Paul's is that of Wren; and our own Remington's bridge-enthusiasm
involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over the Guadalquivir
is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is
that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the Trent in
Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the
speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the
beautiful bridge over the River Wear in Durham County. There is a
segment of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's bridge
which spans our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the
kind which the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto, begun by the
Censor Fulvius and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius.
Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now
so valued as a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and
Ecclesiastical rule. In striking contrast with the reminiscences of
valor, hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious Papal
inscriptions which everywhere in the States of the Church, in elaborate
Latin, announce that this Pontiff built or that Pontiff repaired these
structures.
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