We learn from the Bible that burnt bricks were used in building the Tower of Babel, and from early historians, as well as from recent discoveries, we know that they were also made for the walls of Babylon. The bricks of the ancient Egyptians were made of clay tempered with water and mixed with chopped straw, and afterwards dried in the sun, and the labour of the Israelites was made more severe by their being compelled to find straw for themselves. In Rome both burnt or kiln-dried bricks and those dried in the sun were employed, and though at a later date the art of brickmaking seems to have fallen into disuse, it was revived again in Italy after some hundreds of years. The trade seems to have been brought to England by the Romans, and many of the most ancient buildings in this country are made of very fine brickwork, though, till the reign of Elizabeth, only large mansions were so built, the common houses being formed of frame-works of timber filled in with coarse plaster supported by laths of wood. There are few more interesting sights than a brick-field in full work with its great sheds, its horses going slowly round and round in the mills, grinding the clay which has been dug out of the deep pits; its great stacks covered with hurdles and screens made of reeds and its immense kilns, so cleverly and evenly built, where the smoke rises lazily from the dull fires by which the drying or burning is completed. [Illustration: Clay Mill.] The methods of brickmaking differ considerably in various parts of England, but that which we most commonly see in practice near London will very well represent them all, and it is this which will now be described. The earth used for making bricks is found after digging till the labourers reach the loamy soil lying just above that blue clay which is known as London clay; and this earth is known as strong clay, mild clay, and malm, and this earth requires preparation by mixing with them chalk and the dust of burnt ashes from the dust bins. These burnt ashes the brickmakers call “breeze.” The chalk mill and the clay mill are placed close together on large mounds, high enough to allow the “malm” (which is a mixture of chalk and clay ground to a thin paste) to run down to the brick earth. The chalk mill is a round trough where the chalk is ground by heavy wheels fitted with spikes on their tires or hoops, and turned by one or two horses. The trough is supplied with water from a pump, and the chalk, as it is ground, runs off by a wooden gutter into the clay mill, where it is again stirred and ground till it mixes with the clay; the mixture then runs through a grating and through other gutters to the brick earth, which has been placed in heaps to receive it. [Illustration: Hack Barrow. Barrow.]