would fain make us believe that our doors and windows must not only be crowned by arches, but they must be Gothic arches,—­doctrine to be received with some grains of allowance.  A pointed Gothic arch may be, often is, very beautiful; but, applying our test of utility, it is most obviously out of place, and therefore inartistic, where close economy, convenience, and abundance of light are required.  For the sake of strength, if for no other reason, let the top of the openings be arched, but a low arch of one arc or two is often preferable to a high one.  If, for economy’s sake, you wish to make the top of the sash square, do so, curving the upper portion of the frame as a sort of centre on which the masonry may rest; but do not attempt this if the openings