shape. The next process is that of tempering or mixing the clay into a homogeneous paste, which is sometimes done by the spade, but more commonly in the pug-mill (see vol. vii., p. 726) or by crushing between a pair of rollers; often, indeed, both are employed. In making bricks by the old hand process, the shape is given by a mould either entirely of wood, or of wood faced with metal, and without top or bottom. This admits of the clay being pressed into it by a tool called a plane, which is also used to produce an even surface on the upper and lower beds of the brick, by working off the superfluous clay. Sand is used to part the wet clay from the mould and the table on which it rests.

Although hand-made bricks are still very common, yet machinery is now always employed when large quantities are required. Brick-making machines are of two leading kinds; one class of them being constructed to work the clay in a wet plastic state, the other class requiring it to be in a semi-dry condition. Of the two sorts, the wet-clay machines are the simpler, cheaper, and can be worked by lessskilled workmen. On the other hand, the dry-clay

machines, which make the bricks by forcing the clay into moulds by strong pressure, shorten the process, as no time is required for drying them. The bricks so made, too, are not only of a more perfect shape, but they can be moulded into any form, and may even be made highly ornamental at a very slight additional cost.

As might be expected, both the dry and the wetclay machines of different makers vary considerably in their details. Since we have not room for two figures, we give one, which will convey a good idea of the general plan on which most of the wet-clay machines work. The machine is driven by steam, and the clay is fed by a hopper into the pug-mill A, on the central shaft of which strong pugging blades are placed in a spiral manner. These prepare and force the clay out at the bottom, whence it passes over the carrying rollers, C, to the pressing rollers, PP, which force it through a die at D, in a rectangular stream, S, so exactly shaped to the required size that nothing more is necessary than to cut it into single bricks by the wires, W. These are set in a rocking frame, which can be so adjusted as to cut the bricks on the square or at an angle; the one plan being adopted when the clay is at rest, the other while it is in motion. The figure shews what is called a single-ended machine. When doubleended, the clay is forced out at opposite sides of the

pugging cylinder, and there is then, of course, a cutting-table at either side, instead of only one, as shewn in our cut. Some of these machines are provided with a pair of powerful crushing rollers, which reduce any hard lumps or stones before the clay enters the pug-mill. One of the best known wet-clay machines is that made by Clayton, Son, & Co., London. When of a size which can be worked by a steam-engine of 16-horse power, it produces from 20,000 to 30,000 bricks per day, and its price in 1871 was £330. The one shewn in our figure is Murray's patent. Drain tiles are made by the same kind of machinery, with a peculiarly constructed die, so as to make the clay into a hollow tube; so also are hollow bricks, with again an alteration in the shape of the die. Hollow bricks having less body than those which are solid, are more easily, and usually more thoroughly fired. On account of this, as well as by reason of their admitting of a current of air through them, they form, as a rule, dryer walls.

The green bricks, after being carefully dried, either in the sun or by artificial heat, are usually baked in a kiln with a suitable arrangement of fires and flues. Kilns are of many forms, and the time required for firing in them varies from 40 to 60

hours for common red and white bricks, while for some fire-bricks 150 hours are necessary. Where kilns are not used, bricks are burned in clamps, the clay requiring to be mixed up, in the process of tempering, with a quantity of ground coal sufficient to burn them. A good test of the character of a clay is obtained by the result of firing. The average contraction in the kiln for prepared clays is 7 per cent. If a brick contracts much more than this, the clay is too fusible; if less, then it is likely to be of an open porous body, which retains its shape well during the firing process.

All brick clays contain iron, and the colour of a burned brick almost entirely depends on the amount of it which is present; thus clays containing less than 1 or 14 per cent. of iron, change in the kiln to various shades of cream colour and buff, whilst those containing more than 2 per cent., range in colour from yellowish-fawn to dark red. Blue bricks are made from the same clay as the red by controlling in a peculiar way the supply of air in firing, and by carrying the heat slightly further. It is asserted by some that the red is changed to the black oxide of iron in the process.

Fire-bricks are made from clay as free as possible from oxide of iron and alkaline substances, so that

Much attention has been paid of late years to the manufacture of fine bricks and terra cotta, which is only another name for ornamental bricks of various shapes, or architectural enrichments of the same material. The effect of some of the public buildings recently erected in London and elsewhere, in which terra cotta has been used, is really beautiful. Although it cannot be said to equal sandstone in appearance, it has yet the advantage of giving a much greater variety of colour, and is infinitely better and more enduring than a facing of stucco

or cement.

The duties formerly levied on bricks were wholly repealed in 1850.

