In the same category with colored bricks (indeed, they are a sort of spiritualized bricks) are the brilliant-hued encaustic tile that are finding their way hither across the Atlantic.  Let us hope that the greatest country in the world will not long send three thousand miles for its building materials.  A variety of forms and sizes of bricks we may easily have when we demand it in earnest.  Beyond question there is room for almost unlimited exercise of fancy in this direction.  We only need the taste to design appropriate shapes and to use them aright.  Mr. Ruskin mentions certain brick mouldings as being among the richest in Italy.  The matter of size relates rather to construction than ornament, but it is very important here.  I think it will some time seem as unreasonable to make brick of but one size and pattern as it would now be to have all timber sawn of uniform dimensions.

[Illustration:  Bricks that are not square.]

You are more liable to attempt too much in the way of decoration than too little.  Don’t make your house look as though it was intended for a brickmaker’s show-case.  You will find the simplest designs the best.  I have seen a really good effect on the side of a large building from the mere holes left in the wall by the masons’ stagings.

One thing more:  Do not become possessed with the idea that a brick house must be a large or an expensive one.  It may be small and cheap, but withal so cosey and domestic, so thoroughly tasteful and picturesque, that you will have an unquestioning faith in the possibility and the desirableness of love in a cottage, the moment you behold it.  On the other hand, by making the best of your resources, it is possible to build a large, plain, square house, a perfect cube if you please, that shall not only be homelike in appearance, but truly impressive and elegant.  How?  I’ve been trying to illustrate and explain.  By being honest; by despising and rejecting all fashions that have nothing but custom to recommend them; by using colored and moulded brick if you can use them well; by not laying the outside work in white mortar, and by exercising your common-sense and independence, both of which qualities I am sure you possess.

I must beg Mrs. John and Sister Jane (by the way, I’m flattered to know that a notable housekeeper finds anything promising in what I have thus far written you) not to give up the ship.  One more broadside for the brick-yard, and we will pass on to loftier themes.

LETTER XIV.

From John.

Every man to his trade.