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 archaeologist, who
seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race.
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