But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably described in another military episode of this favourite historian,—that which Alexander of Parma built across the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for Philip of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and courage; and it became the scene of one of the most terrible tragedies and the most fantastic festivals which signalize the history of that age, and illustrate the extraordinary and momentous struggle for religious liberty in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred feet into the stream,—connected with the shore by boats, defended by palisades, fortified parapets, and spiked rafts; cleft and partially destroyed by the volcanic fire-ship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and engineer, whereby a thousand of the best troops of the Spanish army were instantly killed, and their brave chief stunned,—when the hour of victory came to the besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and Arcadian banquet, and ‘the whole extent of its surface from the Flemish to the Brabant shore’ was alive with ‘war-bronzed figures crowned with flowers.’ ‘This magnificent undertaking has been favourably compared with the celebrated Rhine bridge of Julius Cæsar. When it is remembered, however, that the Roman work was performed in summer, across a river only half as broad as the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of the tides, and flowing through an unresisting country, while the whole character of the structure, intended only to serve for the single passage of an army, was far inferior to the massive solidity of Parma’s bridge, it seems not unreasonable to assign the superiority to the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and desperate enemies at every point.’[50]
It was at the bridge of Pinos, where the Moors and Christians had so fiercely battled, that Columbus, after pleading his cause in vain at the court, hastening away with despondent steps, was overtaken by the queen’s messenger; recalled, and provided with the substantial aid that led to his momentous discovery. It was in a pavilion in the middle of the bridge across the Seine at Montereau, that the Dauphin, afterwards Charles the Seventh, invited the Duke of Burgundy to meet him in colloquy; and there the latter met his death. The Bridge of Lodi is one of the great landmarks of Napoleon’s career; and the Bridge of Concord no insignificant landmark of the American Revolutionary War. Over the Melos at Smyrna is a bridge which is a rendezvous for camels, and has been justly called ‘the central point of the commerce of Asia Minor.’
We have a memorable illustration of the historic interest of bridges, in the elaborate annals of the Pont Neuf.[51] Although in importance it has long since been superseded by other elegant causeways, for centuries it was the centre of Paris life,—of the trade and pastime, of the scandal and the violences, of the shows and émeutes, so that the record of what occurred there is an epitome of political and social history. It was the rendezvous of dog-clippers and ballad-singers, of bravi and gallants, of the quack and the courtezan, of student, soldier, artist, and gossip. ‘The heart of Paris beat there,’ says the historian of the Pont Neuf, ‘from the seventeenth century;’ the statue of Henry IV. alone made it the nucleus of political associations; it was alike the scene of Cellini’s adventure and Sterne’s sentiment. Catherine de Medicis laid its first stone. Henry IV. completed it; guillotines, cafés, and altars have signalized its extremities or parapets. La Fronde was there inaugurated; there the discharge of cannon proclaimed the flight of the king in ’91; its pavement was bloody with the massacres of September; the first Napoleon there first tried his hand against the revolution; it was the scene of an Englishman’s famous bet and a parrot’s famous lingo. Huguenot, royalist, priest, executioner, gamin, assassin, thief, dandy, nun, hero, and actress,—procession, tryst, ambush, faction, and farce,—murder, song, bon-mot, watchword,—the tragic, the holy, and the hopeless in life, alternate in the story of the Pont Neuf. The Countess du Barri, as a child, ‘the pretty little angel,’ was a vendor there; and an old epigram identified her career with bridges,—her birth with the Pont au Choux, her childhood with the Pont Neuf, her triumph with the Pont Royale, and her end with the Pont aux Dames.
Even the fragile bridges of our own country during the Revolution, have an historical importance in the story of war. The ‘Great Bridge’ across the Elizabeth river, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia; the floating bridge at Ticonderoga; that which spanned Stony Brook in New Jersey; and many others, are identified with strife or stratagem. What an effective object in the distant landscape, to the habitué of the Central Park in New York, is the lofty bridge whereby the Croton aqueduct crosses the Harlaem river, with its fifteen arches, its fourteen hundred feet of length, and its span of nearly a thousand! How few of the multitude to whom King’s Bridge is a daily goal or transit, are cognizant of its historical associations; yet the records of Manhattan Island declare that in 1692 ‘His Excellency the Governor, out of great favour and good to the city,’ proposed the building of this bridge, and soon ordered that ‘if Frederick Phillipse will undertake the same, he shall have the preference of their Majesties’ grant (5th of King William and 3rd of Queen Mary), which was subsequently confirmed to the lord of the manor of Phillipsburgh;’ whereon was born and lived Washington’s first love—the beautiful Mary Phillipse. Here was the barrier of the British, when they occupied New York Island in the Revolution; while as far north as the Croton river extended the neutral ground, the scene of Cooper’s first American romance, the heroine of which is this same fair but unresponsive enslaver of our peerless chief’s young affections. Here, in ’75, Congress ordered a post established to protect New York by land; two years later occurred the sanguinary fight between the Continentals under Heath and the Hessians under Knyphausen. The next year Cornwallis fixed his command at the same border causeway; and in ’81, when our army came near the spot to give the French officers a view of the outposts, a brisk skirmish ensued, and a number of our men were killed at long shot. King’s Bridge was long the rendezvous of freebooters in those unsettled times, and the rallying point of the Cow-boys. Beautifully situated at the confluence of the Hudson and Harlaem rivers, surrounded by high rolling hills, then thickly wooded and crowned with forts, the region was originally selected as the site of New Amsterdam, on account of its secure position. When Manhattan Island was abandoned by the British in ’76, Washington occupied King’s Bridge as his head-quarters. Indeed, from Trenton to Lodi, military annals have few more fierce conflicts than those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground is disputed; to cross one is often a declaration of war, and Rubicons abound in history.
