TREES AND LANES 



51 



see, and I am happy in having within easy driving 

 reach six good old bridges, built of the rough sand- 

 stone quarried in the neighbouring hilly ground, span- 

 ning the same small river at different points. I amuse 

 myself by conjecturing how the arches were built, 

 because their ragged outline points to some ruder 

 method of support than the usual wooden " centering " 

 of modern work. I suppose that there was some 

 rough construction of tree trunks and faggoting and 

 earth put up to build upon, just as the vaulted rooms 

 are built to this day in Southern Italy, where wood is 

 not to be had, by building up faggots of brushwood 

 and earth into the form of a filling of vault or dome 

 or waggon head. The wooden railing and way of 

 supporting the posts is the old way of the country, 

 though doubtless the original railing was of oak roughly 

 split, not sawn. In some cases a wall about two feet 

 high is carried up, but this takes away some of the 

 space of the none-too-wide roadway ; in one case, I 

 regret to say, in place of the older parapet of wood or 

 stone, the fine old bridge has been hopelessly disfigured 

 by a cast-iron railing, painted white. 



It is interesting to see that by the side of each one 

 of these old bridges there is the plain evidence of a 

 still older ford ; where the river had been widened and 

 shallowed, and where the water, there only a few inches 

 deep, still flows over the artificial stony bed, and the 

 hollow track of the old road still shows, through some 

 centuries' overgi'owth of grass and weed. 



