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