VI
Thegreat work of Ammanati sets thought in movement on bridge decoration, and I wish to offer some hints on this subject, not for the purpose of finding rules, but in order that a public debate may be invited. Rules would be very useful if they could be formulated, but in bridge decoration national sentiment and personal feeling have been exceedingly active; no writer, then, can do more than offer suggestions from his own point of view.
Less than twenty years ago a debate on this subject would not have been easy, for good books on the technical history of bridges were uncommon, and photographs of fine examples were far more difficult to get than they are now. English books on bridges are still formidably dull; to read them is perhaps as troublesome as hill climbing on a foggy day; but the fear of being “ploughed” in a stiff examination helps young men to be intrepid. In France, on the other hand, the public is served very well by literary pontists. M. Charles Béranger, for instance, from his Librairie Polytechnique in Paris, is publishing a series of thorough books on bridges, as useful to us as they are to French students. Already eight volumes have been issued. Theyinclude:—
1.“Ponts en Maçonnerie.” Par E. Degrand, Inspecteur-Général des Ponts et Chaussées, et Jean Résal, Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées.Two volumes, illustrated; 40 francs.
2.“Ponts Métalliques.” Par M. Pascal, Ingénieur.One volume; 15 francs; illustrated.
3.“Croquis de Ponts Métalliques.” Par Jules Gaudard, Ingénieur Civil et Professeur Honoraire de l’Université de Lausanne.Profusely illustrated; 20 francs.
4.“Cours de Ponts Métalliques.” Par Jean Résal.Vol. I, 375 illustrations; 20 francs.
5.“Manuel Théorique et Pratique du Constructeur en Ciment Armé.” Par MM. N. de Tédesco et V. Forestier.One volume, 242 illustrations; 20 francs.
6.“Études sur les Ponts en Pierre remarquables par leur Décoration.” Par F. De Dartein, Inspecteur-Général des Ponts et Chaussées en Retraite,etc.Vol. I,“Ponts Français antérieurs au Dix-Huitième Siècle”;not yet published. “Vol. II,Ponts Français du Dix-Huitième Siècle—Centre”;published.Vol. III,“Ponts Français du Dix-Huitième Siècle—Languedoc”;published.Vol. IV, Bourgogne; published.Vol. V,“Ponts Étrangers antérieurs auXIXsiècle—Italiens, Espagnols et Anglais”; not yet published. Price, 25 francs the volume.
For this work M. De Dartein has made exact measured drawings from sixty-eight bridges, and each example has a great historic interest. The author has taken a line of hisown, dwelling on the ornament of bridges, their decoration; several of his volumes are long overdue, but in his earnest study of the eighteenth century we see what he admires in French design. M. De Dartein is thoughtful and thorough, but I wish some photographs had been added to the illustrations, because measured drawings give only the dry bones of architecture.
How to decorate a bridge is a question beset with so many problems, some practical, and others æsthetic, that it ought to be debated at an international congress of engineers and architects and artists. There are persons who think that M. De Dartein will say the last word on his important theme; but it is enough for me to believe that his material and his personal taste will be invaluable, presenting facts and provoking discussion. He lingers too often over details of trivial ornament, which increase the cost of production without doing any good at all to the architecture. In other words, M. De Dartein speaks too often as an engineer.
The qualities of a great bridge should make their appeal in stern lines, in ample proportions, in a scale that befits not the site alone but the site and its history; for all fine architecture dwells with the fugitive generations as a lasting citizen; it is an epitome of racial character alembicated by genius. Bridges cannot be fine when they are dwarfed by their environments, or when they are too big to be in harmony with the externals of their setting. This, no doubt, is a staring truism, yet it is unseen by most modern engineers, whose metal monsters are often as wrongly placed in a gentle landscape as a giant from Brobdingnag would be at Lilliput. On the other hand, can you explain why the Roman bridge at Alcántara is tremendous art? Is it not because he is in scale with the rocky gorge of the Tagus? This virile bridge completes a grand site, and finds in the site his own completion.
