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Topographie de la Gaule,” where an engraving gives a good idea of
their appearance.
12. Ponte Nomentano in the Campagna, three miles from Rome.
This, no doubt, is the most romantic of all the fortified bridges that
Brangwyn has painted. Both bridge and castle are mediæval, but
they rise over the willow-frilled Anio, a river haunted by myths which
to the ancients were sacred truths. It was in the Anio that Rhea
Silvia passed from the brief hours of her mortality into the life of a
goddess; and to this river Silvia confided her two children, Romulus
and Remus, the twin Moses of Roman story, who were carried in
their cradle to the Tiber, where other waters bore them on and on till
at last they came to land under the fig tree at the foot of the
Palatine hill. What a delightful legend to be whispered by the current
of the prattling Anio below the uncouth stones of the Nomentano!
What other war-bridge has been united to such a gracious myth?
And history as well as legend has been busy on the banks of the
Anio. Into this river the ashes of Marius were thrown by the
adherents of Sulla; and beyond the bridge, on the right bank, west
of the Via Nomentana, is a very famous hillside, the Mons Sacer, to
which the plebeians retreated, as to a fortified place, when they
asserted their right to tame the patricians. Their first great strike, or
secession, occupied four months in the year 549 b.c., when four
thousand of them encamped on the friendly hill, leaving the crops
unharvested, and the city without a garrison. Mount Sacer became
sacred to the People of Rome, and to the historic sense it is the Hill
of Liberty, sanctified by the first brave ideals of a democratic justice.
Yet in recent times vulgarians have taken hold of Mount Sacer, and
have carted it away by the ton to be used as building material.
As for the Ponte Nomentano, he is nothing more than a burly
soldier, a common man-at-arms. The mediæval engineer was
uninspired by an enchanted site, and gave the whole of his attention
to the pronged battlements. He had no feeling for proportion, and
no liking for a stern eloquence of line such as we find in the noble
castle of Chenonceaux, a masterpiece of the French Renaissance,
whose long wing is carried by a bridge of five round arches, and
whose turreted portion is pierced by a single arcade.
13. The bridges of Laroque, near Cahors, on the river Lot. In this
rapid sketch Brangwyn represents a riverside Gibraltar upon which
an ancient village stands, partly on bridges. Its value in “the good
old times” as a stronghold fortified by Nature is patent, and the
watch-towers have an unsleeping alertness that looks out upon the
world through one eye or window. I should like to know who built
the first bridge at Laroque. There is a Romanesque form in the arch
drawn by Brangwyn, and the Romans were active in the
neighbourhood. Over the Lot at Divona, now called Cahors, they
built a bridge, which perished some years ago in a local storm of
party feeling. To imagine Rome with a Gibraltar on the Lot is a great
pleasure.
 laroque on the river lot, near cahors, a sort of inland gibraltar; a
part of the village is built on bridges thrown across chasms in the rocks

Before we pass on from the defensive bridges, I should like to

give you a picture of the famous old bridge at Saintes, in France,
that lasted to the year 1843, when it was destroyed. I know not why
I use the silly word “it,” for the bridge of Saintes was an exceedingly
martial structure that united all the main phases of military art—the
primitive, the Roman, and the mediæval. Let me give an abridged
description from Viollet-le-Duc’s “Dictionnaire raisonnée
d’Architecture”:—
“The first gate appeared on the right shore of the
Charente, on the side of the Faubourg des Dames; next came
the Roman arch, [127] the upper part of which was crenellated
during the Middle Ages; next on the side of the town stood a
tower of oval plan, through which the road lay; the town
gates with flanking towers closed the end of the bridge. From
the first gate to the Roman arch the bridge was of wood, as
was also the case between the great tower and the town
gates, so that by the removal of this part of the roadway all
communication could be cut off between the town and the
tower, as well as between the bridge and the Faubourg;
moreover, the parapets were crenellated, so that the garrison
of the town at any moment could stop all navigation.”
 V
A brief introduction to the history of bridges has so many difficulties
that I creep through my work, a few hundred words in a long day.
To try to plant an oak tree in a thimble would be more difficult, I
suppose, but gleaning here and there over vast fields brings trouble
enough to any writer. I go through scores of photographs, and turn
over great piles of notes, and seek for a topic that is not too
technical for the general reader, but that touches a really important
phase in the evolution of bridge-building. There is a species of
bridge to which the arches at Laroque belong; it may be called either
freakish or very exceptional. Let me give a few examples.
There is one at Crowland, a curious three-branched structure
which for many a year stood at the confluence of the Catwater drain
and two streamlets, the Welland and the Nyne. To-day no water
flows under this bridge, and common little modern houses do not
make pretty pictures when they are framed by the arches. There are
three pointed arches, with their abutments at the angles of an
equilateral triangle; they meet in the middle, and form three
roadways and three watercourses. They have three stone ribs
apiece, and the nine ribs meet in the centre I note, too, that these
arches were built not by a bridgeman, but by a mason skilled in
church work, for their rings are moulded elaborately as in Gothic
windows and doorways. As for the style of architecture, it is not
older than the beginning of the fourteenth century; but a much
earlier bridge at Crowland, probably of wood, was famed for its
triangular shape, and mentioned in a charter of the year 943, when
Edmund was King.
