And all the rest of that wall is built up of dark-stained brown wooden bricks. The other side shows between dark buttresses the red of the books, and towards the back of this side are small square buildings—wooden boxes stained brown—with brass domes and mysterious doorways. I think the priests and attendants of the Temple live here.
The front of the Temple shows a little of the red between dark buttresses, which, here, are ornamented with delicate dark carved chessmen. The gate is of pierced brass—two finger-plates for a door, and the brazen pillars of the portico are two candlesticks, which support a brass inkstand, on which stand two yellowish wooden chessmen. On the middle of the roof is a big lacquered wooden bowl—the kind that nice grocers put in their windows full of prunes or coffee. Above is a brass rose-bowl, on that a finger-bowl of inlaid brass, crowned with a black chess king. There are two dark arches with bed-knobs on them, and round the roof are various towers and turrets, and tall minarets made of dark bricks with chessmen on the top.
In front of the pillars at the gate two black elephants stand on wooden plinths, and the fore-court of the Temple and the space at the side are paved with mother-of-pearl.
I know the main things that are needed for this Temple, but its details are changed a little every time I build it.
If you cannot get mother-of-pearl card counters you can make a beautiful pavement by pasting the shining pods of honesty in a pattern on a piece of dark brown cardboard, or dark brown paper pasted on cardboard; but if you do this you must build a little dark-wood brick wall all round to hide the brown paper edges. Build gatehouses in your wall, little ones, to show off, by contrast, the massive splendour of your Temple. These honesty pods are a most useful substitute for mother-of-pearl. You can paste them on square pillars or on the fronts of boxes (houses I mean) or make sloping roofs of them by sticking them on folded cardboard fastened at the proper angle by tapes glued about a third of the way up. But as a rule sloping roofs are not good in Eastern cities. A grass garden with paths of honesty, or a shell-built fountain basin in the middle, will add a charm to any city square. And by the way, don't be afraid of open spaces. Have as many buildings as you like, and mass them together as you choose, but let there be open spaces. They will be to your building as mounts are to pictures or margins to books. And for frame or binding, let there be a wall all round your city. It gives a neatness and a completeness which enhance a hundred-fold all the qualities your city may possess.
HONESTY ROOF.
There are cardboard models of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower Bridge, and the Temple at Jerusalem. These are interesting in themselves and it is good to put them together. The Temple, which is sold by the Religious Tract Society, is really beautiful, and when you have set it up it looks like a model in ivory. The bridge and the Cathedral are of dull brown pasteboard—but they are interesting for all that. But when you are tired of these things as models, parts of them can be used with great effect in your building, especially if you paint the brown ones with aluminium paint, or even whitewash them.
In the foreground of the picture of the Astrologer's tower you will see a little house which doesn't look as if it belonged where it is. And no more it does. It was put in just to show you what these little cardboard buildings are like—it is one of the gate-houses of the Tower Bridge, and the little white house on the parapet above the steps in the picture of the silver towers is a little gate-house out of another model.