BRICKLAYING, BRICKWORK. The material of which a town is built depends mainly on the geology of the surrounding district. In a mountainous country like Scotland, cities of stone, such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen naturally abound; while London, and most of the great towns of England, situated in alluvial valleys and plains, are built of bricks derived from the alluvial clay beneath and around them. In Holland, where the whole country is but the delta of the Rhine, and no stone is to be found, brick is universal, even to the paving of the streets.

The standard size of English bricks being 9 inches by 41, the thickness of walls is regulated thereby. They are either half-brick, 1 brick, 1, 2, 3, or 4 bricks in thickness. In moderate-sized modern English houses, the inside partition-walls are usually half-brick, the outer walls, 1 or 14. In larger houses of superior construction, a thickness of two or three bricks is sometimes used. This latter thickness is seldom exceeded, except in large public works. Modern brick-houses are, for the most part, far less substantial than those erected by our forefathers. Building leases being usually granted for ninetynine years, at the expiration of which term, the whole property reverts to the freeholder, the object of the builder is merely to make a house that shall stand for that period, and not to expend any money for the sake of further stability. Garden-walls are commonly built but half-brick in thickness; these, however, are strengthened by 9-inch piers at intervals of 10 or 12 feet. In laying the foundations of walls, the first courses should be thicker than the intended superstructure, and the projections thus formed, usually of quarter brick on each side, are called 'set-offs.' Before laying walls of houses, trenches are dug, and the foundation tried with a crowbar or rammer. If it is found to be loose, and the looseness due to superficial soil, this is removed, and its place supplied with fragments of stone and old broken bricks, which are closely rammed together. In some cases, inverted arches of brick are built for foundation, or a stratum of concrete laid down. See CONCRETE.

Mortar composed of lime and sand is the common cement for brickwork. It should be equally and carefully applied; and the bricks wetted, in order that the mortar may adhere more firmly, by being absorbed into their pores. The force with which good mortar is capable of adhering to bricks is very remarkable. It is found to be the greatest in old structures that have been exposed to the continuous action of water. Such B. is said to be 'water-bound' by workmen, and can scarcely be separated without breaking the bricks.

A fundamental principle to be rigidly observed in

perpendicular joints shall fall immediately below each other, or, to use the bricklayer's phrase, the work must break bond.' The mode of arrangement of the bricks to effect this is called the bond; a layer or stratum of bricks is called a course. Bricks laid with their lengths in the direction of the course, and their sides to the wall-face, are called stretchers; those laid across the line of the course, with their ends forming the wall-face, headers; a layer of headers, a heading course; of stretchers, a stretching course.

The two kinds of bond almost exclusively used in England are the English and Flemish bond. English bond consists of alternate stretching and heading courses; Flemish bond, of a stretcher and header laid alternately in each course (see figures). English bond is the strongest; Flemish bond, the more ornamental; and they are used accordingly.

Old English Bond.

Flemish Bond.

There are two other kinds of bond occasionally used-herring bond, and garden-wall bond. The former is applied to form the core of thick walls, where Flemish bond is used for the facing. A course of bricks is laid obliquely at an angle of 45° to the face of the wall; then above it, another course at the same angle, but inclined in the opposite direction, so that the joints may cross the first. This is considered to add to the strength of Flemish bond, but is objectionable on account of the triangular interstices necessarily left between the oblique bricks and the bricks of the facing. Garden-wall bond is only used for 9-inch walls, and formed by laying three stretchers and one header, and so on in each course. In order to strengthen Flemish bond, bands of hoop-iron are sometimes laid flatwise between the courses. This hoop-iron bond' has superseded the old practice of using bond-timbers, which were inserted the whole length of the wall. The hoop-iron should be slightly rusted, to secure the complete adhesion of the mortar.

In constructing arches of brickwork, much care and skill are required. A wooden centring is always used; and when very rude work only is required, common bricks are laid upon the centring, and the gaping interstices at the upper ends filled with rough brick wedges. For better work, each brick has to be properly bevelled, according to the curve. When semicircular arches are made, all the bricks require an equal bevel, and therefore bricks moulded uniformly to the required angle may be used; but for other curves and for flat arches, each brick has to be separately shaped by the bricklayer. In order to do this, a drawing of the required arch is made of the full size on a board; the bricks are laid upon

this side by side, and shaped to the lines of the drawing; they are then transferred to their corresponding place in the structure. The bricks are first rudely shaped by the brick-axe, then finished on the rubbing-stone, a piece of rough grained stone about 20 inches in diameter. In all kinds of B., the walls should be built up level throughout, in order that the settlement may be equal. An unequal settlement may produce a rupture of the wall.