PONT NEUFTHE PONT NEUF AT PARIS, BUILT IN 1604; IT HAS BEEN MUCH ALTERED SINCE THE RENAISSANCE
THE PONT NEUF AT PARIS, BUILT IN 1604; IT HAS BEEN MUCH ALTERED SINCE THE RENAISSANCE
Still, it cannot be said that Roman bridges were always free from redundant ornament. There were times when pomp exerted a bad influence; and later ages borrowed oddments of Roman decoration that weakened in many countries the aspect of bridges. It is from such Roman work as the Pont du Gard, where no detail was called for, and where the architect’s aim was to be unpretentious, that we learn never to worry a bridge with embellishments. To construct ornament is very often an easy accomplishment of bad taste, while to ornament construction is a very difficult problem of self-restraint in art, because judgment tells us that a great design carried out in simple and thorough masonry is in itself ornamental, if not complete. Applied decoration is almost certain to harm it, just as a human face is disfigured by sticking-plaster.
For example, turn to Frank Brangwyn’s drawing of the Pont Neuf at Paris, and note under the parapet the well-spaced brackets. Each bracket is decorated with a mask. Why? Simpler and shorter brackets would have been more in keeping with the architecture, as these long ones overlap the keystones—a serious blunder. Partly to hide a ring of voussoirs is to blur the whole structural beauty ofan arch. It is like covering the eyes with blue spectacles. And there are other mistakes of scale in the Pont Neuf. No fewer than six piers are crowded into the Seine, as if inundations were amusements to be liked very much. But the spirit of Renaissance art was overapt to be finikin. In a fine bridge at Chatsworth, for instance, a charming effect is troubled by a too expensive parapet; and statues are lodged on pedestals above the cutwaters. Why? Is the cutwater of a bridge a convenient spot for the display of sculpture? As many persons fear in talk a sudden silence made by thought, so many architects in their revisions fear the plain spaces left in their designs by a creative inspiration. Then in a hurry they add some “ornament” such as we find at Chatsworth, or in Gauthey’s Pont de Navilly on the Doubs. In this bridge narrow spandrils are choked with an overturned vase surrounded by an ornament of bulrushes, and over each cutwater there is a huge stone shaped like an egg and garlanded. I decline to speak in technical terms because the folly of using superfluous “ornament” is hidden by words that look erudite. Was it an admiration for Moses that caused Gauthey to put bulrushes on a bridge? And did he suppose that they suggested water and adventure? As for those huge eggs of stone, if they came from some bird five or six times as big as an ostrich, I should like to see them in a museum of natural history, but without their ornamental wreaths.
In brief, are you attracted by any phase of modern bridge-building that copies the decorations of civic architecture,displaying columns, pilasters, niches, balustrades, battlements, towers, turrets, pinnacles, or any other finery that serves no organic purpose in the life of a contemporary bridge? Myself, I hate such a strumpet of a bridge as the Hoogesluis at Amsterdam, with her ornate spandrils, and her embossed masonry, and her balustraded parapet surmounted by a row of obelisks around which lamps are bracketed. Also I hate such a suspension bridge as the one at Conway Castle, where the metal rods that support the roadway pass through a brace of turrets on each of the embattled gateways. The effect is not only comic but ludicrous. No engineer with any sense would have put a metal viaduct within a few yards of Conway Castle. Or, if a metal suspension had been forced upon him by his employers, he would have made in a modern style a very simple and stern design. Instead, we have two vulgar gateways rudely copied from Conway Castle, and then lacerated by five metal rods that cut through each of the four turrets. I am reminded of an absurd railway bridge at Cologne, whose parapets are—or were—flanked by small turrets, and whose gateway has—or had—two high towers formidably armed with make-believe battlements and machicolations. Such futile pretension is a public insult; it implies that laymen have no common sense at all in their attitude to “feats of engineering.”
But it is not the modern bridge alone that provokes criticism in this matter of decorative art. Some ancient and famous bridges are hard nuts to crack as soon as wepass from their structural fitness to their ornamentation. As an example I may choose the Ponte Sant’ Angelo at Rome, which has been copied feebly by the Schloss Brücke at Berlin. Originally the Sant’ Angelo was the Pons Ælius, built by Hadrian (A.D.13) face to face with his mausoleum, to-day the castle of Saint Angelo. In the seventeenth century new parapets were added to the bridge, and ten colossal statues by Bernini were put up on pedestals along the parapets. Around these statues many a controversy has raged, and I am not surprised. In my photographs there is a small lamp-standard between each pair of huge figures; even the lights of Rome have to twinkle below the decorations. The bridge looks burdened rather than adorned; it is neither wide enough nor high enough to be used as a gallery for sculpture modelled on a large scale. That a great effort was made by an artist of power is evident, but the artist worked for his own ambition, and not for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. He had no conception of the fact that the bridge and its environment were so good that they could not be improved by huge “embellishments.” Yet there are writers who say, “Yes, no doubt, Bernini’s bouncing figures are theatrical, but, after all, their general effect is grandiose.” The truth is, every great city needs a Parliament of Taste where questions of civic art could be debated publicly, with help from lantern slides. No writer can hope to do much in his defence of art. Indeed, books are studied so infrequently that they cannot draw public attention to the larger problems of architecture anddecoration; whereas free debates in a Parliament of Taste, centring always around object-lessons, might restore to art the life of a great citizen.