At the south-west entrance of Crowland Bridge, beyond the five
steps, there is a rough-hewn statue that represents a crowned and
bearded figure seated up high against the parapet walls, in an
attitude of sorrow, with arms folded (and perhaps they may be
bound together) over a long robe. Time has frayed and scarred this
uncouth sculpture, but not without leaving some mellow lines and
planes. The archæology of guesswork has called this effigy by
various names, such as Ethelbald, and Saint Guthlac, and Henry II,
but I prefer to look upon it as a simple Pietà chiselled by a mason
who had been trained to do enniched figures for church decoration—
work without detail, to make at a distance a broad effect. This
conjecture is in accord with the ecclesiastical moulding of the
archstones, and with the mediæval custom that united bridges to
Christianity by means of sacred emblems. Crowland Abbey ruled
over the district, so one of the Abbots may have built the bridge;
and perhaps the pointed arches, three in number, with their triple
ribs, and their three pathways, and the three streams of water, may
have been intended as symbols of the Trinity. If so,—and there is
nothing in this view to clash with the spirit of the Mediæval Church,
—then a Pietà turned toward the west would be the most beautiful
symbol of that Light which went down with the sun, and then rose
again through the dark into the dusk, and through the dusk into a
dawn where faith for ever dwells. On the other hand, if the crowned
figure represents a mere earthly king, I know not why Ethelbald
should be chosen, for his reign of two years was not a creative time
and he died in 860, just eighty-three years before Crowland’s
triangular bridge was alluded to in the charter of the year 943.
Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Athelstan—these kings in succession
were nearer to the charter, and their longer reigns were more
notable than the short hours of Ethelbald. Alfred we should prefer, of
course, but he has been passed over by the busy minds that have
weaved around Crowland Bridge so many cobwebs of the study and
so much haze of idle conjecture. My own views are conjectures also,
but they are taken partly from the bridge itself and partly from the
care and affection that the Church during the Middle Ages bestowed
on bridge-building.
And now a technical matter ought to be considered in its bearing
on the arches of Crowland Bridge. At a time when bridges were
protected by the Church, their arches were affected by changes of
style in ecclesiastical windows and doorways; but, of course,
whatever shape was given to them, they were treated differently
from doorways and windows, for these had to bear only a downward
thrust, while bridges had to withstand five trials: their own “spring,”
the vibration caused by wheeled traffic, the lateral pressure of
flowing water, the disturbance of gravity by immersion, and blows
from drifting ice and timber. With these problems to be solved,
bridgemen set no store by moulded archstones, a kickshaw of style.
Sometimes they built the ring of an arch with two or three sets of
voussoirs, [128] but their aim was practical, not ornamental; they
wished to give greater resistance to their work, and not merely to
spend time and money on a decorative effect. So when we find in
the arches of Crowland Bridge such moulded handicraft as was used
in church decoration, we may surmise that the architect and his
masons were not bridge-builders, and that they worked only for the
light foot-traffic of a village.
It is worth noting that in the year 1752 a French architect named
Beffara took a hint from Crowland Bridge, and then achieved fame
with a daring structure built near Ardres, in the Pas-de-Calais. There
are four branches to this bridge, and they carry roads over two
canals that intersect at right angles. One canal goes from Saint-Ouen
to Calais and the other from Ardres to Gravelines. Beffara’s work is
placed by Larousse among the fifty-four most notable bridges in the
world, and this honour it seems to merit; but Frenchmen in their
vanity have tried to make it into a pretentious bridge by giving to it a
braggart name—Le Sans-Pareil. Gracious! It is fit for a café or for a
battleship, in whose nomenclature bravado and bombast rule as
customs. Poor Beffara! “Le Sans-Pareil,” like “Titanic” or like
“Dreadnought,” defies the powers of Nature, inviting them to do
their worst; and what good omen can there be in such bantam
cockiness?
For a long time the old bridge at Bâle, over the Rhine, remarkable
for its length and for its beautiful site, was not only freakish but
exceedingly insolent. At one end, on the side of greater Bâle, was a
tower decorated with a grotesque head called Laellenkoenig, which,
in answer to the working of a clock, put out its tongue and rolled
insulting eyes at the opposite bank. Eight or ten times an hour this
abusive pantomime was repeated, and it never failed to anger little
Bâle, which had the pugnacious vanity of a small organism. I do not
know how many duels were fought, but at last a touch of
Rabelaisian humour suggested a mechanical revenge, far more
regular in its action than were fights and punctured bodies. A tall
post was set up by the inhabitants of Bâle junior, and on the top of it
stood a hateful statue that affected to turn its back on the enemy
with a shameless movement.
It is risky at the present time to say that a bridge has certain old
characters: change is so rapid that no pontist can keep in touch with
its vagaries; but I believe the old bridge at Bâle is alive, and that it
keeps in use the Gothic tower, a triangular defence of red sandstone
erected on the middle pier, and devoted now to a thermometer, a
barometer, and a table of weights and measures. Laellenkoenig has
gone, of course, and Bâle junior has grown much bigger and less
techy.
The Bridge of Sighs, at Venice, must be included among the
exceptional bridges, being equally celebrated in history and in art.
Who can say how many times she has been etched and painted and
engraved? She is not very important as a work of architecture, yet
artists are drawn towards her invariably, and seldom do they fail to
make her impressive. Brangwyn loves the Bridge of Sighs, and does
her much more than justice in one of his finest etchings. There is
something trivial in her Renaissance ornament, and her proportions
are not great, being only two metres wide and six high; on the other
hand, her abutments are famous buildings, the ducal palace and the
State prison. It is from the second storey of the palace that we enter
the gloom of her covered passage, concerning which a Frenchman
writes as follows: “On pourrait presque le comparer, en agrandissant
les proportions, à nos fourgons d’armée.”
 It is said that only a prisoner here and there went over this bridge
more than once—in his compulsory walk from a dungeon in the
prison to the Council of the Ten. Those who awaited their trial in the
dungeons were looked upon as already condemned; their
appearance before the Ten was a formality, at least in public opinion;
and for this reason the dark corridor across the canal was called the
Bridge of Sighs.
Among the bridges of the fourteenth century there are two that
history has set down as very exceptional. One of them is a covered
bridge over the Ticino at Pavia, erected under the care of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti. Professor Fleeming Jenkin says of it: “This bridge,
which still exists, has seven pointed brick arches, each 70 ft. in span
and 64 ft. in height; the depth of the arch ring at the crown is 5 ft. 6
in. The tympanum is pierced; the bricks used in the arches are
formed to suit their position, and are hollow in the middle to
diminish the weight. The roof of the roadway is carried by a hundred
rough granite columns.”
