by their historical suggestions, almost every vocation and sentiment of
humanity being intimately associated therewith. The Rialto at Venice and
the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, are identified with the financial
enterprise of the one city and the goldsmiths' skill of the other: one was
long the Exchange of the 'City of the Sea,' and still revives the image of
Shylock and the rendezvous of Antonio; while the other continues to
represent mediæval trade in the quaint little shops of jewellers and
lapidaries. One of the characteristic religious orders of that era is
identified with the ancient bridge which crosses the Rhone at Avignon,
erected by the 'Brethren of the Bridge,' a fraternity instituted in an age
of anarchy expressly to protect travellers from the bandits, whose
favourite place of attack was at the passage of rivers. The builder of the
old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, is believed to have been attached to
this same order; he died in 1176, and was buried in a crypt of the little
chapel on the second pier, according to the habit of the fraternity. For
many years a market was held on this bridge; it was often the scene of
war; it stayed the progress of Canute's fleet; at one time destroyed by
fire, and at another carried away by ice; half ruined in one era by the
bastard Faulconbridge, and at another the watchword of civil war, when the
cry resounded, 'Cade hath gotten London Bridge!' and Wat Tyler's rebels
convened there. Elizabeth and her peerless courtiers have floated, in
luxurious barges and splendid attire, by its old piers, and the heads of
traitors rotted in the sun upon its venerable battlements. Only sixty
years ago a portion of the original structure remained;[49] it was once
covered with houses; Peter the Dutchman's famous water-wheels plashed at
its side; from the dark street and projected gables noted tavern-signs
vibrated in the wind. The exclusive thoroughfare from the city to Kent and
Surrey, what ceremonial and scenes has it not witnessed,--royal entrances
and greetings, rites under the low brown arches of the old chapel, revelry
in the convenient hostels, traffic in the crowded mart, chimes from the
quaint belfry, the tragic triumph of vindictive law in the gory heads upon
spikes! The veritable and minute history of London Bridge would illustrate
the civic and social annals of England; and romance could scarce invent a
more effective background for the varied scenes and personages such a
chronicle would exhibit than the dim local perspective, when, ere any
bridge stood there, the ferryman's daughter founded, with the tolls, a
House of Sisters, subsequently transformed into a college of priests. By a
law of Nature, thus do the elements of civilization cluster around the
place of transit; thus do the courses of the water indicate the direction
and nucleus of emigration,--from the vast lakes and mighty rivers of
America, whereby an immense continent is made available to human
intercourse, and therefore to material unity, to the point where the
Thames was earliest crossed and spanned. More special historical and
social facts may be found attached to every old bridge. In war,
especially, heroic achievement and desperate valour have often consecrated
these narrow defiles and exclusive means of advance and retreat:--
'When the goodman mends his armour,
And trims his helmet's plume,
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom,
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the good old days of old.'
The bridge of Darius spanned the Bosphorus,--of Xerxes, the
Hellespont,--of Cæsar, the Rhine,--and of Trajan, the Danube; while the
victorious march of Napoleon has left few traces so unexceptionably
memorable as the massive causeways of the Simplon. Cicero arrested the
bearer of letters to Catiline on the Pons Milonis, built in the time of
Sylla on the ancient Via Flaminia; and by virtue of the blazing cross
which he saw in the sky from the Ponte Molle the Christian emperor
Constantine conquered Maxentius. The Pont du Gard near Nismes, and the St.
Esprit near Lyons, were originally of Roman construction. During the war
of freedom, so admirably described by our countryman, whereby rose the
Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, at the siege of Valenciennes, we are told,
'made forays upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring supplies,
and the broken statues of the dismantled churches were used to build a
bridge across an arm of the river, which was called, in derision, the
Bridge of Idols.'
