‘Sin and Death amainFollowing his track, such was the will of Heaven,Pav’d after him a broad and beaten wayO’er the dark abyss, whose boiling gulfTamely endured a bridge of wond’rous length,From hell continued, reaching th’ utmost orbOf this frail world; by which the spirits perverseWith easy intercourse pass to and froTo tempt and punish mortals.’
‘Sin and Death amainFollowing his track, such was the will of Heaven,Pav’d after him a broad and beaten wayO’er the dark abyss, whose boiling gulfTamely endured a bridge of wond’rous length,From hell continued, reaching th’ utmost orbOf this frail world; by which the spirits perverseWith easy intercourse pass to and froTo tempt and punish mortals.’
Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the segments of caverns, the accidental shapes of geological formations, often result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of bridges as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and Kentucky, especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable freaks of Nature; there is one in Walker county, of the former State, which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic county of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of this species. Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions and symmetrical structure that they rank among the wonders of the world, and have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. Their structure would hint the requisites, and their forms the lines of beauty, desirable in architectural prototypes. Across Cedar creek, in Rockbridge county, Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown by elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch, whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet thick, and so massive isthe whole that over it passes a public road, so that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the side of the creek it has a Gothic aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees, its dizzy elevation, buttress-like masses, and aërial symmetry, make this sublime arch one of those objects which impress the imagination with grace and grandeur all the more impressive because the mysterious work of Nature,—eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent forces of the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant’s Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four hundred feet above the water’s edge in the county of Antrim, on the north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part pentagonal, whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate mass, but articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and socket must be disjointed.
The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable. The Imperial statues which line that of Berlin form an impressive array; and whoever has seen the figures on the bridge of Sant’ Angelo at Rome, when illuminated on a Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinità at Florence, bathed in moonlight, and their outlines distinctly revealed against sky and water, cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is pictorial embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed midway or at either end of a bridge, especially one of mediæval form and fashion, seems appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which divides the town and crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the pictures are weather-stained; as no vehicles are allowed, foot-passengers can examine them at ease. They are in triangular frames, ten feet apart; but few have any technical merit. One series illustrates Swiss history; and the Kapellbrücke has the pictorial life of theSaint of the town; while the Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint and rough copy of the famous ‘Dance of Death.’
In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cascades do bridges cross! sometimes so aërial, and overhanging such precipices, as to justify to the imagination the name superstitiously bestowed on more than one, of the Devil’s Bridge; while from few is a more lovely effect of near water seen than the ‘arrowy Rhone,’ as we gaze down upon its ‘blue rushing,’ beneath the bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied pictorial effects of bridges, at least in a city, are nowhere more striking than at Venice, whose five hundred, with their mellow tint and association with palatial architecture and streets of water, especially when revealed by the soft and radiant hues of an Italian sunset, present outlines, shapes, colours, and contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as to warm and haunt the imagination while they charm the eye. It is remarkable, as an artistic fact, how graciously these structures adapt themselves to such diverse scenes,—equally, though variously, picturesque amid the sturdy foliage and wild gorges of the Alps, the bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the Thames, and the crystal atmosphere, Byzantine edifices, and silent canals of Venice.
Whoever has truly felt the aërial perspective of Turner has attained a delicate sense of the pictorial significance of the bridge; for, as we look through his floating mists, we descry, amid Nature’s most evanescent phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or masses whereby this familiar image seems to identify itself not less with Nature than with Art. Among the drawings which Arctic voyagers have brought home, many a bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems to tempt adventurous feet and to reflect a like form of fleecy cloud-land; daguerreotyped by the frost in miniature, the same structures may be traced on the window-pane; printed on the fossil and the strata of rock, in the veins of bark and the lips of shells, or floating in sunbeams, an identical design appears; and, on asummer morning, as the eye carefully roams over a lawn, how often do the most perfect little suspension-bridges hang from spear to spear of herbage, their filmy span embossed with glittering dewdrops![52]
THE END.
Footnotes:
[1]‘A recent London paper advertises a genuinethesaurusof ancient tavern signs and other curiosities at auction, collected during a long life by some curious antiquary. The catalogue covered an extensive and unique collection for a history of ancient and modern inns, taverns, and coffee-houses, in town and country (numbering upwards of 850 signs), formed with unwearied diligence and vast outlay during a lifetime; and illustrated with upwards of 2,500 ancient and modern engravings, comprising topographical and antiquarian subjects, early views of London, caricatures, humorous and satirical subjects, portraits of celebrities whose names have been adopted as signs, characters remarkable for their eccentricities, actors and actresses; others illustrating ancient sports and pastimes, etchings, wood-cuts, and numerous others, plain and coloured, many of great rarity; also 415 drawings in water-colours, sepia, and pen and ink, and numerous copies from scarce engravings and old paintings; together with extensive antiquarian, local, and biographical notices (both printed and in MS.) on signs and their origin, merriments and witticisms in prose and verse, tales, traditions, legends, and remarkable incidents, singular inscriptions on tap-room windows and walls, anecdotes of landlords, guests, visitors, writers, &c.’