B. is measured by the rod or by thousand. A rod contains 272 square feet of standard thickness —that is, 1 brick. This is equal to 306 cubic feet, and will, on an average, require 4500 bricks, allowing for waste. The weight of a rod of B. containing 4500 bricks, 27 bushels of lime, and 3 single loads of sand, is about 13 tons. The bricklayer is always attended by a labourer or hodman, who carries his bricks and mortar in a 'hod'-a triangular wooden box, open at the top and one end, and supported on a round leg, by which the hodman holds it on his shoulder. A bricklayer's wages are usually about 268. per week, the labourer's about 188. The labourers are generally Irishmen.

The surface of brickwork is sometimes ornamented by pointing. This is done by raking out the mortar of the joints to a small depth, and filling up again with blue mortar, and marking the courses with the edge of the trowel. This is called flat-joint pointing. When the courses are marked by a neatly pared raised line of white plaster of about half an inch in thickness, laid upon the blue mortar, it is called tuck or tuck-joint pointing. Coloured bricks, as a means of external ornament, have been extensively and most effectively used in North Italy and Germany. The works of Mr Ruskin, Mr Gally Knight, Webb's Continental Ecclesiology, Street's Brick and Marble of the Middle Ages, and Fergusson's Hand-book of Architecture, may be consulted for illustrated examples of these.

Chromatic brickwork is now becoming very extensively used in England, especially by architects who are endeavouring to revive the style of architecture called by themselves English Gothic, and by some others Venetian Gothic, in which the pointed arch, formed of coloured bricks, forms one of the prominent features. These architects maintain that, as they are compelled to construct with B., it is more honest to use bricks ornamentally, than by means of stucco to obtain an external imitation of stone; and as B. admits of but little ornamentation in relief, they use variation of colour, of which B. is peculiarly susceptible, and thus produce a sort of architectural mosaic. The eloquent and popular advocacy of these views by Mr Ruskin, and the skill and enthusiasm with which many young and rising architects are carrying them out, seem likely to bring about a great development, almost amounting to a revolution in English domestic and ecclesiastical architecture.

BRICOLLE. See BALLISTA.

maids, or attendants on brides, appear to have been in use among the Anglo-Saxons, and are mentioned in early accounts of marriage-ceremonies. A part of their duty consisted in dressing and undressing the bride. Bridemaids, as mere ceremonious attendants at marriages, are still in use in England. The husband had an analogous body of attendants, called bridegroom-men; but they have disappeared in modern usage, and their only representative is one confidential friend in attendance. In Scotland, this personage is called the best man. One of his duties is to pull off the bridegroom's right-hand glove, while one of the bridemaids does the same service for the bride, when the pair are requested to join hands.

BRIDE-FAVOURS are small knots of white ribbons, which are pinned to the breasts of all who are in attendance at weddings, nor are even the post-boys and their horses' heads left undecorated with these gay trappings. The origin of the bride-favour is said to be the true-lovers'-knot

something symbolical of the union of hearts and hands on the occasion. In various old plays and poems there are allusions to bride-favours or ribbons, as that in Herrick's Hesperides :

What posies for our wedding-rings,

What gloves we'll give and ribbonings. The BRIDE-CAKE is also symbolical in its origin. The ceremony used at the solemnisation of marriage among the Romans was called confarreation, in token of a most firm conjunction between the man and wife, with a cake of wheat or barley. This, Blount tells us, is still retained in part with us, by that which is called the bride-cake used at weddings.'-Brand's Popular Antiquities. The old English and also Scottish custom of breaking a cake over the head of the bride on entering her new dwelling, perhaps points to a usage of the most remote antiquity-the sprinkling with wheat as a token of plenty. In modern times, the bridecake is a stately piece of confectionary, consisting of a rich cake as a basis, on which is reared a castellated structure, with various fanciful devices, the whole being covered with a preparation of white sugar. This fabric is cut up and given in pieces to the guests, as part of the wedding jovialty.

BRI'DEWELL, a well between Fleet Street and the Thames, dedicated to St Bride, which has given its name to a palace, parish, and house of correction. A palace, described as 'a stately and beautiful house,' was built here, in 1522, by Henry VIII., for the reception and accommodation of the Emperor Charles V. and his retinue; and King Henry himself also often lodged here, as, for instance, in 1525, when a parliament was held in Blackfriars; and in 1529, the same regal personage and his queen, Catharine, lived in the B. while the question of their marriage was argued. In 1553, Edward VI. gave it over to the city of London, to be used as a workhouse for the poor, and a house of correction 'for the strumpet and idle person, for the rioter that consumeth all, and for the vagabond that will abide in no place.' Queen Mary having confirmed the gift, it was formally taken possession of in 1555 by the lord mayor and corporation. The B. was afterwards used for other persons than the class above named, and at last became a place of punishment, as it now is. As a house of correction, it is not under the sheriff's charge, but is governed by a keeper wholly independent of that officer.

340

By the 15 and 16 Vict. c. 70, a new House of Correction is established for the city of London. See CORRECTION, HOUSE OF.