In this matter we owe much to Hosking, the Victorian pontist, who cried out against the blunders made in the ornamentation of bridges. As early as 1842 he told the truth boldly, declaring that the most eminent civil engineers, in their efforts to take hints from street buildings, had failed to produce anything but meanness or absurdity, or a combination of both. Hosking had faith in three simpleprinciples:—
1. That bridges, in the combination of their leading lines, should be bold and simple;
2. That their passage over dangerous places ought to be a secure highway; and,
3. That in stone bridges far too much money had been wasted on the high finish of exterior surfaces. In very ponderous language Hoskingsaid:—
“It may be fairly questioned whether Waterloo and London bridges would not have been finer objects had the masonry of their external faces been merely rough-axed, or even left scabbled, instead of being fair hammer-dressed; and certainly many thousands of pounds might have been saved in the execution of Waterloo Bridge, and a much better result produced, by the omission of the coupled columns and their immediate accessories, and by the use of a plain parapet of a more reasonable height, instead of the high,the enormously expensive, and absurdly ugly balustraded enclosures which now aid the columns and their projected entablatures to deform a splendid structure.”
“It may be fairly questioned whether Waterloo and London bridges would not have been finer objects had the masonry of their external faces been merely rough-axed, or even left scabbled, instead of being fair hammer-dressed; and certainly many thousands of pounds might have been saved in the execution of Waterloo Bridge, and a much better result produced, by the omission of the coupled columns and their immediate accessories, and by the use of a plain parapet of a more reasonable height, instead of the high,the enormously expensive, and absurdly ugly balustraded enclosures which now aid the columns and their projected entablatures to deform a splendid structure.”
This Puritan outlook appeals to me, for I believe that good bridges should be as sternly efficient as were the Ironsides of Cromwell’s army. Their beauty is a thing apart from any cavalier-like finery of dressing ornament. It shows that all the parts of a bridge are co-ordinated with fine judgment, and that each part is in nice accord with its own work and with the great office which the bridge as a whole has to fulfil daily.
When the railway viaduct at Ludgate Hill was finished, there was a public outcry because of its gaunt and shabby ugliness; but Londoners were appeased as soon as some “decorative” metalwork was nailed upon the parapets. This “ornament,” a trumpery makeshift, was supposed to have given merit to an imbecile design that disgraced the main road toSt.Paul’s Cathedral. As things of this sort are allowed to happen in the heart of our great city, who can have confidence in civic authorities? What chance is there that new projects for bridges will be considered intelligently?
In 1815, when Rennie began his bridge over the Thames at Southwark, neither the Government nor the City of London employed him; it was a Company that approved his designs, and financed the undertaking. At an expense of £800,000, three bad arches of cast-iron were put up from “elegant” stone piers and abutments; yet Londonwas charmed by “a great feat of engineering,” partly because 5780 tons of ironwork had been employed, and partly because the central arch had a span of 240ft.From 1819 to November 8, 1864, the Company was a toll gatherer on their industrial bridge; then the toll was done away with, and the Company received from the City an industrial compensation. Here is a financial adventure which might have been undertaken to benefit a small township which had in its neighbourhood some new ironworks and collieries. Still more farcical was the public lottery that helped to collect money for the building of the first Westminster Bridge, between 1738 and 1750. Even now, after many lessons from past follies, London has made more than one muddle over the project ofSt.Paul’s Bridge. Not even the Tower Bridge, with all its blatant defects, has enabled the City to be alert and clever as a pontist.
