Hawthorne, when contemplating the noisome suburban street where Burns
lived; but all the humane and poetical associations connected with the
long struggle sustained by him, of 'the highest in man's soul against the
lowest in man's destiny,' recur in sight of the Bridge of Doon, and the
'Twa Brigs of Ayr,' whose 'imaginary conversations' he caught and
recorded; or that other bridge which spans a glen on the Auchinleck
estate, where the rustic bard first saw the Lass of Ballochmyle. The
tender admiration which embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the
idea of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest published volume
was suggested, according to Milnes, as he 'loitered by the gate that leads
from the battery on Hampstead Heath to the field by Caenwood;' and the
young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet passage, 'Awhile upon
some bending planks,' came to him as he hung 'over the rail of a
foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering
Edmonton.' One of Wordsworth's finest sonnets was composed on Westminster
Bridge. To the meditative pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to
quietude; the genial Country Parson, whose _Recreations_ we have recently
shared, unconsciously illustrates this, as he speaks of the privilege men
like him enjoy, when free 'to saunter forth with a delightful sense of
leisure, and know that nothing will go wrong, although he should sit down
on the mossy parapet of the little one-arched bridge that spans the
brawling mountain-stream.' On that Indian-summer day when Irving was
buried, no object of the familiar landscape, through which, without
formality, and in quiet grief, so many of the renowned and the humble
followed his remains from the village church to the rural graveyard, wore
so pensive a fitness to the eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow
Creek, near to which Ichabod Crane encountered the headless horseman,--not
only as typical of his genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene,
but because the country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honour,
had hung wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks. There are few places in
Europe where the picturesque and historical associations of a bridge more
vividly impress the spectator than Sorrento; divided from the main land by
a gorge two hundred feet deep and fifty wide, the chasm is spanned by a
bridge which rests on double arches, built by the Romans; it is the
popular rendezvous, and, beheld on coming from some adjacent
orange-garden, resembles a picture,--the men with their crimson or brown
caps, and the women with jetty hair and eyes and enormous earrings,
cluster there in the centre of the most exquisite scenery. There is a
bridge across the Adige, at Verona, which used to be opened but once a
year, on account of the risk of injury--its span being prodigious; it was
long called the 'Holiday Bridge.' In Paris the change in the names of
bridges is historically significant: in 1817 'the bridge of Austerlitz
abdicated its name,' and became the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes. The
lofty bridge of Carignano, at Genoa, owes its existence to a quarrel
between two noblemen; and it is a favourite sacrificial spot to suicides
who have repeatedly thrown themselves therefrom headlong into the Strada
Servi.
'The Baltimore and Ohio railroad company lose two of their admirable
bridges: one at Fairmount, over the Monongahela river, and the famous one
over the Cheat river,' wrote a late reporter from the scene of war in
Virginia. 'The latter was one of the most beautiful structures in the
United States, and, being placed amid scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, it
had already become a classic spot in the guide-book of American art. It
was vandalism fit for ingrates and traitors of the lowest type to destroy
what was at once so beautiful and useful a monument of taste and science.'
Another fine landscape effect produced by a bridge is at Spoleto, in the
Roman States; the ten brick arches that so picturesquely span the romantic
valley, have carried the water for centuries into the old city. The
magnificent bridge by which Madrid is approached, is a grand feature in
the adjacent landscape; and its striking photograph a noble souvenir of
the Spanish capital. The most awful bridge imagination ever created is
that described by Milton, whereby Satan's 'sea should find a shore:'--
'Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way
O'er the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wond'rous length,
From hell continued, reaching th' utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse
With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt and punish mortals.'
Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are
more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is
generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the
segments of caverns, the accidental shapes of geological formations, often
result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of bridges
as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and Kentucky,
especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable freaks of
Nature; there is one in Walker county, of the former State, which, as a
local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic county of
Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet with an
altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster Mountain of
Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of this species.
Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions and symmetrical
structure that they rank among the wonders of the world, and have long
been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. Their structure would
hint the requisites, and their forms the lines of beauty, desirable in
architectural prototypes. Across Cedar creek, in Rockbridge county,
Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown by elemental forces and
shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch, whence you gaze down two
hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides are rock, nearly
perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it the fragmentary arch
of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts an aspect of
lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet thick, and so
massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so that by
keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To realize
its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the side of the creek it
has a Gothic aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees, its dizzy
elevation, buttress-like masses, and aërial symmetry, make this sublime
arch one of those objects which impress the imagination with grace and
grandeur all the more impressive because the mysterious work of
Nature,--eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent forces of the
universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant's
Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four
hundred feet above the water's edge in the county of Antrim, on the north
coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part pentagonal,
whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate mass, but
articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and socket must be
disjointed.
