The Danes appear to have done little more than plunder and destroy. The Normans, more politic, imitated the Saxons, and left us Churches and Castellated Mansions; but still we are without domestic architecture. All these facts tend to prove, that our Cities, and even London, consisted almost wholly of wooden or framed houses plastered. Why it was so, is a problem not easily resolved; for, supposing the antient Briton ignorant of masonry before the country was invaded, the Romans immediately introduced the cutting and sculpturing of stone, such cement as we cannot now equal, and the use of bricks. Perhaps, however, the uncertain tenure of all property discouraged the Farmer and Citizen from erecting solid mansions; indeed, they were all soldiers and vassals, and their houses probably were erected by their various masters at the least possible expence. This argument may apply to the time anterior to the Norman invasion; but it will not do after London increased, and the people were made more independent. When property became secure, the houses were certainly slight and combustible; and hence the tremendous fires which have been recorded between the time of William the Conqueror and 1666. Stone was, I presume, almost exclusively used for Palaces and the mansions of the richest Citizens; but that is readily accounted for: Stone requires no great deal of preparation; the facing received the labours of the Sculptor or Mason, but the monstrous thick wall was filled with fragments from the chissel, or rough pebbles. Besides, pillars, mouldings, and fret-work, arose without difficulty from soft stone. Could those embellishments have been produced in brick without infinite trouble? and, would they ever have looked well when joined with mortar? Is it not then plain that the noble ideas of our Princes, Nobles, and other rich men who lavished vast sums on their structures, required _Stone_ to embody them; and that, had it been common, Brick would certainly have been rejected by them? The total disuse of brick by the rich deprived the less fortunate Citizen of its advantages. The revival or introduction of any manufacture demands encouragement from the powerful; if that is withheld, who will attempt them merely on disinterested motives? Parsimony in the great revived the art of Brick-making. When a Prince found the price of labour increase, and wished to build, he first stripped the design of his architect of ornament: thus stripped, a plain surface might be composed of any hard substance; Brick naturally occurred, and bricks were made. Still the mass of the people had them not. The affluent used them both in London and in the country; but the unhappy publick, fascinated with their Wood and Plaster, at last saw one fatal flame destroy all their frail tenements at one blow. The year 1666 expelled wooden buildings from our Metropolis; and from that year Brick reigned with undiminished sway, has crept beyond all reasonable limits, and even aspired to compose