The purposes for which brick can be best used depend,
of course, upon its qualities. Speaking generally, such purposes are
very numerous and very various, especially the utilitarian purposes,
though rich and varied ornamental work can also be executed in
brickwork.

Perhaps the most remarkable quality of brickwork is that it can be
thrown into almost any shape. It is in this respect almost like a
plastic material, and this peculiarity it owes chiefly to the very small
size of each brick as compared with the large masses of the brickwork of
most buildings. Stone is far less easily dealt with than brick in this
respect. Think for a moment of the great variety of walls, footings,
piers, pilasters, openings, recesses, flues, chimney breasts, chimney
shafts, vaults, arches, domes, fireproof floors, corbels, strings,
cappings, panels, cornices, plinths, and other features met with in
constant use, and all formed by the bricklayer with little trouble out
of the one material--brickwork! A little consideration will convince you
that if the same material furnishes all these, it must be very plastic.
As a limitation we ought to note that this almost plastic material
cannot be suddenly and violently dealt with--that is to say, with the
exception of some sorts of arches, you cannot form any abrupt or
startling feature in brickwork, and you are especially limited as to
projections.

If you wish to throw out any bold projection, you may support it on a
long and sloping corbel of brickwork. But if there is not room for that,
you must call in some other material, and form the actual support in
stone, or terra cotta, or iron, and when you have gained your
projection, you may then go on in brickwork if you like.

Brick cornices should be steep, but cannot be bold, and so with other
ornamental and structural features. A noteworthy property of brickwork,
and one of immense value, is that it is thoroughly fireproof; in fact,
almost the only perfectly fireproof material. There is an interesting
account of the great fire of London by one of the eye witnesses, and
among the striking phenomena of that awful time he notes that the few
brick buildings which existed were the only ones able to withstand the
raging fire when it reached them.

In our own day a striking proof of the same thing was given in the great
fire in Tooley street, when Braidwood lost his life. I witnessed that
conflagration for a time from London Bridge, and its fury was so