The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable. The Imperial statues
which line that of Berlin form an impressive array; and whoever has seen
the figures on the bridge of Sant' Angelo at Rome, when illuminated on a
Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinità at Florence, bathed in
moonlight, and their outlines distinctly revealed against sky and water,
cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may heighten the
architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is pictorial
embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed midway or at
either end of a bridge, especially one of mediæval form and fashion, seems
appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at Lucerne, strikes
us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which divides the town and
crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the pictures are
weather-stained; as no vehicles are allowed, foot-passengers can examine
them at ease. They are in triangular frames, ten feet apart; but few have
any technical merit. One series illustrates Swiss history; and the
Kapellbrücke has the pictorial life of the Saint of the town; while the
Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint and rough copy of the famous 'Dance of
Death.'
In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cascades do bridges cross!
sometimes so aërial, and overhanging such precipices, as to justify to the
imagination the name superstitiously bestowed on more than one, of the
Devil's Bridge; while from few is a more lovely effect of near water seen
than the 'arrowy Rhone,' as we gaze down upon its 'blue rushing,' beneath
the bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied pictorial effects of bridges, at
least in a city, are nowhere more striking than at Venice, whose five
hundred, with their mellow tint and association with palatial architecture
and streets of water, especially when revealed by the soft and radiant
hues of an Italian sunset, present outlines, shapes, colours, and
contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as to warm and haunt the imagination
while they charm the eye. It is remarkable, as an artistic fact, how
graciously these structures adapt themselves to such diverse
scenes,--equally, though variously, picturesque amid the sturdy foliage
and wild gorges of the Alps, the bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the
Thames, and the crystal atmosphere, Byzantine edifices, and silent canals
of Venice.
Whoever has truly felt the aërial perspective of Turner has attained a
delicate sense of the pictorial significance of the bridge; for, as we
look through his floating mists, we descry, amid Nature's most evanescent
phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or masses whereby this
familiar image seems to identify itself not less with Nature than with
Art. Among the drawings which Arctic voyagers have brought home, many a
bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems to tempt adventurous feet
and to reflect a like form of fleecy cloud-land; daguerreotyped by the
frost in miniature, the same structures may be traced on the window-pane;
printed on the fossil and the strata of rock, in the veins of bark and the
lips of shells, or floating in sunbeams, an identical design appears; and,
on a summer morning, as the eye carefully roams over a lawn, how often do
the most perfect little suspension-bridges hang from spear to spear of
herbage, their filmy span embossed with glittering dewdrops![52]
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'A recent London paper advertises a genuine _thesaurus_ of ancient
tavern signs and other curiosities at auction, collected during a long
life by some curious antiquary. The catalogue covered an extensive and
unique collection for a history of ancient and modern inns, taverns, and
coffee-houses, in town and country (numbering upwards of 850 signs),
formed with unwearied diligence and vast outlay during a lifetime; and
illustrated with upwards of 2,500 ancient and modern engravings,
comprising topographical and antiquarian subjects, early views of London,
caricatures, humorous and satirical subjects, portraits of celebrities
whose names have been adopted as signs, characters remarkable for their
eccentricities, actors and actresses; others illustrating ancient sports
and pastimes, etchings, wood-cuts, and numerous others, plain and
coloured, many of great rarity; also 415 drawings in water-colours, sepia,
and pen and ink, and numerous copies from scarce engravings and old
paintings; together with extensive antiquarian, local, and biographical
notices (both printed and in MS.) on signs and their origin, merriments
and witticisms in prose and verse, tales, traditions, legends, and
remarkable incidents, singular inscriptions on tap-room windows and walls,
anecdotes of landlords, guests, visitors, writers, &c.'
[2] Count Pecchio.
[3] Alexander Smith.
[4] Prescott's Robertson's _Charles Fifth_, vol. 1, p. 355.
[5] Brooks's _History of Medford_.
[6] A. Trollope.
[7] _A Month in England._
[8] _Life and Letters of John Winthrop_, by Robert C. Winthrop, p. 306.
[9] 'I would not,' observes Washington Irving in one of his letters, 'give
an hour's conversation with Wilkie about paintings, in his earnest but
precise and original enthusiasm, for all the enthusiasm and declamation of
the common run of amateurs and artists.'