A more absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown across a strategic river. What would be the use of those ornate towers if the suspended roadway connecting them to the banksides were cut by a shell or by a falling bomb? And what anachronism could be sillier than that which has united the principle of metal suspension to an architecture cribbed partly from the Middle Ages, and partly from the French Renaissance? The many small windows, the peaked roofing, the absurdly impudent little turrets, the biscuit-like aspect of the meretricious masonry, the desperate effort to be “artistic” at any cost: all this, youknow, is at standing odds with the contemporary parts of the unhistoric bridge, parts huge in scale, but so commercial that there is not a vestige of military forethought anywhere. It is mere perishable bulk.
Tower BridgeTHE TOWER BRIDGE, LONDON
THE TOWER BRIDGE, LONDON
[82]See the Statute of Winchester,A.D.1285, and Statute 2, RichardII,A.D.1378; see also the Rolls of Parliament. Among the most dangerous rogues were many lawless barons and their retinues, against whom the Law protested vainly. InA.D.1138 we find them mentioned by the “Gesta Stephani,” and till late in the fifteenth century the partisans of nobles were feared on the roads. But for them the Wars of the Roses would have been less horrible, and wayfaring life would have been less barbarously at odds with those Christian virtues which were proclaimed everywhere by great symbols of religion: manor churches, hopeful cathedrals, vast monasteries, wayside chapels and shrines, and quiet homes whispering with the prayers of gentle nuns. Brutal strife among Christians had made the world into a new Garden of Gethsemane over which the Spirit of Christ brooded and wept.
[83]There seems to be only one exception to this rule. I refer to some Chinese bridges of the thirteenth century, mentioned by Marco Polo in his account of the city Sin-din-fu, now called Ching-tu-fu, situated on the western side of the province of Se-chuen, of which it is the capital. Marco Polo says: “The city is watered by many considerable streams, which, descending from the distant mountains, surround and pass through it in a variety of directions. Some of these rivers are half a mile in width, others are two hundred paces, and very deep, over which are built several large and handsome stone bridges, eight paces in breadth, their length being greater or less according to the size of the stream. From one extremity to the other there is a row of marble pillars on each side, which support the roof; for here the bridges have very handsome roofs, constructed of wood, ornamented with paintings of a red colour, and covered with tiles. Throughout the whole length also there are neat apartments and shops, where all sorts of trades are carried on. One of the buildings, larger than the rest, is occupied by the officers who collect the duties upon provisions and merchandise, and a toll from persons who pass the bridge. In this way, it is said, his Majesty receives daily the sum of a hundred besants of gold.” According to the Latin editions of Marco Polo, the booths or shops were set up in the morning and removed from the bridge at night. If so, then the width of these bridges, described by Marco as “eight paces,” must have been more than twenty-four feet, since booths would have obstructed such narrow footways. Marco Polo’s great editor, Colonel Yule, interpreting the description of another bridge, proves that the “paces” must be geometric.
[84]Degrand, in his“Ponts en Maçonnerie,”gives a reproduction of Palladio’s drawing, which represents an imperial scheme, far and away better than Antonio da Ponte’s.
[85]The Bridge of Ali Verdi Khan.
[86]Lord Curzon’s book on Persia.
[87]British Museum, theMS.16 F.ii, Fol.73. The little picture is drawn from nature; a bad reproduction of it appears in M. Jusserand’s good book on “English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.”
[88]J. J. Jusserand,p.49. See also in Stow.
[89]This was finished in 1014; in 1136 it was burnt down, and in 1176 Colechurch started upon his brave enterprise.
[90]Viollet-le-Duc writes as follows (vol. 6,p.410):“Dans les villes, on profitait souvent des arches de pont pour établir des moulins, et même alors les ponts et moulins, bâtis en bois, ne formaient qu’une seule et même construction. Avant 1835, il existait encore à Meaux, en Brie, un pont de ce genre entièrement en bois ainsi que les moulins y attenant; cet ensemble datait de la fin du xvᵉ siècle....”
[91]Alas! The Great War has done much harm to the Pont du Marché at Meaux. To-day (September 26, 1914) I saw a photograph of its crippled condition. One arch at least is ruined, and mended roughly with timbering.
[92]See “The Builder,” November 22, 1890.
[93]There has been much disputation over the origin ofSt.Mary’s Chapel, and I refer you to the following books: 1. “Remarks on Wayside Chapels,” by two architects, J. C. and C. Buckler,8vo, Oxford, 1843. This book was approved by Parker, an excellent recommendation. 2. “A Dissertation on Ancient Bridges and Bridge Chapels,” by Norrison Scatcherd, 1828. 3. “The Chapel of King EdwardIIIon Wakefield Bridge,” by Norrison Scatcherd, 1843. In the earlier treatise the chapel is attributed to the reign of EdwardIV. Scatcherd belongs to an old school of polemical swashbucklers, but what he says is worth attention, though difficult to follow. 4. “The Histories of York.”
