It is one of those symbols of humanity which spring from and
are not grafted upon Nature; it proclaims her affinity with man, and
links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and his needs; it
seems to celebrate the stream over which it rises, and to wed the
wayward waters to the order and the mystery of life. There is no hint of
superfluity or impertinence in a bridge; it blends with the wildest and
the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, and is a feature of
both rural and metropolitan landscape that strikes the mind as
essential. The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky arches
which flood and fire have excavated or penned up in many picturesque
regions,--the segments of caverns, or the ribs of strata,--so that,
without the instinctive suggestion of the mind itself, Nature furnishes
complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor Science can improve.
Herein the most advanced and the most rude peoples own a common skill;
bridges, of some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries,
being the familiar invention of savage necessity and architectural
genius. The explorer finds them in Africa as well as the artist in Rome;
swung, like huge hammocks of ox-hide, over the rapid streams of South
America; spanning in fragile cane-platforms the gorges of the Andes;
crossing vast chasms of the Alleghanies with the slender iron viaduct of
the American railways; and jutting, a crumbling segment of the ancient
world, over the yellow Tiber: as familiar on the Chinese tea-caddy as on
Canaletto's canvas; as traditional a local feature of London as of
Florence; as significant of the onward march of civilization in Wales
to-day as in Liguria during the Middle Ages.
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