SOMETHING ABOUT BRIDGES.
Instinctively, Treason, in this vast land, aimed its first blow at the Genius of Communication,—the benign and potent means and method of American civilization and nationality. The great problem Watt and Fulton, Clinton and Morse so gloriously solved, a barbaric necessity thus reduces back to chaos; and not the least sad and significant of the bulletins whereby the most base of civic mutinies finds current record is that entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same direction, on the Italian peninsula,—an engineer having submitted to Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; Tennyson makes one an essential feature of his English summer picture, wherein forever glows the sweet image of the "Gardener's Daughter"; and Bunyan found no better similitude for Christian's passage from Time to Eternity than the "river where there is no bridge."
The primitive need, the possible genius, the science, and the sentiment of a bridge endear its aspect and associations beyond those of any other economical structure. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque about a mill, as Constable's pencil and Tennyson's muse have aptly demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle possible in a sculptured gate, as those of Ghiberti so elaborately evidence; science, poetry, and human enterprise consecrate a light-house; sacred feelings hallow a spire; and mediæval towers stand forth in noble relief against the sunset sky: but around none of these familiar objects cluster the same thoroughly human associations which make a bridge attractive to the sight and memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies man's primal relation to Nature, his first instinctive effort to circumvent or avail himself of her resources; indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge from Nature herself,—her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a stream, "the testimony of the rocks," the curving shores, cavern roofs, and pendent branches, and the prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet well calls "a bridge to tempt the angels down."
A bridge of the simplest kind is often charmingly effective as a landscape-accessory: there is a short plank one in a glen of the White Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on cannon-balls! how venerable seems the most graceful of Tuscan bridges, when we remember it was erected in the fifteenth century,—and the Rialto, when we think that it was designed by Michel Angelo! and how signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true principle in science, that the contrivance whereby the South-Americans bridge the gorges of their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted osiers and bamboo,—one of which, crossed by Humboldt, was a hundred and twenty feet long,—is identical with that which sustains the magnificent structure over the Niagara River! In a bridge the arch is triumphal, both for practical and commemorative ends: unknown to the Greeks and Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, it is said by modern architects, did not appreciate its true mechanical principle, but ascribed the marvellous strength thereof to the cement which kept intact their semicircle. In Cæsar's "Commentaries," the bridge transit and vigilance form no small part of military tactics,—boats and baskets serving the same purpose in ancient and modern warfare. The Church of old originated and consecrated bridges; religion, royalty, and art celebrate their advent; the opening of Waterloo Bridge is the subject of one of the best pictures of a modern English painter; and Cockney visitors to the peerless Bridge of Telford still ask the guide where the Queen stood at its inauguration. But it is when we turn from the historical and scientific to the familiar and personal that we realize the spontaneous interest attached to a bridge. It is as a feature of our native landscape, the goal of habitual excursions, the rendezvous, the observatory, the favorite haunt or transit, that it wins the gaze and the heart. There the musing angler sits content; there the echoes of the horse's hoofs rouse to expectancy the dozing traveller; there the glad lover dreams, and the despairing wretch seeks a watery grave, and the song of the poet finds a response in the universal heart,—
"How often, oh, how often,
In the days that have gone by,
Have I stood on that bridge at midnight,
And gazed on the wave and sky!"
One of the most primitive tokens of civilization is a bridge; and yet no artificial object is more picturesquely associated with its ultimate symbols: the fallen tree whereon the pioneer crosses a stream in the wilderness is not more significant of human isolation than the fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands. Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our Western Continent record the savage expedients whereby water-courses were passed,—coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a floating log, or, in shallow streams, a series of stepping-stones; and the most popular historian of England, when delineating to the eye of fancy the hour of her capital's venerable decay, can find no more impressive illustration than to make a broken arch of London Bridge the observatory of the speculative reminiscent.
The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inventions, that which is most inevitable to humanity, signalizing the first steps of man amid the solitude of Nature, and accompanying his progress through every stage of civic life: its crude form makes the wanderer's heart beat in the lonely forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the track of his kind; and its massive remains excite the reverent curiosity of the archæologist, who seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than the unexpected sight of one of those bridges of solid and symmetrical masonry which the traveller in Italy encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a squalid town upon the ancient highway. The permanent method herein apparent suggests an energetic and pervasive race whose constructive instinct was imperial; such an evidence of their pathway over water is as suggestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the savage is of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no other structure, use combines with beauty by an instinctive law; and the stone arch, more or less elaborate in detail, is as essential now to the function and the grace of a bridge as when it was first thrown, invincible and harmonious, athwart the rivers Cæsar's legions crossed.
As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a precarious foothold amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a homely, but significant proverb, "Never find fault with the bridge that carries you safe over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast, when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm! how mysteriously sleep the moonbeams there! what a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's' patriarchs in this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric characters known for years.
Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lombardy whence a jilted lover sprang with his faithless bride as she passed to church with her new lover; it is yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." An old traveller, describing New-York amusements, tells us of a favorite ride from the city to the suburban country, and says,—"In the way there is a bridge about three miles distant, which you always pass as you return, called the 'Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself under your protection."[F] A curious lawsuit was lately instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost an elephant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccustomed weight; the authorities protested against damages, as they never undertook to give safe passage to so large an animal.