om a
narrow alley in a part of Venice now exclusively inhabited by the lower
orders, close to the arsenal;[90] they are entirely wrought in brick,
with exquisite mouldings, not cast, but _moulded in the clay by the
hand_, so that there is not one piece of the arch like another; the
pilasters and shafts being, as usual, of stone.

Sec. XXXVIII. And here let me pause for a moment, to note what one should
have thought was well enough known in England,--yet I could not perhaps
touch upon anything less considered,--the real use of brick. Our fields
of good clay were never given us to be made into oblong morsels of one
size. They were given us that we might play with them, and that men who
could not handle a chisel, might knead out of them some expression of
human thought. In the ancient architecture of the clay districts of
Italy, every possible adaptation of the material is found exemplified:
from the coarsest and most brittle kinds, used in the mass of the
structure, to bricks for arches and plinths, cast in the most perfect
curves, and of almost every size, strength, and hardness; and moulded
bricks, wrought into flower-work and tracery as fine as raised patterns
upon china. And, just as many of the finest works of the Italian
sculptors were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts of their
architects are expressed in brick, or in the softer material of terra
cotta; and if this were so in Italy, where there is not one city from
whose towers we may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine,
everlasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more ought it to be
so among the fields of England! I believe that the best academy for her
architects, for some half century to come, would be the brick-field; for
of this they may rest assured, that till they know how to use clay, they
will never know how to use marble.

Sec. XXXIX. And now observe, as we pass from fig. 2 to fig. 3, and from
fig. 5 to fig. 6, in Plate XVII., a most interesting step of transition.
As we saw above, Sec. XIV., the round arch yielding to the Gothic, by
allowing a point to emerge at its summit, so here we have the Gothic
conceding something to the form which had been assumed by the round; and
itself slightly altering its outline so as to meet the condescension of
the round arch half way. At page 137 of the first volume, I have drawn
to scale one of these minute concessions of the pointed arch, granted at
Verona out of pure courtesy to the Ve