[94]Camden’s “Britannia,” Ed. Gough,Vol. III, London, 1789,pp.38-9.
[95]St.Mary’s Chapel was illustrated by Toms, after George Fleming, 1743; by Lodge, in Thoresby’s “Ducatus”; by Cawthorne, about 1800; and by “The Builder,” November 22, 1890.
[96]“Bath Old Bridge and the Chapel Thereon,” by Emanuel Green,F.S.A.,F.R.S.L.,p.143, British Archæological Association.
[97]“The Builder,” August 20, 1887.
[98]These dates I take from the catalogue of historic monuments issued by theMinistère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts. Some writers give the dates as 1178 and 1188.
[99]According to Degrand; some other writers say nineteen. The largest spans were a little more than thirty-three metres; but even in these the size varied somewhat.
[100]See Allen’s “History of the County of York,” 1832. P. Atkinson was the architect of the new bridge, and his work went on till March, 1810. As for the old Ouse Bridge, good views of it will be found in the “Antiquarian Itinerary,”Vol. I, 1815; the “Antiquarian Cabinet,”Vol. III, 1817; and the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” ninth edition. Let us take a glance at one of the pictures. On the west end of the bridge is a tall building carried by two pointed arches and crowned with a small steeple. It is the great Council Chamber, with a prison for felons beneath it, according to the “Antiquarian Cabinet.” We cross the river and find at the other side the gaol which was rebuilt in 1724. Two small arches on this side of the bridge balance those that arcade the Council Chamber, and in the middle is a graceful pointed arch with a span of 81 feet. The spandrils are relieved by a well-marked string-course, the parapets are fringed with railings and graced in the centre with two finials, which displace the mediæval cross.
[101]See Mr. Kershaw’s article, “The Builder,” April 29, 1882,p.531.
[102]InVol. Xof the“Archæologia Cantiana”an inventory is given of the possessions of the chapel in the year 1549.
[103]The photograph belongs to the London Missionary Society. The bridge itself has points of interest quite apart from the idol. There is a single arch of a horseshoe form with long and narrow archstones. The shelving parapets are decorated with small knobs of stone, and they do not rise to a gable point, like those in the Spanish variety of gabled bridge; there is a flat space at the summit, and below the middle of it the small idol is placed.
[104]From information sent to me by theRev.O. M. Jackson, who for more than twenty years has worked as a missionary in Western China.
[105]Take the dates of a few important bridges in Lancashire. Time of King John, Lancaster Bridge; 1225, Preston; 1305, Warrington; 1365, Salford; 1372, Stockport; and 1490, Garstang Bridge. The first Lancashire bridges were but narrow structures for foot and horse. Some had very high single arches, and those with from four to six spans were steep and lofty; they seemed to fly away from spates.
[106]On the other hand, there is a good social picture, showing that workmen in those days fed very well, though they could not afford to subscribe to the building of abridge:—
Wives went out to wite [know] how they wrought;Five score in a flock, it was a fayre syght.In broad clothes bright white bread they brought,Cheese and chickens clerelych a dyght [prepared].
Wives went out to wite [know] how they wrought;Five score in a flock, it was a fayre syght.In broad clothes bright white bread they brought,Cheese and chickens clerelych a dyght [prepared].
Wives went out to wite [know] how they wrought;
Five score in a flock, it was a fayre syght.
In broad clothes bright white bread they brought,
Cheese and chickens clerelych a dyght [prepared].
[107]Cofferdams are embankments which surround the site so as to exclude water from it. “They are formed in general by driving two rows of piles round the site so as to enclose between them a watertight wall of clay puddle; in depths of less than three or four feet, where there is little current, a simple clay dam may be used. In greater depths, the timber walls consist of guide piles at intervals, with some form of sheet piling between them; in extreme depths the timber walls may be composed of stout piles driven in side by side all round. The dam must be sufficiently strong to bear the pressure of the water against the outside when the space enclosed has been pumped dry.... The‘Cours de Ponts,’at the School of the Ponts et Chaussées, states that a cofferdam need never be made of greater thickness than from four to six feet, as the interior can always be sufficiently stayed inside. This method of founding is now seldom practised; it is costly and causes great obstruction in the stream.”—Professor Fleeming Jenkin.
