England boasts no monument of her modern victories so impressive as the
bridge named for the most memorable of them. The best view of Prague and
its people is from the long series of stone arches which span the
Moldau. The solitude and serenity of genius are rarely better realized
than by musing of Klopstock and Gessner, Lavator and Zimmermann, on the
Bridge of Rapperschwyl on the Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt and
wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we have the first view of
Mont Blanc. The Suspension Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as
great, in its degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract
which thunders forever at its side; while no triumph of inventive
economy could more aptly lead the imaginative stranger into the
picturesque beauties of Wales than the extraordinary tubular bridge
across the Menai Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long
causeway over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the bridge over the
Loire at Orleans are memorable in every traveller's retrospect.
But the economical and the artistic interest of bridges is often
surpassed by their historical suggestions; almost every vocation and
sentiment of humanity being intimately associated therewith.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247