1829.] The Bridges of London. 39 



his natural invention would lead him to apply a stone, if of sufficient 

 length, to answer his purpose ; but if not, a piece of wood, or trunk of a 

 tree, would be employed in the same way, to render the passage more 

 easy to himself. 



History does not furnish us with any materials wherewith to form a 

 connected account of the progress of these rude attempts, till they 

 attained the perfection of the modern bridge. But the great fundamental 

 principle of bridge building certainly originates in the invention of the 

 arch, and of the origin of this main principle in architecture there is 

 great uncertainty. 



Those who have written of architecture as they would of poetry, have 

 deduced the first origin of the arch from the " beautiful and superb 

 dome of the heavens," and have wondered that the " variegated arch 

 that at times made its appearance," had not been mucli earlier adopted 

 as an object of imitation. Others, the ingenuity of whose minds have 

 equalled the sublimity of these poetical writers, have traced the origin 

 of bridges to the ingenious labours of the spider. But though we ac- 

 knowledge the ingenuity, or rather instinct, with which insects, birds, and 

 quadrupeds discover admirable instances of art suitable to their nature 

 and use, fitted for their situations, we cannot think that these have formed 

 models, excepting in very few instances, for the rational part of the 

 creation. The origin of the arch is very uncertain. The eastern 

 nations, among their many monuments of grandeur and of art, have left 

 us scarcely a specimen of it ; yet we question whether those excavations 

 which still excite our wonder, and which gave the form of the arch 

 without its principle, might not have first led to the discovery of its 

 utility and excellence. 



It is probable that the Chinese, whose interior history is yet in some 

 measure problematical, had arrived at a greater degree of perfection in 

 the arch at a much earlier period than the Greeks and Romans, who 

 have been our great masters and models in architectural construction. 

 We who boast of so much excellence in the construction of the arch, 

 have not outdone them, since we find that at a very early period they 

 constructed a bridge of one arch, from one mountain to another, of the 

 span of GOO feet. 



Our masters, however, in this art — and the first that we know and 

 acknowledge to have combined the parts of an arch scientifically 

 together — are the Greeks ; and since the days of Stewart and Revett's 

 industrious researches, we are willing to allow the Greeks to be our 

 masters, and to seek no higher antiquity for our models. 



We must not, however, permit the arches of antiquity to lead us from 

 our subject. The origin of the arch, or the honour of its invention, is 

 not the object of our present inquiry, but rather its application in the 

 construction of our London bridges. In the midst of the general 

 improvements which have taken place in our metropohs since the peace, 

 the passages over the Thames have not been neglected, and two bridges, 

 Waterloo and Southwark, have added to the convenience and the beauty 

 of our city, and now a new London Bridge is rapidly throwing its arches 

 across the broad stream, to the astonishment of tlie citizens, and the dread 

 of the inhabitants of Thames-street, and that part of Southwark more 

 immediately in the vicinity of the river. 



Our finest bridge, however — and, without vanity, perhaps the finest in 

 Europe — is Waterloo Bridge ; and sorry we are, that from the want of 