This neat description is accurate, but in it the bridge is not
visualised. Would that we had a Brangwyn sketch! I have by my side
an engraving of the bridge, and the effect of the design is that of an
open-work frieze. Each gracefully pointed arch is a repetition of the
other six; the piers also are uniform and graceful, being all 16 ft. 3
in. wide; and all the spandrils are pierced in the same triangular
fashion. The point of each triangle is turned downwards, its sides are
the inner surfaces of two arch rings, and its base, turned upwards,
and gracefully arched with seventeen long bricks, helps to support
the parapet. On this parapet at equal intervals rise the hundred
granite columns by which the covered roadway is carried. So the
design is a clever feat not merely of repetitive decoration, but of
repeating solids and voids that oppose each other in a harmony of
contrasts; for the empty spandrils in their form oppose the leaf-
shaped openings made by the arches, and all the curved solids of
the bridge are foiled in a rugged manner by the upright columns, as
well as by the long horizontal lines of the covered roadway. In the
contrast between cold granite and warm brick there is colour also,
and it suits the pulsating light and heat of Italy.
As for the second bridge of the fourteenth century, which
architects regard as very uncommon, it exists in drawings only, for it
was destroyed by Carmagnola. Its founder was a duke of Milan,
Bernabò Visconti, and it crossed the Adda at Trezzo. According to
Hann and Hosking, it had “a single arch of granite, very well
constructed of stones in two courses, the innermost 3¼ ft. thick in
the direction of the radius, the outermost 9 in., the span at low
water 251 ft.; the river rises sometimes 13 ft.” The radius of the arch
was 133 ft. A span of 251 ft. in a stone bridge was a noble
achievement. It is the largest that I remember. The Grosvenor
Bridge at Chester has a span of 200 ft., just thirty yards wider than
the central arch of Trajan’s Bridge over the Tagus. New London
Bridge in her finest arch attains a span of 152 ft., beating Waterloo
Bridge by nearly eleven yards. Two French bridges of the eighteenth
century—the Pont de Lavaur and the Pont de Gignac—have spans of
160 ft.; and let me refer you also to the Pont de Neuilly-sur-Seine (p.
338).
Many uncommon bridges have been attributed to the Chinese,
and I know not what to say about some of them. Let me quote from
Marco Polo, giving also the excellent notes written by his editor
Colonel Yule. In the twenty-seventh chapter of his travels Marco Polo
speaks “of the river named Pulisangan, and of the bridge over it.”
This river, whose name is written variously, is believed to be the
Hoen-ho of the Jesuits’ map, which, uniting with another stream
from the north-west, forms the Pe-ho or White River. When Marco
Polo comes to the Pulisangan[129] he finds “a very handsome bridge
of stone, perhaps unequalled by another in the world.” “Its length is
three hundred paces, and its width eight paces; so that ten men can
ride abreast without inconvenience.[130] It has twenty-four arches,
supported by twenty-five piers erected in the water, all of serpentine
stone, and built with great skill. On each side, and from one
extremity to the other, there is a handsome parapet, formed of
marble slabs and pillars arranged in a masterly style. At the
commencement of the ascent the bridge is something wider than at
the summit, but from the part where the ascent terminates, the
sides run in straight lines and parallel to each other.[131] Upon the
upper level there is a massive and lofty column, resting upon a
tortoise of marble, and having near its base a large figure of a lion,
with a lion also on the top.[132] Towards the slope of the bridge
there is another handsome column or pillar, with its lion, at the
distance of a pace and a half from the former; and all the spaces
between one pillar and another, throughout the whole length of the
bridge, are filled up with slabs of marble, curiously sculptured, and
mortised into the next adjoining pillars, which are, in like manner, a
pace and a half asunder, and equally surmounted with lions, [133]
forming altogether a beautiful spectacle. These parapets serve to
prevent accidents, that might otherwise happen to passengers. What
has been said applies to the descent as well as to the ascent of the
bridge.”[134]
I do not understand why this description is considered very
difficult to understand. It depicts a gabled bridge with a flat top, not
an uncommon form of bridge in China, I believe. The footway
ascends to the beginning of the middle arch, where it becomes flat
and level; it continues so for the full width of the arch, and then it
descends toward the abutment across the river. With this picture in
mind it is easy to decorate the bridge over the Pulisangan, or Hoen-
ho, with the accessories described by Marco Polo. The parapets have
coping stones of sculptured marble, and pillars are carefully set
along the parapets at an equal distance from each other. These
pillars are of two sorts. Those above the flat part of the roadway,
where the parapets also are horizontal, are tall and massive. On
each side, at the brow of the ascent, there is a tall pillar upon the
summit of which is a stone lion; and in the middle of each parapet,
on this level part of the road, there is a taller and heavier column,
whose pedestal is a marble tortoise, and whose summit carries a
symbolic lion. Another lion is placed near the tortoise, perhaps on a
ledge of stone corbelled out from the parapet. As for the parapets
that slope up from the abutments to the point where they become
level, or horizontal, they, too, have their emblematic lions carried by
pillars, and these ornaments, in accordance with the logic of design,
are much smaller than those on the summit of the steep bridge. For
the rest, Marco Polo speaks of twenty-four arches and of twenty-five
piers; and if we give to the arches an average span of fifty-two feet,
and to the piers an average width of thirteen feet, we get a bridge
1573 ft. long, or seventy-three feet longer than the five hundred
yards suggested by Colonel Yule. Viewed in this way, apart from the
vague glamour of enthusiastic words, there is nothing extravagant in
Marco Polo’s description.
Many writers have been astonished by another Chinese bridge,
called the Bridge of Cho-gan, in the province of Shen-si. Its great
arch is said to have had an unrivalled span. I am told that it was
built with huge blocks of stone, cut into voussoirs, the joints of
which converged towards a common centre, as in our own bridges.