But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably described in another
military episode of this favourite historian,--that which Alexander of
Parma built across the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for Philip
of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and courage; and it
became the scene of one of the most terrible tragedies and the most
fantastic festivals which signalize the history of that age, and
illustrate the extraordinary and momentous struggle for religious liberty
in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred feet into the
stream,--connected with the shore by boats, defended by palisades,
fortified parapets, and spiked rafts; cleft and partially destroyed by the
volcanic fire-ship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and engineer, whereby
a thousand of the best troops of the Spanish army were instantly killed,
and their brave chief stunned,--when the hour of victory came to the
besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and Arcadian banquet,
and 'the whole extent of its surface from the Flemish to the Brabant
shore' was alive with 'war-bronzed figures crowned with flowers.' 'This
magnificent undertaking has been favourably compared with the celebrated
Rhine bridge of Julius Cæsar. When it is remembered, however, that the
Roman work was performed in summer, across a river only half as broad as
the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of the tides, and flowing
through an unresisting country, while the whole character of the
structure, intended only to serve for the single passage of an army, was
far inferior to the massive solidity of Parma's bridge, it seems not
unreasonable to assign the superiority to the general who had surmounted
all the obstacles of a northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the
sea, and enterprising and desperate enemies at every point.'[50]
It was at the bridge of Pinos, where the Moors and Christians had so
fiercely battled, that Columbus, after pleading his cause in vain at the
court, hastening away with despondent steps, was overtaken by the queen's
messenger; recalled, and provided with the substantial aid that led to his
momentous discovery. It was in a pavilion in the middle of the bridge
across the Seine at Montereau, that the Dauphin, afterwards Charles the
Seventh, invited the Duke of Burgundy to meet him in colloquy; and there
the latter met his death. The Bridge of Lodi is one of the great landmarks
of Napoleon's career; and the Bridge of Concord no insignificant landmark
of the American Revolutionary War. Over the Melos at Smyrna is a bridge
which is a rendezvous for camels, and has been justly called 'the central
point of the commerce of Asia Minor.'
We have a memorable illustration of the historic interest of bridges, in
the elaborate annals of the Pont Neuf.[51] Although in importance it has
long since been superseded by other elegant causeways, for centuries it
was the centre of Paris life,--of the trade and pastime, of the scandal
and the violences, of the shows and _émeutes_, so that the record of what
occurred there is an epitome of political and social history. It was the
rendezvous of dog-clippers and ballad-singers, of _bravi_ and gallants, of
the quack and the courtezan, of student, soldier, artist, and gossip. 'The
heart of Paris beat there,' says the historian of the Pont Neuf, 'from the
seventeenth century;' the statue of Henry IV. alone made it the nucleus of
political associations; it was alike the scene of Cellini's adventure and
Sterne's sentiment. Catherine de Medicis laid its first stone. Henry IV.
completed it; guillotines, _cafés_, and altars have signalized its
extremities or parapets. La Fronde was there inaugurated; there the
discharge of cannon proclaimed the flight of the king in '91; its pavement
was bloody with the massacres of September; the first Napoleon there first
tried his hand against the revolution; it was the scene of an Englishman's
famous bet and a parrot's famous lingo. Huguenot, royalist, priest,
executioner, _gamin_, assassin, thief, dandy, nun, hero, and
actress,--procession, tryst, ambush, faction, and farce,--murder, song,
_bon-mot_, watchword,--the tragic, the holy, and the hopeless in life,
alternate in the story of the Pont Neuf. The Countess du Barri, as a
child, 'the pretty little angel,' was a vendor there; and an old epigram
identified her career with bridges,--her birth with the Pont au Choux, her
childhood with the Pont Neuf, her triumph with the Pont Royale, and her
end with the Pont aux Dames.
Even the fragile bridges of our own country during the Revolution, have an
historical importance in the story of war. The 'Great Bridge' across the
Elizabeth river, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia; the floating bridge
at Ticonderoga; that which spanned Stony Brook in New Jersey; and many
others, are identified with strife or stratagem. What an effective object
in the distant landscape, to the _habitué_ of the Central Park in New
York, is the lofty bridge whereby the Croton aqueduct crosses the Harlaem
river, with its fifteen arches, its fourteen hundred feet of length, and
its span of nearly a thousand! How few of the multitude to whom King's
Bridge is a daily goal or transit, are cognizant of its historical
associations; yet the records of Manhattan Island declare that in 1692
'His Excellency the Governor, out of great favour and good to the city,'
proposed the building of this bridge, and soon ordered that 'if Frederick
Phillipse will undertake the same, he shall have the preference of their
Majesties' grant (5th of King William and 3rd of Queen Mary), which was
subsequently confirmed to the lord of the manor of Phillipsburgh;' whereon
was born and lived Washington's first love--the beautiful Mary Phillipse.