[108]A metre = 1·093633 yards, or 39·37079 inches; a centimetre = 0·39371 inch.
[109]Professor Fleeming Jenkin, Ninth Edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.”
[110]The centre arch has a span of 152ft., and rises 29ft.6in.above Trinity highwater mark; the arches on each side of the centre have a span of 140ft., and the abutment arches 130ft.Total length, 1005ft.; width from outside to outside, 56ft.; height above low water, 60ft.Centre piers, 24ft.thick. Materials: the exterior stones are granite, the interior, half Bramley Fall and half from Painshaw, Derbyshire.
[111]For example, King John’s Bridge at Tewkesbury; Barden Bridge and Burnsall Bridge in Wharfedale; the Old Dee Bridge at Chester; Huntingdon, Bridgenorth, Baslow, Froggall, Brecon, and Llangollen. There are many others.
[112]This valuable reference was brought to my notice by Mr. H. T. Crofton, an able pontist, who sent me his notes on bridges, asking me to cull from them whatever information my own research had missed. A hobby is the only altruism.
[113]Springing.The plane of demarcation between the ring and the abutment is called the “springing” of an arch. A “ring” is the compressed arc of materials known as archstones or voussoirs; and the “springing” marks the place where a ring starts out on its upward curve from a pier or from an abutment.
[114]Thehaunchesof an arch are those parts that lie midway between the springing and the crown: the crown being the summit of a ring.
[115]“The Builder,” November 19, 1892,p.394.
[116]“The Builder,” November 19, 1892,p.394.
[117]If Cæsar’s bones were found they would be sold at Christie’s to a tradesman millionaire.
[118]Lord Curzon’s “Persia and the Persian Question,” 1892,Vol. II,pp.45-6.
[119]According to some writers, the earliest known arches of handicraft—pointed, and round, and even elliptical—are Babylonian, but I do not care to be so dogmatic. Dates very often are as elusive as dreams. But the influence of Babylon was, doubtless, very great on the traditions of the building arts; perhaps we find it even in the elliptic vault of Chosroes’ great hall at Selucia-Ctesiphon. This vault, dating from the sixth centuryA.D., was a forerunner ofSt.Bénézet’s elliptic arch (p.81).
[120]Brangwyn has drawn for the édition de luxe the bridge at Ronda, which dates from 1761. Its architect, José Martin Aldeguela, was even more unfortunate than were Peter Colechurch and the good Saint Bénézet; these masters died before their work was complete, while poor Aldeguela fell from his bridge and was dashed to pieces. Two other bridges, one Moorish and one Roman, cross the chasm at Ronda, but at the upper end where the depth is less prodigious; so their architects had easier problems to solve, and yet they did not equal in any respect the heroic inspiration of Aldeguela. Mr. Edgar Wigram has said that although Ronda Bridge owes much of its effect to its extraordinary site, yet an extraordinary piece of architecture is necessary to command the site; it is the triumph of genius over nature that we feel both at Ronda and in the Pont Napoléon.
[121]The middle arch of 58ft.span, 17ft.rise, and 14ft.in width across the soffit, has archstones which are only 18ins.deep, and they vary in thickness from 5 to 16ins.: many of them are 8 and 9ins.Sometimes there are two headers to answer a course of common archstones; and sometimes two courses of archstones answer one header. The piers are 10ft.thick, and the middle arch springs about 3ft.above the river’s bed. A steep road over the bridge diminishes the weight upon the side arches; but Telford believed that if the spandrils had been hollowed the road could have been made with an easy gradient of 1 in 24. The workmanship is very light, and it appears to be stable, though a shivering bridge inspires no more confidence than a stammering man. In 1803, owing to a defect in the foundation of the western abutment, one of the side arches fell, yet the others remained uninjured while the broken one was being rebuilt. So the bridge in the proportion of all its parts must have been very well balanced, despite its quivering alertness and lightness.
[122]Roman examples: the two bridges at Mérida, and the bridge of Salamanca. Mediæval examples: Tudela, Tordesillas, Talavera, Zaragoza, Castro Gonzalo, and El Burgo, near Coruña, the scene of a good fight in Drake’s expedition of 1589.
[123]“Gothic Architecture in Spain,” 1865,p.211.
