The white mansions of Tyburnia, Belgravia, South Kensington, and the neat villas of the suburbs are only brickwork, with a thin coat of stucco, which serves the purpose of concealing the real structure—­often only too much in need of concealment—­with a material supposed to be a little more sightly, and certainly capable of keeping the weather out rather more effectually than common brickwork would.

More than this, such fine structures, apparently built entirely of stone, as are being put up for commercial purposes in the streets of the city, and for public purposes throughout London, are all of them nothing more than brick fabrics with a facing of masonry.  Examine one of them in progress, and you will find the foundations and vaults of brickwork, and not only the interior walls, but the main part of the front wall, executed in brickwork, and the stone only skin deep.  There are, however, two or three ways of making use of brickwork without covering it up, and of gaining good architectural effects thereby, and to these I beg now to direct your attention.

The architect who desires to make an effective brick building, which shall honestly proclaim to all the world that it is of brick, may do this, and, if he will, may do it successfully, by employing brickwork and no other material, but making the best use of the opportunities which it affords, or he may erect his building of brickwork and stone combined, or of brickwork and terra cotta.  Mr. Robson, till lately the architect to the School Board for London, has the merit of having put down in every part of the metropolis a series of well contrived and well designed buildings, the exterior of which almost without exception consists of brickwork only.

If you examine one of his school-houses, you will see that the walls are of ordinary stock brickwork, but usually brightened up by a little red brick at each angle, and surmounted by well contrasted gables and with lofty, well designed chimneys, rising from the tiled roof.  The window openings and doorways are marked by brickwork, usually also red, and sometimes moulded, and though I personally must differ from the taste which selected some of the forms employed (they are those in use in this country in the 17th and the last centuries), I cordially recognize that with very simple and inexpensive means exceedingly good, appropriate, and effective buildings have been designed.

Among examples of architecture wholly, or almost wholly, executed in red brick, I cannot pass over a building built many years ago, little known on account of its obscure situation, but a gem in its way.  I allude to the schools designed by Mr. Wilde, and built in Castle street, Endell street.