This may be true, though in photographs of Chinese bridges which I
have seen the voussoirs do not resemble ours; not only are they
much longer, they are much narrower also, and recall to my memory
a good description written by Barrow, whose impressions of China
are invaluable to students. Barrow speaks of archstones from five to
ten feet long, and says that each stone “is cut so as to form a
segment of the arch.” “There is no keystone” when an arch is built in
this manner. Again, “ribs of wood fitted to the convexity of the arch
are bolted through the stones by iron bars, fixed in the solid part of
the bridge”; sometimes no wood is employed, and then “the curved
stones are mortised into long transverse blocks of stone.” It would
be ridiculous to speak of this technical method as one that employs
voussoirs, since the arch ring is built with a few segmental stones
and without a keystone; and possibly the Bridge of Cho-gan was
constructed in this fashion. A drawing of it is given in Kircher’s “La
Chine Illustrée”—or, rather, in Dalquié’s translation of Kircher’s book,
published in 1670 at Amsterdam. It is not a geometrical drawing,
and the dimensions are given in Chinese measures, which do not
help us to love Kircher and Dalquié. M. Degrand is baffled by these
measures;[135] but he admits that the Bridge of Cho-gan must have
been a grandiose structure dating from a very remote time.
Gauthey speaks with admiration of the “Pont de Fo-Cheu sur le
Min”—a bridge not less than 7935 metres long by 19 metres 50
wide, with a hundred arches, all semicircular, and thirty-nine metres
in their average span. The piers were nearly as broad, and their
height was thirty-nine metres. Here is a bridge that Dean Swift
ought to have put into his pictures of Brobdingnag. Gauthey seems
to have faith in it, while M. Degrand has doubts. He says: “Even if
we admit that there is no flagrant exaggeration in the documents
from which the account of this bridge is taken, the workmanship in
its general character, as shown in the drawing given by Gauthey, has
a near resemblance to that in Roman bridges, and ought not to be
assigned to a period earlier than theirs.” Gauthey describes the
decorative treatment. Under the parapet of white marble ran a line
of consoles; the piers were surmounted by figures of lions in black
marble, cut from blocks seven metres long; and above each
twentieth arch the footway was guarded by a gateway, un arc de
triomphe.
For the rest, as I wanted to learn something more about this
bridge of a hundred vast arches over the Min at Fo-Cheu, I wrote to
the Rev. O. M. Jackson, whose kind help I have already
acknowledged (p. 248). There is a river Min in Sichuan, but no news
of such a bridge has reached Mr. Jackson, though he has worked in
Western China for more than twenty years, and has travelled on foot
over a very wide area in the province of Sichuan. Again, Mr. Jackson
does not recognise the spelling “Fo-Cheu,” but refers me to the city
of Fu Chow in the coast province of Fukien. One day, perhaps,
research will bring me in touch with the colossal masterpiece
described by Gauthey, though at present I am baffled by the variety
of geographical names that travellers have given to the bridges of
China. Still, the Chinese have been great bridge-builders, and some
of their stone arches have been very high and very wide. Perhaps
the one described by Kircher may have been as wide as Trezzo
Bridge, over the Adda, with its wonderful span of 251 feet.
My favourite bridge in the class of exceptional merit is the Ponte
della Trinità over the Arno at Florence, designed in 1566 by the
architect of the Pitti Palace, Bartolomeo Ammanati, a devoted
admirer of Michelangelo. Both in science and in art the Ponte della
Trinità is complete as an original success. Its vaulting—I ought to
say his vaulting, for in this bridge the male qualities of genius are
much stronger than the female—his vaulting, then, if not the most
scientific in the world, is not excelled by any other work either
ancient or modern. There are three arches, and their curves are
cycloids; the rise from the springing level is only a trifle more than
one-sixth of the span. How Ammanati managed to get his effect of
perfect balance and symmetry is a question very hard to answer, for
there is a considerable difference between the width of his arches,
the central one being 96 ft. in span, and the others 86 ft. and 88 ft.
This fact has been established by measured drawings, but do you
notice it out of doors, in the magic of this beautiful bridge? The piers
are simple and excellent. Their width, twenty-six feet, is not too
much for the spates of a freakish river, nor too heavy for the bridge
as a linear composition; on the upstream side they have stern
cutwaters, good foils in a piece of architecture that blends an alert
grace with a supple vigour. Another point worth noting is the
gradient of a roadway that starts out from low abutments. Ammanati
was bent upon being a friend to the traffic of Florence, and with the
help of his cycloid arches he kept the road on a mild curve. To-day
this good point attracts little attention, as most of us forget that
steep bridges were in vogue till late in the eighteenth century.
A Victorian pontist, William Hosking, endeavoured to prove that
Ammanati made one mistake in the Ponte della Trinità. It seemed to
Hosking that the piers were too bulky, so he cut them down in a
sketch and spoilt the whole bridge by altering the proportions.
Architects told him so, but Hosking crowed over his little sketch and
published it with pride, as you will find by turning to his
“Architectural Treatise on Bridge Building”—a valuable work from
other standpoints.
 VI
The great work of Ammanati sets thought in movement on bridge
decoration, and I wish to offer some hints on this subject, not for
the purpose of finding rules, but in order that a public debate may
be invited. Rules would be very useful if they could be formulated,
but in bridge decoration national sentiment and personal feeling
have been exceedingly active; no writer, then, can do more than
offer suggestions from his own point of view.
