dea of the
variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.

Sec. V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects
to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication.
There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of
something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French
eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like
a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants
for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as
worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring
it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought
it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of
refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the
worm cast or coprolite.

Sec. VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least
to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication,
make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by
sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of
stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own
mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not
think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock,
glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen
bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate
sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red
mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities;
spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy
coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she
wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs
to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and
iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance.

Sec. VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to
institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere
inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief.
The architect has perhaps more lice