vator and Zimmermann, on the
Bridge of Rapperschwyl on the Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt and
wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we have the first view of
Mont Blanc. The Suspension Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as
great, in its degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract
which thunders forever at its side; while no triumph of inventive
economy could more aptly lead the imaginative stranger into the
picturesque beauties of Wales than the extraordinary tubular bridge
across the Menai Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long
causeway over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the bridge over the
Loire at Orleans are memorable in every traveller's retrospect.

But the economical and the artistic interest of bridges is often
surpassed 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 goldsmith's 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 mediaeval 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 favorite 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 Londonbridge," 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 origi