Less than twenty years ago a debate on this subject would not
have been easy, for good books on the technical history of bridges
were uncommon, and photographs of fine examples were far more
difficult to get than they are now. English books on bridges are still
formidably dull; to read them is perhaps as troublesome as hill
climbing on a foggy day; but the fear of being “ploughed” in a stiff
examination helps young men to be intrepid. In France, on the other
hand, the public is served very well by literary pontists. M. Charles
Béranger, for instance, from his Librairie Polytechnique in Paris, is
publishing a series of thorough books on bridges, as useful to us as
they are to French students. Already eight volumes have been
issued. They include:—
1. “Ponts en Maçonnerie.” Par E. Degrand, Inspecteur-Général des
Ponts et Chaussées, et Jean Résal, Ingénieur des Ponts et
Chaussées. Two volumes, illustrated; 40 francs.
2. “Ponts Métalliques.” Par M. Pascal, Ingénieur. One volume; 15
francs; illustrated.
3. “Croquis de Ponts Métalliques.” Par Jules Gaudard, Ingénieur
Civil et Professeur Honoraire de l’Université de Lausanne. Profusely
illustrated; 20 francs.
 4. “Cours de Ponts Métalliques.” Par Jean Résal. Vol. I, 375
illustrations; 20 francs.
5. “Manuel Théorique et Pratique du Constructeur en Ciment
Armé.” Par MM. N. de Tédesco et V. Forestier. One volume, 242
illustrations; 20 francs.
6. “Études sur les Ponts en Pierre remarquables par leur
Décoration.” Par F. De Dartein, Inspecteur-Général des Ponts et
Chaussées en Retraite, etc. Vol. I, “Ponts Français antérieurs au Dix-
Huitième Siècle”; not yet published. “Vol. II, Ponts Français du Dix-
Huitième Siècle—Centre”; published. Vol. III, “Ponts Français du Dix-
Huitième Siècle—Languedoc”; published. Vol. IV, Bourgogne;
published. Vol. V, “Ponts Étrangers antérieurs au XIX siècle—Italiens,
Espagnols et Anglais”; not yet published. Price, 25 francs the
volume.
For this work M. De Dartein has made exact measured drawings
from sixty-eight bridges, and each example has a great historic
interest. The author has taken a line of his own, dwelling on the
ornament of bridges, their decoration; several of his volumes are
long overdue, but in his earnest study of the eighteenth century we
see what he admires in French design. M. De Dartein is thoughtful
and thorough, but I wish some photographs had been added to the
illustrations, because measured drawings give only the dry bones of
architecture.
How to decorate a bridge is a question beset with so many
problems, some practical, and others æsthetic, that it ought to be
debated at an international congress of engineers and architects and
artists. There are persons who think that M. De Dartein will say the
last word on his important theme; but it is enough for me to believe
that his material and his personal taste will be invaluable, presenting
facts and provoking discussion. He lingers too often over details of
trivial ornament, which increase the cost of production without doing
any good at all to the architecture. In other words, M. De Dartein
speaks too often as an engineer.
 The qualities of a great bridge should make their appeal in stern
lines, in ample proportions, in a scale that befits not the site alone
but the site and its history; for all fine architecture dwells with the
fugitive generations as a lasting citizen; it is an epitome of racial
character alembicated by genius. Bridges cannot be fine when they
are dwarfed by their environments, or when they are too big to be in
harmony with the externals of their setting. This, no doubt, is a
staring truism, yet it is unseen by most modern engineers, whose
metal monsters are often as wrongly placed in a gentle landscape as
a giant from Brobdingnag would be at Lilliput. On the other hand,
can you explain why the Roman bridge at Alcántara is tremendous
art? Is it not because he is in scale with the rocky gorge of the
Tagus? This virile bridge completes a grand site, and finds in the site
his own completion.
 the pont neuf at paris, built in 1604; it has been much altered since the
renaissance

Still, it cannot be said that Roman bridges were always free from
redundant ornament. There were times when pomp exerted a bad
influence; and later ages borrowed oddments of Roman decoration
that weakened in many countries the aspect of bridges. It is from
such Roman work as the Pont du Gard, where no detail was called
for, and where the architect’s aim was to be unpretentious, that we
learn never to worry a bridge with embellishments. To construct
ornament is very often an easy accomplishment of bad taste, while
to ornament construction is a very difficult problem of self-restraint
in art, because judgment tells us that a great design carried out in
simple and thorough masonry is in itself ornamental, if not complete.
Applied decoration is almost certain to harm it, just as a human face
is disfigured by sticking-plaster.
 For example, turn to Frank Brangwyn’s drawing of the Pont Neuf
at Paris, and note under the parapet the well-spaced brackets. Each
bracket is decorated with a mask. Why? Simpler and shorter
brackets would have been more in keeping with the architecture, as
these long ones overlap the keystones—a serious blunder. Partly to
hide a ring of voussoirs is to blur the whole structural beauty of an
arch. It is like covering the eyes with blue spectacles. And there are
other mistakes of scale in the Pont Neuf. No fewer than six piers are
crowded into the Seine, as if inundations were amusements to be
liked very much. But the spirit of Renaissance art was overapt to be
finikin. In a fine bridge at Chatsworth, for instance, a charming
effect is troubled by a too expensive parapet; and statues are lodged
on pedestals above the cutwaters. Why? Is the cutwater of a bridge
a convenient spot for the display of sculpture? As many persons fear
in talk a sudden silence made by thought, so many architects in their
revisions fear the plain spaces left in their designs by a creative
inspiration. Then in a hurry they add some “ornament” such as we
find at Chatsworth, or in Gauthey’s Pont de Navilly on the Doubs. In
this bridge narrow spandrils are choked with an overturned vase
surrounded by an ornament of bulrushes, and over each cutwater
there is a huge stone shaped like an egg and garlanded. I decline to
speak in technical terms because the folly of using superfluous
“ornament” is hidden by words that look erudite. Was it an
admiration for Moses that caused Gauthey to put bulrushes on a
bridge? And did he suppose that they suggested water and
adventure? As for those huge eggs of stone, if they came from some
bird five or six times as big as an ostrich, I should like to see them in
a museum of natural history, but without their ornamental wreaths.
