The warm tone of these beds of soil is an admirable relief
to the blue of the distances, which we have taken as the distinctive
feature of the country, tending to produce the perfect light without
which no landscape can be complete. Therefore the red of the brick is
prevented from glaring upon the eye, by its falling in with similar
colors in the ground, and contrasting finely with the general tone of
the distance. This is another instance of the material which nature most
readily furnishes being the right one. In almost all blue country, we
have only to turn out a few spadefuls of loose soil, and we come to the
bed of clay, which is the best material for the building; whereas we
should have to travel hundreds of miles, or to dig thousands of feet, to
get the stone which nature does not want, and therefore has not given.
188. Another excellence in brick is its perfect air of English
respectability. It is utterly impossible for an edifice altogether of
brick to look affected or absurd: it may look rude, it may look vulgar,
it may look disgusting, in a wrong place; but it cannot look foolish,
for it is incapable of pretension. We may suppose its master a brute, or
an ignoramus, but we can never suppose him a coxcomb: a bear he may be,
a fop he cannot be; and, if we find him out of his place, we feel that
it is owing to error, not to impudence; to self-ignorance, not to
self-conceit; to the want, not the assumption of feeling.
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