The principles which, after comparing many examples of different dates, seemed to me the true ones, in order to successfully use bricks, are few and simple, and it is a great pleasure to find them in many respects identical with those Mr. Trollope has laid down in the excellent paper to which this chapter is so much indebted.[6] Martel, in his _Principles of Colouring_, published by Winsor & Newton, says that in the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to offer a satisfactory explanation of the cause of the peculiar colours of different substances--that is, why grass is green, or copper red, or silver white; and he adds that it is usual to account for them by saying that all bodies _absorb_ certain colours and reflect others, the colour absorbed being always complementary to that reflected. Thus if a body is green it is said to absorb the red rays, and reflect blue and yellow, and so with others. He further says that if the eye sees red it is immediately called up to see another colour, namely green, which is the exact contrast; and states that if a red flower is placed on a sheet of white paper and suddenly withdrawn, a green image will faintly appear to the eye. Now a broad red wall is one of the most dreary objects of modern civilisation, and, indeed, the side of a square, broken only by rectangular windows, as exhibited in London squares, has doubtless had a depressing and injurious effect on the duration of human life. Russell Square and Bedford Square are familiar instances of this; and how unfavourably they contrast with old Lincoln’s Inn buildings, in the same city, the engraving will show, yet the same architecture that prevails in Lincoln’s Inn would abundantly serve all the purposes of a London square of modern times. The corbelling out of the chimney, and the way in which the octagon and gables blend together, is artistic to a passing degree, and well the designer knew the value of the material he had in hand. Probably it was erected in the latter part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. [Illustration: ANCIENT BRICKWORK, LINCOLN’S INN.] Lincoln’s Inn was equal in importance, it is said, to the Temple, and had its annual revels. The Temple master of these was a “Lord of Misrule,” till the better feeling of the members stopped all these saturnalia. “Assumed characters,” it is said, were so numerous that they required limitation in the edicts of the Benchers, and “Jack Straw” and his train were banished under pain of any one who assumed the character paying five pounds; and though Charles II. visited Lincoln’s Inn to see the revels, they were doomed to disappear.