In brief, are you attracted by any phase of modern bridge-building
that copies the decorations of civic architecture, displaying columns,
pilasters, niches, balustrades, battlements, towers, turrets,
pinnacles, or any other finery that serves no organic purpose in the
life of a contemporary bridge? Myself, I hate such a strumpet of a
bridge as the Hoogesluis at Amsterdam, with her ornate spandrils,
and her embossed masonry, and her balustraded parapet
surmounted by a row of obelisks around which lamps are bracketed.
Also I hate such a suspension bridge as the one at Conway Castle,
where the metal rods that support the roadway pass through a brace
of turrets on each of the embattled gateways. The effect is not only
comic but ludicrous. No engineer with any sense would have put a
metal viaduct within a few yards of Conway Castle. Or, if a metal
suspension had been forced upon him by his employers, he would
have made in a modern style a very simple and stern design.
Instead, we have two vulgar gateways rudely copied from Conway
Castle, and then lacerated by five metal rods that cut through each
of the four turrets. I am reminded of an absurd railway bridge at
Cologne, whose parapets are—or were—flanked by small turrets,
and whose gateway has—or had—two high towers formidably armed
with make-believe battlements and machicolations. Such futile
pretension is a public insult; it implies that laymen have no common
sense at all in their attitude to “feats of engineering.”
But it is not the modern bridge alone that provokes criticism in
this matter of decorative art. Some ancient and famous bridges are
hard nuts to crack as soon as we pass from their structural fitness to
their ornamentation. As an example I may choose the Ponte Sant’
Angelo at Rome, which has been copied feebly by the Schloss
Brücke at Berlin. Originally the Sant’ Angelo was the Pons Ælius,
built by Hadrian (a.d. 13) face to face with his mausoleum, to-day
the castle of Saint Angelo. In the seventeenth century new parapets
were added to the bridge, and ten colossal statues by Bernini were
put up on pedestals along the parapets. Around these statues many
a controversy has raged, and I am not surprised. In my photographs
there is a small lamp-standard between each pair of huge figures;
even the lights of Rome have to twinkle below the decorations. The
bridge looks burdened rather than adorned; it is neither wide
enough nor high enough to be used as a gallery for sculpture
modelled on a large scale. That a great effort was made by an artist
of power is evident, but the artist worked for his own ambition, and
not for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo. He had no conception of the fact that
the bridge and its environment were so good that they could not be
improved by huge “embellishments.” Yet there are writers who say,
“Yes, no doubt, Bernini’s bouncing figures are theatrical, but, after
all, their general effect is grandiose.” The truth is, every great city
needs a Parliament of Taste where questions of civic art could be
debated publicly, with help from lantern slides. No writer can hope to
do much in his defence of art. Indeed, books are studied so
infrequently that they cannot draw public attention to the larger
problems of architecture and decoration; whereas free debates in a
Parliament of Taste, centring always around object-lessons, might
restore to art the life of a great citizen.
In this matter we owe much to Hosking, the Victorian pontist,
who cried out against the blunders made in the ornamentation of
bridges. As early as 1842 he told the truth boldly, declaring that the
most eminent civil engineers, in their efforts to take hints from street
buildings, had failed to produce anything but meanness or absurdity,
or a combination of both. Hosking had faith in three simple
principles:—
1. That bridges, in the combination of their leading lines, should
be bold and simple;
2. That their passage over dangerous places ought to be a secure
highway; and,
3. That in stone bridges far too much money had been wasted on
the high finish of exterior surfaces. In very ponderous language
Hosking said:—
“It may be fairly questioned whether Waterloo and London
bridges would not have been finer objects had the masonry of
their external faces been merely rough-axed, or even left
scabbled, instead of being fair hammer-dressed; and certainly
many thousands of pounds might have been saved in the
execution of Waterloo Bridge, and a much better result
produced, by the omission of the coupled columns and their
immediate accessories, and by the use of a plain parapet of a
more reasonable height, instead of the high, the enormously
 expensive, and absurdly ugly balustraded enclosures which
now aid the columns and their projected entablatures to
deform a splendid structure.”
This Puritan outlook appeals to me, for I believe that good
bridges should be as sternly efficient as were the Ironsides of
Cromwell’s army. Their beauty is a thing apart from any cavalier-like
finery of dressing ornament. It shows that all the parts of a bridge
are co-ordinated with fine judgment, and that each part is in nice
accord with its own work and with the great office which the bridge
as a whole has to fulfil daily.
When the railway viaduct at Ludgate Hill was finished, there was
a public outcry because of its gaunt and shabby ugliness; but
Londoners were appeased as soon as some “decorative” metalwork
was nailed upon the parapets. This “ornament,” a trumpery
makeshift, was supposed to have given merit to an imbecile design
that disgraced the main road to St. Paul’s Cathedral. As things of this
sort are allowed to happen in the heart of our great city, who can
have confidence in civic authorities? What chance is there that new
projects for bridges will be considered intelligently?
In 1815, when Rennie began his bridge over the Thames at
Southwark, neither the Government nor the City of London
employed him; it was a Company that approved his designs, and
financed the undertaking. At an expense of £800,000, three bad
arches of cast-iron were put up from “elegant” stone piers and
abutments; yet London was charmed by “a great feat of
engineering,” partly because 5780 tons of ironwork had been
employed, and partly because the central arch had a span of 240 ft.
From 1819 to November 8, 1864, the Company was a toll gatherer
on their industrial bridge; then the toll was done away with, and the
Company received from the City an industrial compensation. Here is
a financial adventure which might have been undertaken to benefit a
small township which had in its neighbourhood some new ironworks
and collieries. Still more farcical was the public lottery that helped to
collect money for the building of the first Westminster Bridge,
between 1738 and 1750. Even now, after many lessons from past
follies, London has made more than one muddle over the project of
St. Paul’s Bridge. Not even the Tower Bridge, with all its blatant
defects, has enabled the City to be alert and clever as a pontist.
