he bridge
again, and thence to the shores of the London river; and surely there was
enough to astonish me. For though there was a bridge across the stream
and houses on its banks, how all was changed from last night! The soap-
works with their smoke-vomiting chimneys were gone; the engineer's works
gone; the lead-works gone; and no sound of rivetting and hammering came
down the west wind from Thorneycroft's. Then the bridge! I had perhaps
dreamed of such a bridge, but never seen such an one out of an
illuminated manuscript; for not even the Ponte Vecchio at Florence came
anywhere near it. It was of stone arches, splendidly solid, and as
graceful as they were strong; high enough also to let ordinary river
traffic through easily. Over the parapet showed quaint and fanciful
little buildings, which I supposed to be booths or shops, beset with
painted and gilded vanes and spirelets. The stone was a little
weathered, but showed no marks of the grimy sootiness which I was used to
on every London building more than a year old. In short, to me a wonder
of a bridge.

The sculler noted my eager astonished look, and said, as if in answer to
my thoughts--

"Yes, it _is_ a pretty bridge, isn't it? Even the up-stream bridges,
which are so much smaller, are scarcely daintier, and the down-stream
ones are scarcely more dignified and stately."

I found myself saying, almost against my will, "How old is it?"

"Oh, not very old," he said; "it was built or at least opened, in 2003.
There used to be a rather plain timber bridge before then."

The date shut my mouth as if a key had been turned in a padlock fixed to
my lips; for I saw that something inexplicable had happened, and that if
I said much, I should be mixed up in a game of cross questions and
crooked answers. So I tried to look unconcerned, and to glance in a
matter-of-course way at the banks of the river, though this is what I saw
up to the bridge and a little beyond; say as far as the site of the soap-
works. Both shores had a line of very pretty houses, low and not large,
standing back a little way from the river; they were mostly built of red
brick and roofed with tiles, and looked, above all, comfortable, and as
if they were, so to say, alive, and sympathetic with the life of the
dwellers in them. There was a continuous garden in front of them, going
down to the water's edge, in which the flowers were now blooming
luxuriantly, and sending delicious waves of sum