s not more significant of human isolation than the
fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands.
Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first
exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our
Western Continent record the savage expedients whereby water-courses
were passed,--coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an
aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a floating log,
or, in shallow streams, a series of stepping-stones; and the most
popular historian of England, when delineating to the eye of fancy the
hour of her capital's venerable decay, can find no more impressive
illustration than to make a broken arch of London Bridge the observatory
of the speculative reminiscent.

The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inventions, that which is
most inevitable to humanity, signalizing the first steps of man amid the
solitude of Nature, and accompanying his progress through every stage of
civic life: its crude form makes the wanderer's heart beat in the lonely
forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the track of his kind; and its
massive remains excite the reverent curiosity of the archaeologist, who
seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few
indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than the unexpected
sight of one of those bridges of solid and symmetrical masonry which the
traveller in Italy encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a
squalid town upon the ancient highway. The permanent method herein
apparent suggests an energetic and pervasive race whose constructive
instinct was imperial; such an evidence of their pathway over water is
as suggestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the savage is
of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no other structure, use
combines with beauty by an instinctive law; and the stone arch, more or
less elaborate in detail, is as essential now to the function and the
grace of a bridge as when it was first thrown, invincible and
harmonious, athwart the rivers Caesar's legions crossed.

As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a precarious foothold
amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn
timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who
discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and
ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the
pedestrian over