"Southwark Bridge," says Mr. Timbs, "designed by John Rennie, F.R.S., was built by a public company, and cost about £800,000. It consists of three cast-iron arches; the centre 240 feet span, and the two side arches 210 feet each, about forty-two feet above the highest spring-tides; the ribs forming, as it were, a series of hollow masses, or voussoirs, similar to those of stone, a principle new in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and very successful. The whole of the segmental pieces and the braces are kept in their places by dovetailed sockets and long cast-iron wedges, so that bolts are unnecessary, although they were used during the construction of the bridge to keep the pieces in their places until the wedges had been driven. The spandrels are similarly connected, and upon them rests the roadway, of solid plates of cast-iron, joined by iron cement. The piers and abutments are of stone, founded upon timber platforms resting upon piles driven below the bed of the river. The masonry is tied throughout by vertical and horizontal bond-stones, so that the whole rests as one mass in the best position to resist the horizontal thrust. The first stone was laid by Admiral Lord Keith, May 23rd, 1815, the bill for erecting the bridge having been passed May 16th, 1811. The iron-work (weight 5,700 tons) had been so well put together by the Walkers of Rotherham, the founders, and the masonry by the contractors, Jolliffe and Banks, that, when the work was finished, scarcely any sinking was discernible in the arches. From experiments made to ascertain the expansion and contraction between the extreme range of winter and summer temperature, it was found that the arch rose in the summer about one inch to one and a half inch. The works were commenced in 1813, and the bridge was opened by lamp-light, March 24th, 1819, as the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral tolled midnight. Towards the middle of the western side of the bridge used to be a descent from the pavement to a steam-boat pier."
Mr. Charles Dickens, in one of the chapters of his "Uncommercial Traveller," has sketched, in his most exquisite manner, just such old City churches as we have in Cannon Street and its turnings. The dusty oblivion into which they are sinking, their past glory, their mouldy old tombs—everything he paints with the correctness of Teniers and the finish of Gerard Dow.
"There is," he says, "a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in 1754, to the Dowgate family. And who were they? Jane Comfort must have married young Dowgate, and come into the family that way. Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comfort when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf. If Jane were fond of young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Comfort, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy; and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success as was expected.
THE FOURTH SALTERS' HALL
"The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then find to my astonishment that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes: the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as death it is! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half-choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him.
"In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument, the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.