Here was the barrier of the British, when they occupied New York Island in
the Revolution; while as far north as the Croton river extended the
neutral ground, the scene of Cooper's first American romance, the heroine
of which is this same fair but unresponsive enslaver of our peerless
chief's young affections. Here, in '75, Congress ordered a post
established to protect New York by land; two years later occurred the
sanguinary fight between the Continentals under Heath and the Hessians
under Knyphausen. The next year Cornwallis fixed his command at the same
border causeway; and in '81, when our army came near the spot to give the
French officers a view of the outposts, a brisk skirmish ensued, and a
number of our men were killed at long shot. King's Bridge was long the
rendezvous of freebooters in those unsettled times, and the rallying point
of the Cow-boys. Beautifully situated at the confluence of the Hudson and
Harlaem rivers, surrounded by high rolling hills, then thickly wooded and
crowned with forts, the region was originally selected as the site of New
Amsterdam, on account of its secure position. When Manhattan Island was
abandoned by the British in '76, Washington occupied King's Bridge as his
head-quarters. Indeed, from Trenton to Lodi, military annals have few more
fierce conflicts than those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground is
disputed; to cross one is often a declaration of war, and Rubicons abound
in history.
There is probably no single problem, wherein the laws of science and
mechanical skill combine, which has so won the attention and challenged
the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The various
exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the
experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been prolific
causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of economy, the
mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires a rare union
of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results in this sphere.
To invent a bridge, through the application of a scientific principle by a
novel method, is one of those projects which seem to fascinate
philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice been more completely
tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically written, would exhibit
as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of inventive skill, decision of
character, genius, folly, and fame, as any other chapter in the annals of
progress. How to unite security with the least inconvenience, permanence
with availability, strength with beauty,--how to adapt the structure to
the location, climate, use, and risks,--are questions which often invoke
all the science and skill of the architect, and which have increased in
difficulty with the advance of other resources and requisitions of
civilization. Whether a bridge is to cross a brook, a river, a strait, an
inlet, an arm of the sea, a canal, or a valley, are so many diverse
contingencies which modify the calculations and plans of the engineer.
Here liability to sudden freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the
enormous weight of railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of
the elements, must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters,
the exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of
viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the problem.
These considerations influence not only the method of construction, but
the form adopted and the material, and have given birth to bridges of
wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, and chain,--to bridges supported by piers,
to floating, suspension, and tubular structures, many of which are among
the remarkable trophies of modern science and the noblest fruits of the
arts of peace. Railways have created an entirely new species of bridge, to
enable a train to intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting
directions, to turn amid jagged precipices, and to cross arms of the sea
at a sufficient elevation not to interfere with the passage of
ships,--objects not to be accomplished by suspension-bridges because of
their oscillation, nor girder for lack of support, the desiderata being
extensive span with rigid strength, so triumphantly realized in the
tubular bridge. The day when the great Holyrood train, passing over the
Strait of Menai by this grand expedient, established the superiority of
this principle of construction, became a memorable occasion in the annals
of mechanical science, and immortalized the name of Stephenson.
We find great national significance in the history of bridges in different
countries. Their costly and substantial grandeur in Britain accords with
the solid qualities of the race, and their elegance on the Continent with
the pervasive influence of art in Europe. It is a curious illustration of
the inferior economical and high intellectual development of Greece, that
the 'Athenians waded, when their temples were the most perfect models of
architecture;' and equally an evidence of the practical energy of the old
Romans, that their stone bridges often remain to this hour intact. Our own
incomplete civilization is manifest in the marvellous number of bridges
that annually break down, from negligent or unscientific construction;
while the indomitable enterprise of the people is no less apparent in some
of the longest, loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sustained
bridges in the world. We have only to cross the Suspension Bridge at
Niagara, or gaze up to its aërial tracery from the river, or look forth
upon wooded ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens from the
Erie railway, to feel that in this, as in all other branches of mechanical
enterprise, our nation is as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. In no
other country would so hazardous an experiment have been ventured as that
of an engineer on one of the most frequented lines of railroad in the
land, who, finding the bridge he was approaching on fire, bade the
passengers keep their seats, and dashed boldly through the flames ere the
main arch gave way! 'The vast majority of bridges in this country,' says a
recent writer, 'whether for railroads or for ordinary horse-travel, have
these elemental points:--1. Fragility. 2. Unendurably hideous ugliness. 3.