A more absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown
across a strategic river. What would be the use of those ornate
towers if the suspended roadway connecting them to the banksides
were cut by a shell or by a falling bomb? And what anachronism
could be sillier than that which has united the principle of metal
suspension to an architecture cribbed partly from the Middle Ages,
and partly from the French Renaissance? The many small windows,
the peaked roofing, the absurdly impudent little turrets, the biscuit-
like aspect of the meretricious masonry, the desperate effort to be
“artistic” at any cost: all this, you know, is at standing odds with the
contemporary parts of the unhistoric bridge, parts huge in scale, but
so commercial that there is not a vestige of military forethought
anywhere. It is mere perishable bulk.
 the tower bridge, london

FOOTNOTES:
[82] See the Statute of Winchester, a.d. 1285, and Statute 2,
Richard II, a.d. 1378; see also the Rolls of Parliament. Among the
most dangerous rogues were many lawless barons and their
retinues, against whom the Law protested vainly. In a.d. 1138 we
find them mentioned by the “Gesta Stephani,” and till late in the
fifteenth century the partisans of nobles were feared on the
roads. But for them the Wars of the Roses would have been less
horrible, and wayfaring life would have been less barbarously at
odds with those Christian virtues which were proclaimed
everywhere by great symbols of religion: manor churches, hopeful
cathedrals, vast monasteries, wayside chapels and shrines, and
quiet homes whispering with the prayers of gentle nuns. Brutal
strife among Christians had made the world into a new Garden of
Gethsemane over which the Spirit of Christ brooded and wept.
[83] There seems to be only one exception to this rule. I refer to
some Chinese bridges of the thirteenth century, mentioned by
Marco Polo in his account of the city Sin-din-fu, now called Ching-
tu-fu, situated on the western side of the province of Se-chuen, of
which it is the capital. Marco Polo says: “The city is watered by
many considerable streams, which, descending from the distant
mountains, surround and pass through it in a variety of directions.
Some of these rivers are half a mile in width, others are two
hundred paces, and very deep, over which are built several large
and handsome stone bridges, eight paces in breadth, their length
being greater or less according to the size of the stream. From
one extremity to the other there is a row of marble pillars on each
side, which support the roof; for here the bridges have very
handsome roofs, constructed of wood, ornamented with paintings
of a red colour, and covered with tiles. Throughout the whole
length also there are neat apartments and shops, where all sorts
of trades are carried on. One of the buildings, larger than the
rest, is occupied by the officers who collect the duties upon
provisions and merchandise, and a toll from persons who pass the
bridge. In this way, it is said, his Majesty receives daily the sum of
a hundred besants of gold.” According to the Latin editions of
Marco Polo, the booths or shops were set up in the morning and
removed from the bridge at night. If so, then the width of these
bridges, described by Marco as “eight paces,” must have been
more than twenty-four feet, since booths would have obstructed
such narrow footways. Marco Polo’s great editor, Colonel Yule,
interpreting the description of another bridge, proves that the
“paces” must be geometric.
[84] Degrand, in his “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” gives a reproduction
of Palladio’s drawing, which represents an imperial scheme, far
and away better than Antonio da Ponte’s.
[85] The Bridge of Ali Verdi Khan.
[86] Lord Curzon’s book on Persia.
[87] British Museum, the MS. 16 F. ii, Fol. 73. The little picture is
drawn from nature; a bad reproduction of it appears in M.
Jusserand’s good book on “English Wayfaring Life in the Middle
Ages.”
[88] J. J. Jusserand, p. 49. See also in Stow.
[89] This was finished in 1014; in 1136 it was burnt down, and in
1176 Colechurch started upon his brave enterprise.
[90] Viollet-le-Duc writes as follows (vol. 6, p. 410): “Dans les
villes, on profitait souvent des arches de pont pour établir des
moulins, et même alors les ponts et moulins, bâtis en bois, ne
formaient qu’une seule et même construction. Avant 1835, il
existait encore à Meaux, en Brie, un pont de ce genre
entièrement en bois ainsi que les moulins y attenant; cet
ensemble datait de la fin du xvᵉ siècle....”
[91] Alas! The Great War has done much harm to the Pont du
Marché at Meaux. To-day (September 26, 1914) I saw a
photograph of its crippled condition. One arch at least is ruined,
and mended roughly with timbering.
[92] See “The Builder,” November 22, 1890.
[93] There has been much disputation over the origin of St.
Mary’s Chapel, and I refer you to the following books: 1.
“Remarks on Wayside Chapels,” by two architects, J. C. and C.
Buckler, 8vo, Oxford, 1843. This book was approved by Parker, an
excellent recommendation. 2. “A Dissertation on Ancient Bridges
and Bridge Chapels,” by Norrison Scatcherd, 1828. 3. “The Chapel
of King Edward III on Wakefield Bridge,” by Norrison Scatcherd,
1843. In the earlier treatise the chapel is attributed to the reign of
Edward IV. Scatcherd belongs to an old school of polemical
swashbucklers, but what he says is worth attention, though
difficult to follow. 4. “The Histories of York.”
[94] Camden’s “Britannia,” Ed. Gough, Vol. III, London, 1789, pp.
38-9.
[95] St. Mary’s Chapel was illustrated by Toms, after George
Fleming, 1743; by Lodge, in Thoresby’s “Ducatus”; by Cawthorne,
about 1800; and by “The Builder,” November 22, 1890.
[96] “Bath Old Bridge and the Chapel Thereon,” by Emanuel
Green, f.s.a., f.r.s.l., p. 143, British Archæological Association.
[97] “The Builder,” August 20, 1887.
[98] These dates I take from the catalogue of historic monuments
issued by the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-
Arts. Some writers give the dates as 1178 and 1188.
[99] According to Degrand; some other writers say nineteen. The
largest spans were a little more than thirty-three metres; but even
in these the size varied somewhat.