There is probably no single problem, wherein the laws of science and mechanical skill combine, which has so won the attention and challenged the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which seem to fascinate philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice been more completely tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically written, would exhibit as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of inventive skill, decision of character, genius, folly, and fame, as any other chapter in the annals of progress. How to unite security with the least inconvenience, permanence with availability, strength with beauty,—how to adapt the structure to the location, climate, use, and risks,—are questions which often invoke all the science and skill of the architect, and which have increased in difficulty with the advance of other resources and requisitions of civilization. Whether a bridge is to cross a brook, a river, a strait, an inlet, an arm of the sea, a canal, or a valley, are so many diverse contingencies which modify the calculations and plans of the engineer. Here liability to sudden freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the enormous weight of railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of the elements, must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters, the exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the problem. These considerations influence not only the method of construction, but the form adopted and the material, and have given birth to bridges of wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, and chain,—to bridges supported by piers, to floating, suspension, and tubular structures, many of which are among the remarkable trophies of modern science and the noblest fruits of the arts of peace. Railways have created an entirely new species of bridge, to enable a train to intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting directions, to turn amid jagged precipices, and to cross arms of the sea at a sufficient elevation not to interfere with the passage of ships,—objects not to be accomplished by suspension-bridges because of their oscillation, nor girder for lack of support, the desiderata being extensive span with rigid strength, so triumphantly realized in the tubular bridge. The day when the great Holyrood train, passing over the Strait of Menai by this grand expedient, established the superiority of this principle of construction, became a memorable occasion in the annals of mechanical science, and immortalized the name of Stephenson.
We find great national significance in the history of bridges in different countries. Their costly and substantial grandeur in Britain accords with the solid qualities of the race, and their elegance on the Continent with the pervasive influence of art in Europe. It is a curious illustration of the inferior economical and high intellectual development of Greece, that the ‘Athenians waded, when their temples were the most perfect models of architecture;’ and equally an evidence of the practical energy of the old Romans, that their stone bridges often remain to this hour intact. Our own incomplete civilization is manifest in the marvellous number of bridges that annually break down, from negligent or unscientific construction; while the indomitable enterprise of the people is no less apparent in some of the longest, loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sustained bridges in the world. We have only to cross the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, or gaze up to its aërial tracery from the river, or look forth upon wooded ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens from the Erie railway, to feel that in this, as in all other branches of mechanical enterprise, our nation is as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. In no other country would so hazardous an experiment have been ventured as that of an engineer on one of the most frequented lines of railroad in the land, who, finding the bridge he was approaching on fire, bade the passengers keep their seats, and dashed boldly through the flames ere the main arch gave way! ‘The vast majority of bridges in this country,’ says a recent writer, ‘whether for railroads or for ordinary horse-travel, have these elemental points:—1. Fragility. 2. Unendurably hideous ugliness. 3. Great aptitude for catching fire. They are all built of wood, and must be constantly patched and mended, and will rot away in a very few years. They are enormous blots on the landscape, stretching as they do like long unpainted boxes across the stream; like huge Saurian monsters with ever-open jaws into which you rush, or walk, or drive, and are gobbled up from all sight or sense of beauty. The dry timber of which they are built will catch fire from the mere spark of a locomotive, as in the case a few years ago of that hideous bridge which had so long insulted the Hudson river at Troy; and which was not only burned itself, but spread the destroying flame to the best part of the town. These bridges deface all the valleys of our land. The Housatonic, the Mohawk, the Lehigh, the hundreds of small yet beautiful rivers which so delightfully diversify our country, one and all suffer by the vile wooden-bridge system which has nothing at all to plead in extenuation of its tasteless, expensive existence. Every bridge in this country should be deprived of its heavy roof; and if the exigencies of engineering required side-walls, they should be plentifully perforated with open spaces. The more recent railroad bridges are fortunately open bridges, or “viaducts,” as it is fashionable to call them, and the traveller, as in the case of the Starucca viaduct on the Erie road, can both admire the engineering skill and enjoy the scenery. The Connecticut valley is terribly disfigured by these bridges; and a traveller from New Haven to Memphremagog will be thoroughly impressed with this fact, which is the only drawback to the pleasure of the route.’ As an instance of ingenuity in this sphere, the bridge which crosses the Potomac creek, near Washington, deserves notice. The hollow iron arches which support this bridge also serve as conduits to the aqueduct which supplies the city with water.
Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what a grand exception to the architectural monotony are her bridges! How effectually they have promoted her suburban growth! ‘The English,’ wrote Rose, from Italy, ‘are Hottentots in architecture except that of bridges.’ Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the finest in Europe; and, by a strangely-tragic coincidence, this noble and costly structure is the favourite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics are indissolubly associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss Laboyle’s monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as St. Paul’s is that of Wren; there Crabbe, with his poems in his pocket, walked to and fro in a flutter of suspense the morning before his fortunate application to Burke; and our own Remington’s bridge-enthusiasm involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over the Guadalquiver is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the Trent in Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the beautiful bridge over the river Wear, in Durham county. There is a segment of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer’s bridge which spans our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the kind which the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto—begun by the Censor Fulvius, and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius. Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now so valued as a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and Ecclesiastical rule. In striking contrast with the reminiscences of valour hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious Papal inscriptions which everywhere in the States of the Church, in elaborate Latin, announce that this Pontiff built, or that Pontiff repaired, these structures.
The mediæval castle-moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently memorable the late visit of Victoria’s son to her American realms, in his inauguration of the magnificent bridge bearing her name, which is thrown across the St. Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less than two English miles,—the greatest tubular bridge in the world. When the young prince, amid the cheers of a multitude and the grand cadence of the national anthem, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows with a mallet to the last rivet in the central tube, he celebrated one of the oldest, though vastly advanced, triumphs of the arts of peace, which ally the rights of the people and the good of human society to the representatives of law and polity.
One may recoil with a painful sense of material incongruity, as did Hawthorne, when contemplating the noisome suburban street where Burns lived; but all the humane and poetical associations connected with the long struggle sustained by him, of ‘the highest in man’s soul against the lowest in man’s destiny,’ recur in sight of the Bridge of Doon, and the ‘Twa Brigs of Ayr,’ whose ‘imaginary conversations’ he caught and recorded; or that other bridge which spans a glen on the Auchinleck estate, where the rustic bard first saw the Lass of Ballochmyle. The tender admiration which embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the idea of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest published volume was suggested, according to Milnes, as he ‘loitered by the gate that leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath to the field by Caenwood;’ and the young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet passage, ‘Awhile upon some bending planks,’ came to him as he hung ‘over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton.’ One of Wordsworth’s finest sonnets was composed on Westminster Bridge. To the meditative pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to quietude; the genial Country Parson, whose Recreations we have recently shared, unconsciously illustrates this, as he speaks of the privilege men like him enjoy, when free ‘to saunter forth with a delightful sense of leisure, and know that nothing will go wrong, although he should sit down on the mossy parapet of the little one-arched bridge that spans the brawling mountain-stream.’ On that Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the village church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod Crane encountered the headless horseman,—not only as typical of his genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because the country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honour, had hung wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks. There are few places in Europe where the picturesque and historical associations of a bridge more vividly impress the spectator than Sorrento; divided from the main land by a gorge two hundred feet deep and fifty wide, the chasm is spanned by a bridge which rests on double arches, built by the Romans; it is the popular rendezvous, and, beheld on coming from some adjacent orange-garden, resembles a picture,—the men with their crimson or brown caps, and the women with jetty hair and eyes and enormous earrings, cluster there in the centre of the most exquisite scenery. There is a bridge across the Adige, at Verona, which used to be opened but once a year, on account of the risk of injury—its span being prodigious; it was long called the ‘Holiday Bridge.’ In Paris the change in the names of bridges is historically significant: in 1817 ‘the bridge of Austerlitz abdicated its name,’ and became the bridge of the Jardin des Plantes. The lofty bridge of Carignano, at Genoa, owes its existence to a quarrel between two noblemen; and it is a favourite sacrificial spot to suicides who have repeatedly thrown themselves therefrom headlong into the Strada Servi.
‘The Baltimore and Ohio railroad company lose two of their admirable bridges: one at Fairmount, over the Monongahela river, and the famous one over the Cheat river,’ wrote a late reporter from the scene of war in Virginia. ‘The latter was one of the most beautiful structures in the United States, and, being placed amid scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, it had already become a classic spot in the guide-book of American art. It was vandalism fit for ingrates and traitors of the lowest type to destroy what was at once so beautiful and useful a monument of taste and science.’