our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the
adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous
autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a
homely, but significant proverb, "Never find fault with the bridge that
carries you safe over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast,
when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm! how mysteriously sleep
the moonbeams there! what a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's'
patriarchs in this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric
characters known for years.

Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lombardy whence a jilted
lover sprang with his faithless bride as she passed to church with her
new lover; it is yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." An old
traveller, describing New-York amusements, tells us of a favorite ride
from the city to the suburban country, and says,--"In the way there is a
bridge about three miles distant, which you always pass as you return,
called the 'Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of the etiquette to salute
the lady who has put herself under your protection."[F] A curious
lawsuit was lately instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost
an elephant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccustomed weight; the
authorities protested against damages, as they never undertook to give
safe passage to so large an animal.

The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing
instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's
talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It
has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of
letters, it is a mediaeval bridge over that vast chasm which divides
classical from modern times. All concliating authors bridge select
severed intelligences, and even national feeling: as Irving's writings
brought more near to each other the alienated sympathies of England and
America, and Carlyle made a trysting-place for British and German
thought; as Sydney Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from
Conservative to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bitter
alienation between Crown and Commons) "reconciling genius spanned the
dividing stream of party."

How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after a tempest, the
news spreads that a freshet has carried away the bridge! Every time we
shake hands, we make a human bridge of courtesy or love; and that was a
graceful fancy of one o