134 ROMANO-BRITISH BRICK-KILN, ETC. 



the banks of the Tigris ; its lofty terraces have mouldered away 

 into heaps of their original dust. On the banks of the Nile by 

 the side of temples of imperishable granite are pyramids of brick, 

 the sharp angles of which have been long effaced. No large rivers 

 flowed in Greece to form an alluvial soil ; in its stead Nature 

 furnished an inexhaustible supply of stone 'of which the Greeks 

 took advantage, of which there is abundant evidence in every 

 direction. The later Roman preferred the volcanic products, 

 peperine and travertine, which were to be sought farther off than 

 the clay-deposits of the Tiber ; but in early times stone only was 

 used in their largest public buildings ; ordinarily they were con- 

 structed of baked clay, the facings only being of stone or marble. 

 Flat baked bricks formed the outside walls of many edifices 

 cemented together in layers. In the Christian era St. Paolo and 

 other Roman churches were built of brick. 



In the alluvial plains of the valley of the Po, although many 

 of the earlier buildings were constructed entirely of stone from 

 quarries at a distance, those of later date, except the shafts of the 

 pillars, which were required to be delicate and detached, were built 

 of brick and stone intermixed. In many of the ecclesiastical 

 buildings at Parma, Venice, Verona, Milan, and Mantua is a rich 

 embroidery of marble on a body of brick. The Farnese Palace, 

 begun by Bramante and finished by Michael Angelo, has plain 

 surfaces of brick, so fine in texture and neat in the joints, that by 

 the superficial observer it is generally taken for stone. 



Brick was made use of until a very late period in Modern Rome. 



