ng-moulds, gable-ends, and
cornices, sharp in outline, crisp and spirited in detail. Even under the
Stuarts, Inigo Jones and his great successor Wren executed some noble
works in this material. Unfortunately for art, Parliament in 1625
established the rectangular dimensions of bricks, which thenceforward
were moulded on one dreary model,--a block of clay nine by four by two
and one-half inches. In 1784 Parliament again interfered, and levied
heavy taxes upon all bricks modelled, whether such bricks were spoiled
in the baking or not. This tax was in its action almost prohibitory of
any attempt at establishing a higher grade of workmanship. In the long
interval between 1625 and the repeal of the tax in 1850, workmen in clay
forgot their cunning, and all desire for improvement in design had come
to a stand-still.

The Victorian architects made strenuous efforts to reform so
discreditable a state of things, and, after struggling against the
ignorance of labor and the conservatism of brick-masters, attained their
end, and when, in 1870, the School Board Act went into operation it
found them ready, with well-trained mechanics at their command. In 1850
the revival and expansion of semi-classic architecture wrought in brick
would have been impossible; in 1870 the building world was ripe for the
change. The architects themselves, after receiving their early education
under the leaders of the stucco and plaster school of the later Georgian
reigns, had had their ideas purified and refined by the art-teachings of
the Victorian Gothicists. The result was a spontaneous movement to
develop a new system of construction, with lintelled openings and square
fenestration,--Queen Anne modified and elevated by mediaeval teachings
and traditions. A traditional manner, but a sensible one; a sudden
fashion, if you will; a craze, but a craze upon which the architects of
the future will probably look back with satisfaction, as a bold and
successful step toward the solution of the vexed problem of domestic
architecture,--how to make every man's house his proper dwelling, how to
combine Sir Henry Wotton's three conditions of the art of well
building,--"Commodity, Firmness, and Delight."

Leaving England, with its highly-developed and well-understood systems
of construction as they existed in the seventeenth century, let us turn
to the colonial work of the early settlers of America, keeping in mind
the difficulties which surrounded them, and which