THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 393 



eled terra-cotta, glass slabs, or glass mosaic, and that our streets 

 may at least present a clean, gay, and cheerful appearance. 



I beg you to observe the Chinese, Japanese, and Persian pot- 

 tery exhibited, mostly in the shape of tiles, and I ask you if these 

 would not make a lovely alternative to our present fronts of dingy 

 brick or plain or painted compo. When I was in Cairo, many 

 house-fronts and some fronts of mosques were faced with these 

 Persian or Khodian tiles. If any one would start a gorgeous front 

 of enameled pottery, there would be an outcry at first ; but we 

 should gradually get accustomed to beauty and color, and become 

 reconciled to the loss of dingy and blackened brick. Even now 

 there is no outcry when the platforms of a railway station are 

 lined with white glazed bricks banded with green or gray, and 

 the small extra cost would soon be repaid by better health and 

 the saving of painting. At first this could only be done by taste- 

 ful, benevolent, and patriotic men who were wealthy, or by enter- 

 prising ones, who thought a house so fronted would advertise 

 itself ; but as this sort of facing came into fashion, window jambs 

 and reveals, panels, strings, and cornices would be kept in stock, 

 probably printed in colors instead of hand-painted, and would be 

 cheap enough. There is one use of enameled pottery I have not 

 mentioned roofing tiles. In parts of France and Italy these pre- 

 vail. At Lugo, in the Rornagna, I saw the steeple of a church 

 covered with enameled pottery of different colors, which wound 

 round it, the steeple being a cone ; the visible glazed parts were 

 semicircular in section, and, though I do not know how they were 

 fixed, they looked as if they were stuck into mortar, like the 

 enameled terra-cotta cones found at Babylon, and used to orna- 

 ment wall surfaces. Most of the tile patterns I have seen in 

 France are, to say the least, more ingenious than beautiful ; but 

 there are gold and green tiles used at Vienna and at Botzen that 

 are ornamental enough. 



Even the Romans were more alive to the use that might be 

 made of broken glass than we are, for we learn from Martial that 

 the collection of broken glass was a trade, and the glass, he says, 

 was exchanged for brimstone matches. I can not say how these 

 glass slabs or tiles would stand our climate, but, if they could be 

 fixed in no other way, they might be set in frames of cast iron, 

 barffed. 



I hardly know if I should include sgraffito. It would cer- 

 tainly be useless in the denser parts of London, as it would 

 soon be a uniform dingy black ; but we know that there are still 

 examples that are visible at South Kensington, and that it lasts 

 well in the country. It is done in this way : Any colored ground 

 that may be chosen is first prepared of mortar or cement, colored 

 with earthy or mineral pigments ; it is then laid on the wall. 