[10] One of the recently-discovered gems of pictorial art in Florence is
the 'coach-house picture;' so called from being a fresco on a stable-wall;
and under the head of 'Romance of a Portrait,' the London _Athenæum_
publishes a statement which seems to show conclusively that the famous
portrait of Addison at Holland House, which has been copied and engraved
time and again, and has been mentioned as authentic by Macaulay, is in
fact not a portrait of Addison, but a portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine, of
Narford Hall, Norfolk, vice-chamberlain to Queen Caroline, and the
successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the wardenship of the Mint.
[11] Another current tradition is the following:--'So great was the
excitement of the Roman populace against the condemnation of Beatrice,
that on her way to the scaffold three attempts were made, by concerted
bands of young men, to rescue her from the officers' hands. On the eve of
the fatal day she sat meditating her doom so intently, that for some time
she did not notice a young man who had bribed the jailer to admit him into
the cell for the purpose of making a sketch of her. Her appearance is thus
described:--"Beatrice had risen from her miserable pallet, but, unlike the
wretched inmate of a dungeon, resembled a being from a brighter sphere.
Her large brown eyes were of liquid softness, her forehead broad and
clear, her countenance of angelic purity, mysteriously beautiful. Around
her head a fold of white muslin had been carelessly wrapped, from whence
in rich luxuriance fell her fair and waving hair. Profound sorrow and
recent bodily anguish imparted an air of touching sensibility to her
lovely features. Suddenly turning, she discovered a stranger seated with
pencil and paper in hand looking earnestly at her--it was Guido Reni. She
demanded who he was, and what he did there; the frank young artist told
his name and object, when, after a moment's hesitation, Beatrice replied,
'Signor Guido, your great name and my sad story may make my portrait
interesting, and the picture will awaken compassion if you write on one of
its angles the word _innocent_.'" Thus was birth given to an inspired
picture, which, to contemplate, is itself worth a visit to Rome; which,
once seen, haunts the memory as a supernatural mystery--as the beautiful
apparition of sublimated suffering.'
[12] Bulwer's _Strange Story_.
[13] 'Mohammedanism had been the patron of physical science; paganizing
Christianity not only repudiated it, but exhibited towards it sentiments
of contemptuous disdain and hatred; hence physicians were viewed by the
Church with dislike, and regarded as atheists by the people, who had been
taught that cures must be wrought by relics of martyrs and bones of
saints: for each disease there was a saint. Already it was apparent that
the Saracenic movement would aid in developing the intelligence of
barbarian Western Europe, through Hebrew physicians, in spite of the
opposition encountered from theological ideas imported from Constantinople
and Rome.'--Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_, p. 414.
[14]
'When fainting Nature called for aid,
And hovering Death prepared the blow,
His vigorous remedy displayed
The power of Art without the show.
In Misery's darkest caverns known,
His useful help was ever nigh;
Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,
Or lonely Want retired to die.
No summons mocked by chill delay,
No petty gains disdained by pride;
The modest wants of every day,
The toil of every day supplied.'
[15] _Shakspeare's Medical Knowledge_, by Charles W. Stearns, M.D. New
York: D. Appleton and Co.
[16] 'Country dances' were taught in France, in 1684, by Isaac, an
Englishman.--D.
[17] Which has long ceased to exist.
[18] _Essays of Elia._
[19] In 1860.
[20] _Friends in Council._
[21] 'By the working of the apparatus for the administration of justice,
they make their profits; and their welfare depends on its being so worked
as to bring them profits, rather than on its being so worked as to
administer justice.'--_Herbert Spencer._
[22] Lockhart's _Life of Scott_.
[23] Sir T. Browne.
[24] Deut. xxxiv. 6.
[25] Tennyson's _In Memoriam_.
[26] _Dei Sepolchri_, di Ugo Foscolo.
[27] A recent advocate for cremation thus suggests the process:--'On a
gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a convenient,
well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple. At the entrance,
where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the body, are
chambers for their accommodation. Within the edifice are seats for those
who follow the remains to the last; there is also an organ and a gallery
for choristers. In the centre of the chapel, embellished with appropriate
emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those
which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the
openings being filled with prepared glass. Within this--a sufficient space
intervening--is an inner shrine, covered with bright, non-radiating metal,
and within this again is a covered sarcophagus of tempered fire-clay, with
one or more longitudinal slits near the top, extending its whole length.
As soon as the body is deposited therein, sheets of flame, at an immensely
high temperature, rush through the long apertures from end to end; and
acting as a combination of a modified oxyhydrogen blowpipe, with the
reverberatory furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the
body in an incredibly short space of time; even the large quantity of
water it contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements,
instead of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce
conflagrations. The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by
flues, and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is
observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether
floating away from the high steeple to mingle with the atmosphere.'
