ure, which has
always seemed peculiarly poetical or strange to men. Hence so many
legends of devil's bridges, and it is rather amusing when we reflect how,
as Pontifex, he is thus identified with the head of the Church. Thus I
once, when attending law lectures in Heidelberg in 1847, heard Professor
Mittermaier say, that those who used the saying of "the divine right of
kings" as an argument reminded him of the peasants who assumed that every
old bridge was built by the devil. It is, however, simply the arch,
which in any form is always graceful, and the stream passing through it
like a living thing, which forms the artistic attraction or charm of such
structures. I have mentioned in my "Memoirs" that Ralph Waldo Emerson
was once impressed by a remark, the first time I met him, to the effect
that a vase in a room had the effect of a bridge in a landscape--at
least, he recalled it at once when I met him twenty years later.

The most distinguished bridge, from a legendary point of view, in Europe,
was that of Saint John Nepomuc in Prague--recently washed away owing to
stupid neglect; the government of the city probably not supporting, like
the king in the opera-bouffe of "Barbe Bleu," a commissioner of bridges.
The most picturesque work of the kind which I recall is that of the Ponte
Maddalena--also a devil's bridge--at the Bagni di Lucca. That Florence
is not wanting in legends for its bridges appears from the following:

THE SPIRIT OF THE PONTE VECCHIO OR OLD BRIDGE.

"He who passes after midnight on the Ponte Vecchio can always see a form
which acts as guard, sometimes looking like a beggar, sometimes like a
_guardia di sicurezza_, or one of the regular watchmen, and indeed
appearing in many varied forms, but generally as that of a watchman, and
always leaning on the bridge.

"And if the passer-by asks him any such questions as these: 'Chi
siei?'--'Cosa fai?'--'Dove abiti?'--'Ma vien' con me?' That is: 'Who are
you?'--'What dost thou do?'--'Where is your home?'--'Wilt with me
come?'--he seems unable to utter anything; but if you ask him, 'Who am
I?' it seems to delight him, and he bursts into a peal of laughter which
is marvellously loud and ringing, so that the people in the shops waking
up cry, 'There is the goblin of the Ponte Vecchio at his jests again!'
For he is a merry sprite, and then they go to sleep, feeling peaceably
assured that he will watch over them as of yore.

"And this he really