t record
is that entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy
contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same
direction, on the Italian peninsula,--an engineer having submitted to
Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of
Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity
with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical
sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook
to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; Tennyson makes
one an essential feature of his English summer picture, wherein forever
glows the sweet image of the "Gardener's Daughter"; and Bunyan found no
better similitude for Christian's passage from Time to Eternity than the
"river where there is no bridge."

The primitive need, the possible genius, the science, and the sentiment
of a bridge endear its aspect and associations beyond those of any other
economical structure. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque
about a mill, as Constable's pencil and Tennyson's muse have aptly
demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle possible in a sculptured
gate, as those of Ghiberti so elaborately evidence; science, poetry, and
human enterprise consecrate a light-house; sacred feelings hallow a
spire; and mediaeval towers stand forth in noble relief against the
sunset sky: but around none of these familiar objects cluster the same
thoroughly human associations which make a bridge attractive to the
sight and memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies man's primal
relation to Nature, his first instinctive effort to circumvent or avail
himself of her resources; indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge
from Nature herself,--her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a
stream, "the testimony of the rocks," the curving shores, cavern roofs,
and pendent branches, and the prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet
well calls "a bridge to tempt the angels down."

A bridge of the simplest kind is often charmingly effective as a
landscape-accessory: there is a short plank one in a glen of the White
Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the
picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the
region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city
by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the
building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the m