[100] See Allen’s “History of the County of York,” 1832. P.
Atkinson was the architect of the new bridge, and his work went
on till March, 1810. As for the old Ouse Bridge, good views of it
will be found in the “Antiquarian Itinerary,” Vol. I, 1815; the
“Antiquarian Cabinet,” Vol. III, 1817; and the “Encyclopædia
Britannica,” ninth edition. Let us take a glance at one of the
pictures. On the west end of the bridge is a tall building carried by
two pointed arches and crowned with a small steeple. It is the
great Council Chamber, with a prison for felons beneath it,
according to the “Antiquarian Cabinet.” We cross the river and find
at the other side the gaol which was rebuilt in 1724. Two small
arches on this side of the bridge balance those that arcade the
Council Chamber, and in the middle is a graceful pointed arch with
a span of 81 feet. The spandrils are relieved by a well-marked
string-course, the parapets are fringed with railings and graced in
the centre with two finials, which displace the mediæval cross.
[101] See Mr. Kershaw’s article, “The Builder,” April 29, 1882, p.
531.
[102] In Vol. X of the “Archæologia Cantiana” an inventory is
given of the possessions of the chapel in the year 1549.
[103] The photograph belongs to the London Missionary Society.
The bridge itself has points of interest quite apart from the idol.
There is a single arch of a horseshoe form with long and narrow
archstones. The shelving parapets are decorated with small knobs
of stone, and they do not rise to a gable point, like those in the
Spanish variety of gabled bridge; there is a flat space at the
summit, and below the middle of it the small idol is placed.
[104] From information sent to me by the Rev. O. M. Jackson,
who for more than twenty years has worked as a missionary in
Western China.
[105] Take the dates of a few important bridges in Lancashire.
Time of King John, Lancaster Bridge; 1225, Preston; 1305,
Warrington; 1365, Salford; 1372, Stockport; and 1490, Garstang
Bridge. The first Lancashire bridges were but narrow structures
for foot and horse. Some had very high single arches, and those
with from four to six spans were steep and lofty; they seemed to
fly away from spates.
[106] On the other hand, there is a good social picture, showing
that workmen in those days fed very well, though they could not
afford to subscribe to the building of a bridge:—
Wives went out to wite [know] how they wrought;
Five score in a flock, it was a fayre syght.
In broad clothes bright white bread they brought,
Cheese and chickens clerelych a dyght [prepared].
[107] Cofferdams are embankments which surround the site so as
to exclude water from it. “They are formed in general by driving
two rows of piles round the site so as to enclose between them a
watertight wall of clay puddle; in depths of less than three or four
feet, where there is little current, a simple clay dam may be used.
In greater depths, the timber walls consist of guide piles at
intervals, with some form of sheet piling between them; in
extreme depths the timber walls may be composed of stout piles
driven in side by side all round. The dam must be sufficiently
strong to bear the pressure of the water against the outside when
the space enclosed has been pumped dry.... The ‘Cours de Ponts,’
at the School of the Ponts et Chaussées, states that a cofferdam
need never be made of greater thickness than from four to six
feet, as the interior can always be sufficiently stayed inside. This
method of founding is now seldom practised; it is costly and
causes great obstruction in the stream.”—Professor Fleeming
Jenkin.
[108] A metre = 1·093633 yards, or 39·37079 inches; a
centimetre = 0·39371 inch.
[109] Professor Fleeming Jenkin, Ninth Edition of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica.”
[110] The centre arch has a span of 152 ft., and rises 29 ft. 6 in.
above Trinity highwater mark; the arches on each side of the
centre have a span of 140 ft., and the abutment arches 130 ft.
Total length, 1005 ft.; width from outside to outside, 56 ft.; height
above low water, 60 ft. Centre piers, 24 ft. thick. Materials: the
exterior stones are granite, the interior, half Bramley Fall and half
from Painshaw, Derbyshire.
[111] For example, King John’s Bridge at Tewkesbury; Barden
Bridge and Burnsall Bridge in Wharfedale; the Old Dee Bridge at
Chester; Huntingdon, Bridgenorth, Baslow, Froggall, Brecon, and
Llangollen. There are many others.
[112] This valuable reference was brought to my notice by Mr. H.
T. Crofton, an able pontist, who sent me his notes on bridges,
asking me to cull from them whatever information my own
research had missed. A hobby is the only altruism.
[113] Springing. The plane of demarcation between the ring and
the abutment is called the “springing” of an arch. A “ring” is the
compressed arc of materials known as archstones or voussoirs;
and the “springing” marks the place where a ring starts out on its
upward curve from a pier or from an abutment.
[114] The haunches of an arch are those parts that lie midway
between the springing and the crown: the crown being the
summit of a ring.
[115] “The Builder,” November 19, 1892, p. 394.
[116] “The Builder,” November 19, 1892, p. 394.
[117] If Cæsar’s bones were found they would be sold at
Christie’s to a tradesman millionaire.
[118] Lord Curzon’s “Persia and the Persian Question,” 1892, Vol.
II, pp. 45-6.
[119] According to some writers, the earliest known arches of
handicraft—pointed, and round, and even elliptical—are
Babylonian, but I do not care to be so dogmatic. Dates very often
are as elusive as dreams. But the influence of Babylon was,
doubtless, very great on the traditions of the building arts;
perhaps we find it even in the elliptic vault of Chosroes’ great hall
at Selucia-Ctesiphon. This vault, dating from the sixth century
a.d., was a forerunner of St. Bénézet’s elliptic arch (p. 81).

[120] Brangwyn has drawn for the édition de luxe the bridge at
Ronda, which dates from 1761. Its architect, José Martin
Aldeguela, was even more unfortunate than were Peter
Colechurch and the good Saint Bénézet; these masters died
before their work was complete, while poor Aldeguela fell from his
bridge and was dashed to pieces. Two other bridges, one Moorish