[2]Count Pecchio.
[3]Alexander Smith.
[4]Prescott’s Robertson’sCharles Fifth, vol. 1, p. 355.
[5]Brooks’sHistory of Medford.
[6]A. Trollope.
[7]A Month in England.
[8]Life and Letters of John Winthrop, by Robert C. Winthrop, p. 306.
[9]‘I would not,’ observes Washington Irving in one of his letters, ‘give an hour’s conversation with Wilkie about paintings, in his earnest but precise and original enthusiasm, for all the enthusiasm and declamation of the common run of amateurs and artists.’
[10]One of the recently-discovered gems of pictorial art in Florence is the ‘coach-house picture;’ so called from being a fresco on a stable-wall; and under the head of ‘Romance of a Portrait,’ the LondonAthenæumpublishes a statement which seems to show conclusively that the famous portrait of Addison at Holland House, which has been copied and engraved time and again, and has been mentioned as authentic by Macaulay, is in fact not a portrait of Addison, but a portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine, of Narford Hall, Norfolk, vice-chamberlain to Queen Caroline, and the successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the wardenship of the Mint.
[11]Another current tradition is the following:—‘So great was the excitement of the Roman populace against the condemnation of Beatrice, that on her way to the scaffold three attempts were made, by concerted bands of young men, to rescue her from the officers’ hands. On the eve of the fatal day she sat meditating her doom so intently, that for some time she did not notice a young man who had bribed the jailer to admit him into the cell for the purpose of making a sketch of her. Her appearance is thus described:—“Beatrice had risen from her miserable pallet, but, unlike the wretched inmate of a dungeon, resembled a being from a brighter sphere. Her large brown eyes were of liquid softness, her forehead broad and clear, her countenance of angelic purity, mysteriously beautiful. Around her head a fold of white muslin had been carelessly wrapped, from whence in rich luxuriance fell her fair and waving hair. Profound sorrow and recent bodily anguish imparted an air of touching sensibility to her lovely features. Suddenly turning, she discovered a stranger seated with pencil and paper in hand looking earnestly at her—it was Guido Reni. She demanded who he was, and what he did there; the frank young artist told his name and object, when, after a moment’s hesitation, Beatrice replied, ‘Signor Guido, your great name and my sad story may make my portrait interesting, and the picture will awaken compassion if you write on one of its angles the wordinnocent.’†Thus was birth given to an inspired picture, which, to contemplate, is itself worth a visit to Rome; which, once seen, haunts the memory as a supernatural mystery—as the beautiful apparition of sublimated suffering.’
[12]Bulwer’sStrange Story.
[13]‘Mohammedanism had been the patron of physical science; paganizing Christianity not only repudiated it, but exhibited towards it sentiments of contemptuous disdain and hatred; hence physicians were viewed by the Church with dislike, and regarded as atheists by the people, who had been taught that cures must be wrought by relics of martyrs and bones of saints: for each disease there was a saint. Already it was apparent that the Saracenic movement would aid in developing the intelligence of barbarian Western Europe, through Hebrew physicians, in spite of the opposition encountered from theological ideas imported from Constantinople and Rome.’—Draper’sIntellectual Development of Europe, p. 414.
[14]
‘When fainting Nature called for aid,And hovering Death prepared the blow,His vigorous remedy displayedThe power of Art without the show.In Misery’s darkest caverns known,His useful help was ever nigh;Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,Or lonely Want retired to die.No summons mocked by chill delay,No petty gains disdained by pride;The modest wants of every day,The toil of every day supplied.’
‘When fainting Nature called for aid,And hovering Death prepared the blow,His vigorous remedy displayedThe power of Art without the show.In Misery’s darkest caverns known,His useful help was ever nigh;Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,Or lonely Want retired to die.No summons mocked by chill delay,No petty gains disdained by pride;The modest wants of every day,The toil of every day supplied.’
[15]Shakspeare’s Medical Knowledge, by Charles W. Stearns, M.D. New York: D. Appleton and Co.
[16]‘Country dances’ were taught in France, in 1684, by Isaac, an Englishman.—D.
[17]Which has long ceased to exist.
[18]Essays of Elia.
[19]In 1860.
[20]Friends in Council.
[21]‘By the working of the apparatus for the administration of justice, they make their profits; and their welfare depends on its being so worked as to bring them profits, rather than on its being so worked as to administer justice.’—Herbert Spencer.
[22]Lockhart’sLife of Scott.
[23]Sir T. Browne.
[24]Deut. xxxiv. 6.
[25]Tennyson’sIn Memoriam.
[26]Dei Sepolchri, di Ugo Foscolo.