[28] 'How can we reconcile this pious and faithful remembrance with the
character of a nation generally thought so frivolous and inconstant? Let
this amiable, affectionate, but slandered people send the stranger and the
traveller to this place. These carefully tended flowers, these tombs, will
speak their defence.'--_Memoir of Harriet Preble_, p. 70.
[29] _Atlantic Monthly_, vol. ii., p. 139.
[30] 'I am now engaged,' wrote Mr. Severn, the artist-friend who watched
over Keats in his last hours, 'on a picture of the poet's grave. The
classical story of _Endymion_ being the subject of his principal poem, I
have introduced a young shepherd sleeping against the headstone, with his
flock about him; while the moon from behind the pyramid illuminates his
figure, and serves to realize the poet's favourite theme, in the presence
of his grave. This interesting incident is not fanciful, but is what I
actually saw, one autumn evening, at Monte Tertanio, the year following
the poet's death.'
[31] Ticknor's _Spanish Literature_.
[32] W. L. Symonds.
[33] 'News-letters were written by enterprising individuals in the
metropolis, and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; and then
circulated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which
has not descended to their printed contemporary--the newspaper,--of never
becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in
the gossip of the coffee-houses.'--Draper's _History of the Intellectual
Development of Europe_, p. 509.
[34] _Jockey's Intelligencer_, 1683.
[35] Burke's influence upon journalism was still more direct. While
preparing for Dodsley 'An Account of the European Settlements in America,'
he was led by his researches to suggest a periodical which should
chronicle the important literary, political, and social facts of the year.
Such was the origin of the _Annual Registers_. The first volume appeared
in 1759. For several years it was edited by Burke, is still regularly
published, and has been imitated in similar publications elsewhere, having
finally initiated and established the historical element of journalism.
[36] The following return of the numbers daily printed by the principal
Paris journals is taken from M. Didot's pamphlet on the fabrication of
paper. It may be regarded as official: _Presse_, 40,000; _Siècle_, 35,000;
_Constitutionel_, 25,000; _Moniteur_, 24,000; _Patrie_, 18,000; _Pays_,
14,000; _Débats_, 9,000; _Assemblée Nationale_, 5,000; _Univers_, 3,500;
_Union_, 3,500; _Gazette de France_, 2,500; _Gazettes de Tribunaux_,
2,500. These journals are all printed in five offices; and the quantity of
paper they annually consume amounts to more than four millions of pounds.
[37] Bryant.
[38] _Blackwood's Magazine_, vol. xxviii., p. 8.
[39] Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_.
[40] Dr. Sprague's _Annals of the American Pulpit_ is full of delineations
and anecdotes of prominent preachers. Their energy, zeal, and courage are
viewed in connection with their racy individual peculiarities. What some
of the Methodists had and have to endure and suffer, is indicated by a
direction from a circuit, in want of a preacher, to the Western
Conference: 'Be sure you send us a good swimmer,'--it being the duty of
the minister in that region frequently to swim wide and bridgeless streams
to keep his appointments.
[41] _Mémoires de Rochambeau._
[42] Rev. Archibald Carlyle's _Autobiography_.
[43] The _Warden_, _Barchester Towers_, and _Framley Parsonage_, by A.
Trollope; _Vincenzo_, by Ruffini; _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, par Geo.
Sand; _La Maudit_, par L'Abbe ----; _Adam Bede_; _Chronicles of
Carlingford_, &c.
[44] Dr. J. W. Draper.
[45] Calvert's _Scenes and Thoughts in Europe_.
[46] Recent Italian journals speak of a project to construct a bridge over
the Straits of Messina, to unite Sicily with the mainland. The bridge
proposed will be a suspension one, on a new system, the chains being of
cast-steel, and strong enough to support the weight of several railway
trains.
[47] _Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America, in
1759-60._ By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.
[48] Bagehot.
[49] Sir Astley Cooper's nephew presented to Dr. Valentine Mott, the late
eminent New York surgeon, an elegantly-wrought case of amputating
instruments, the handles of which are made of the wood and the blades of
iron from old London Bridge, whose oak timbers were laid in 1176.
[50] _History of the Netherlands_, vol. i., p. 182.
[51] _Histoire du Pont Neuf_, par Edouard Fournier.
[52] 'The invention of the Suspension Bridge, by Sir Samuel Brown, sprung
from the sight of a spider's web hanging across the path of the inventor,
observed on a morning walk, when his mind was occupied with the idea of
bridging the Tweed.'