[124]See George Edmund Street, whose valuable book on Spain ought to be studied side by side with those by Ford and Edgar Wigram.
[125]I am reading my proof sheets on the 10th September, 1914, so it is necessary to add that the Pont des Trous at Tournai has renewed its military value, aiding the Belgians in their heroic efforts against that avalanche of inhumanity, the German Army.
[126]The religious order of Pontist Brothers came to France from Italy. It was called the order of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, and its chief resided at Lucca. From about the year 1286 the French brothers had a great hospice in Paris, built on the site now occupied by the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas and the deaf and dumb asylum. In the fourteenth century the order confined its attention to the care of pilgrims, and at last—in 1459—it was suppressed by Pope PiusII.
[127]The triumphal arch of Germanicus, dating from the time of Tiberius. It is extant at Saintes; but when it was reconstructed after its removal from the bridge it suffered much from a mixture of new stones with the old. It is an arch with two passages 38ft.high.
[128]There are many old arches with two or three sets of voussoirs. Over the Loire, at Brives-Charensac, there is a Roman specimen with two rings, now a ruined bridge. Some English examples: the Jolly Miller’s Bridge over the Dee, Chester; Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts, the round arches; Bideford, Devon, twenty arches, built in the fourteenth century with help from indulgences sanctioned by Grandison, Bishop of Exeter; Lostwithiel, Llangollen, Fountains Abbey, Bishop’s Bridge at Norwich, West Rasen, Lincolnshire; Eamont Bridge, Penrith, a triple ring of archstones; Higherford Bridge, near Colne, reputed to be Roman, a wrong attribution, I believe;St.Neots, the most important arch is very interesting; and the Abbot’s Bridge at BurySt.Edmunds. This one is Early English, and its three remarkable arches give us a parallel to the ecclesiastical workmanship in the arches at Crowland. The piers also and the buttresses are unsecular.
[129]It may be remarked that in the Persian language the wordspul-y-sangisignify the “stone bridge,” and it is not improbable that the western people in the service of the Emperor may have given this appellation to the place where a bridge of great celebrity was thrown over the river, which is here applied to the river itself. It will be found to occur in Elphinstone’s “Account of Caubul,”p.429, and in Ouseley’s “Ibn Haukul,”p.277.—Colonel Yule.
[130]Ten horsemen could not draw up abreast in a space less than thirty feet, and might probably require forty when in motion. The paces here spoken of must therefore be geometric; and upon this calculation the bridge would be five hundred yards in length.—Colonel Yule.
[131]By P. Magalhanes, who particularly notices this description, our author is understood to speak here of the perfect level of the surface, and not of the straightness of the sides:“Aux deux extremités,”he translates,“il est plus large qu’au haut de la montée: mais quand on a achevé de monter, on le trouve plat et de niveau comme s’il avoit esté tiré à la linge”(“Nouv. Relat.,”p.14). But the words,“uguale per longo come se fosse tirato per linea,”seem rather to refer to the general parallelism of the sides, although at the ends they diverged, as is the case with almost all bridges.—Colonel Yule.
[132]The ideas of the symbolic lion and of the tortoise are borrowed by the Chinese from thesingaand theKûrmaof Hindu mythology.
[133]It is difficult to understand from the words of the text ... the position of these larger columns with regard to other parts of the bridge; but it seems to be meant, that in the line of the parapet or balustrade, which was formed of alternate slabs of marble and pillars, there was in the middle (or over the centre arch or pier) a column of a size much larger than the rest, having a tortoise for its base or pedestal; and it may be presumed, although not so expressed, that there was a similar column in the balustrade on the opposite side.... One of the Jesuit missionaries who mentions a bridge which he had crossed in this part of the province, says,“Les gardefous en sont de marbre; on conte de chaque côté cent quarante-huit poteaux avec des lionceaux au-dessus ... et aux deux bouts du pont quatre éléphans accroupis.”—Colonel Yule.
[134]Notwithstanding any partial difficulties in the description, or seeming objections to the credibility of the account given of this magnificent bridge, there is unquestionable authority for the existence of one similar to it in all the essential circumstances, and as nearly about the situation mentioned as can be ascertained from the conciseness of the itinerary, so lately as the seventeenth century. It may well, however, be supposed that in the lapse of four hundred years material changes must have taken place, in consequence of accidents, repairs, and perhaps removals.—Colonel Yule.
[135]“Ponts en Maçonnerie.”