Of all feats of engineering skill the most remarkable is the Brooklyn bridge, now completed and open to the public. The bridge roadway from the New York terminus to Sands street, Brooklyn, is a little over a mile long. The whole structure is upheld by four cables containing 21,000 wires. A cross section shows two railroads, two carriage ways, and a foot bridge, giving a width of 80 feet. The company was organized to build the bridge in 1867, and work was begun early in 1870. Though the cost was originally estimated at but $7,000,000, exclusive of the land, it has overrun that sum by $5,000,000. The total cost will be about $15,500,000 including the land. Two men deserve especial mention in connection with the enterprise; the engineer, John A. Roebling, and his son. The former lost his life while directing the work, and the latter has contracted the terrible “caisson disease.” To their intellect, oversight and faithfulness much honor is due.
The idea of fostering art by a thirty per cent. duty put on foreign pictures is ludicrous in the extreme. American artists will become superior by study, not by the pictures of foreigners being excluded. People of taste will not buy a poor work, which they do not like, because it is cheap. They will go without or buy the foreign picture, in spite of the duty. Painting is not manufacturing, even if the average American rates it so, and sees in a work of art only so many dollars and cents.
The name of Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly has been abridged by the Legislature to the more general name of Chautauqua Assembly, by which corporate title it will be hereafter known.
The July number of The Chautauquan will be the last number in the present volume. The next volume will begin with the October number.