Great aptitude for catching fire. They are all built of wood, and must be
constantly patched and mended, and will rot away in a very few years. They
are enormous blots on the landscape, stretching as they do like long
unpainted boxes across the stream; like huge Saurian monsters with
ever-open jaws into which you rush, or walk, or drive, and are gobbled up
from all sight or sense of beauty. The dry timber of which they are built
will catch fire from the mere spark of a locomotive, as in the case a few
years ago of that hideous bridge which had so long insulted the Hudson
river at Troy; and which was not only burned itself, but spread the
destroying flame to the best part of the town. These bridges deface all
the valleys of our land. The Housatonic, the Mohawk, the Lehigh, the
hundreds of small yet beautiful rivers which so delightfully diversify our
country, one and all suffer by the vile wooden-bridge system which has
nothing at all to plead in extenuation of its tasteless, expensive
existence. Every bridge in this country should be deprived of its heavy
roof; and if the exigencies of engineering required side-walls, they
should be plentifully perforated with open spaces. The more recent
railroad bridges are fortunately open bridges, or "viaducts," as it is
fashionable to call them, and the traveller, as in the case of the
Starucca viaduct on the Erie road, can both admire the engineering skill
and enjoy the scenery. The Connecticut valley is terribly disfigured by
these bridges; and a traveller from New Haven to Memphremagog will be
thoroughly impressed with this fact, which is the only drawback to the
pleasure of the route.' As an instance of ingenuity in this sphere, the
bridge which crosses the Potomac creek, near Washington, deserves notice.
The hollow iron arches which support this bridge also serve as conduits to
the aqueduct which supplies the city with water.
Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what a grand exception to
the architectural monotony are her bridges! How effectually they have
promoted her suburban growth! 'The English,' wrote Rose, from Italy, 'are
Hottentots in architecture except that of bridges.' Canova thought the
Waterloo Bridge the finest in Europe; and, by a strangely-tragic
coincidence, this noble and costly structure is the favourite scene of
suicidal despair, wherewith the catastrophes of modern novels and the most
pathetic of city lyrics are indissolubly associated. Westminster Bridge is
as truly the Swiss Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude,
and patience, as St. Paul's is that of Wren; there Crabbe, with his poems
in his pocket, walked to and fro in a flutter of suspense the morning
before his fortunate application to Burke; and our own Remington's
bridge-enthusiasm involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over
the Guadalquiver is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge
in England is that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the
Trent in Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the
speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the
beautiful bridge over the river Wear, in Durham county. There is a segment
of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's bridge which spans
our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the kind which
the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto--begun by the Censor
Fulvius, and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius. Popes Julius
III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now so valued as
a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and Ecclesiastical rule. In
striking contrast with the reminiscences of valour hinted by ancient Roman
bridges, are the ostentatious Papal inscriptions which everywhere in the
States of the Church, in elaborate Latin, announce that this Pontiff
built, or that Pontiff repaired, these structures.
The mediæval castle-moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred
from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where
preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from
the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as
when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth
to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence whereof,
we have the appropriate function which made permanently memorable the late
visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in his inauguration of the
magnificent bridge bearing her name, which is thrown across the St.
Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less than two English
miles,--the greatest tubular bridge in the world. When the young prince,
amid the cheers of a multitude and the grand cadence of the national
anthem, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows with a mallet
to the last rivet in the central tube, he celebrated one of the oldest,
though vastly advanced, triumphs of the arts of peace, which ally the
rights of the people and the good of human society to the representatives
of law and polity.