[27]A recent advocate for cremation thus suggests the process:—‘On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a convenient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple. At the entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the body, are chambers for their accommodation. Within the edifice are seats for those who follow the remains to the last; there is also an organ and a gallery for choristers. In the centre of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the openings being filled with prepared glass. Within this—a sufficient space intervening—is an inner shrine, covered with bright, non-radiating metal, and within this again is a covered sarcophagus of tempered fire-clay, with one or more longitudinal slits near the top, extending its whole length. As soon as the body is deposited therein, sheets of flame, at an immensely high temperature, rush through the long apertures from end to end; and acting as a combination of a modified oxyhydrogen blowpipe, with the reverberatory furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the body in an incredibly short space of time; even the large quantity of water it contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations. The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues, and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether floating away from the high steeple to mingle with the atmosphere.’
[28]‘How can we reconcile this pious and faithful remembrance with the character of a nation generally thought so frivolous and inconstant? Let this amiable, affectionate, but slandered people send the stranger and the traveller to this place. These carefully tended flowers, these tombs, will speak their defence.’—Memoir of Harriet Preble, p. 70.
[29]Atlantic Monthly, vol. ii., p. 139.
[30]‘I am now engaged,’ wrote Mr. Severn, the artist-friend who watched over Keats in his last hours, ‘on a picture of the poet’s grave. The classical story ofEndymionbeing the subject of his principal poem, I have introduced a young shepherd sleeping against the headstone, with his flock about him; while the moon from behind the pyramid illuminates his figure, and serves to realize the poet’s favourite theme, in the presence of his grave. This interesting incident is not fanciful, but is what I actually saw, one autumn evening, at Monte Tertanio, the year following the poet’s death.’
[31]Ticknor’sSpanish Literature.
[32]W. L. Symonds.
[33]‘News-letters were written by enterprising individuals in the metropolis, and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; and then circulated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which has not descended to their printed contemporary—the newspaper,—of never becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses.’—Draper’sHistory of the Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 509.
[34]Jockey’s Intelligencer, 1683.
[35]Burke’s influence upon journalism was still more direct. While preparing for Dodsley ‘An Account of the European Settlements in America,’ he was led by his researches to suggest a periodical which should chronicle the important literary, political, and social facts of the year. Such was the origin of theAnnual Registers. The first volume appeared in 1759. For several years it was edited by Burke, is still regularly published, and has been imitated in similar publications elsewhere, having finally initiated and established the historical element of journalism.
[36]The following return of the numbers daily printed by the principal Paris journals is taken from M. Didot’s pamphlet on the fabrication of paper. It may be regarded as official:Presse, 40,000;Siècle, 35,000;Constitutionel, 25,000;Moniteur, 24,000;Patrie, 18,000;Pays, 14,000;Débats, 9,000;Assemblée Nationale, 5,000;Univers, 3,500;Union, 3,500;Gazette de France, 2,500;Gazettes de Tribunaux, 2,500. These journals are all printed in five offices; and the quantity of paper they annually consume amounts to more than four millions of pounds.
[37]Bryant.
[38]Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. xxviii., p. 8.
[39]Draper’sIntellectual Development of Europe.
[40]Dr. Sprague’sAnnals of the American Pulpitis full of delineations and anecdotes of prominent preachers. Their energy, zeal, and courage are viewed in connection with their racy individual peculiarities. What some of the Methodists had and have to endure and suffer, is indicated by a direction from a circuit, in want of a preacher, to the Western Conference: ‘Be sure you send us a good swimmer,’—it being the duty of the minister in that region frequently to swim wide and bridgeless streams to keep his appointments.
[41]Mémoires de Rochambeau.
[42]Rev. Archibald Carlyle’sAutobiography.
[43]TheWarden,Barchester Towers, andFramley Parsonage, by A. Trollope;Vincenzo, by Ruffini;Mademoiselle La Quintinie, par Geo. Sand;La Maudit, par L’Abbe ——;Adam Bede;Chronicles of Carlingford, &c.
[44]Dr. J. W. Draper.
[45]Calvert’sScenes and Thoughts in Europe.
[46]Recent Italian journals speak of a project to construct a bridge over the Straits of Messina, to unite Sicily with the mainland. The bridge proposed will be a suspension one, on a new system, the chains being of cast-steel, and strong enough to support the weight of several railway trains.
[47]Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America, in 1759-60.By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.
[48]Bagehot.
[49]Sir Astley Cooper’s nephew presented to Dr. Valentine Mott, the late eminent New York surgeon, an elegantly-wrought case of amputating instruments, the handles of which are made of the wood and the blades of iron from old London Bridge, whose oak timbers were laid in 1176.
[50]History of the Netherlands, vol. i., p. 182.
[51]Histoire du Pont Neuf, par Edouard Fournier.
[52]‘The invention of the Suspension Bridge, by Sir Samuel Brown, sprung from the sight of a spider’s web hanging across the path of the inventor, observed on a morning walk, when his mind was occupied with the idea of bridging the Tweed.’