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The posthumous history of the tale of terror is a subject of itself. During the first period of its eclipse-after the historical romance of the Scott type had ousted it from public favour-it fell deep into obscurity and deeper into crude violence and sensationalism. But if the once despot of the boudoir became the servant of the chapbook maker in the slums of Seven Dials; if "The Children of the Abbey," "The Romance of the Pyrenees," "The Bravo of Bohemia " and the rest sank from the drawing-room floor to the sourest recesses of the basement-the spirit of melodrama and of terror (which is only in rousing guise the spirit of escape) persisted unsubdued and persists to this day. Mantalini, the individual, ended his career in a laundry-cellar turning a mangle for a virago; but Mantalini as symbol of male selfishness and of the power of handsome bounders over foolish women will never die. Thus at any stage between 1820 and 1927 may be found flourishing, in one form or another, the tradition that once was Regina Roche, that now is "Sapper" and Edgar Wallace. G. W. M. Reynolds, Wilkie Collins, Miss Braddon, Le Fanu, Ouida, Bram Stoker, Florence Warden, Guy Boothby, Richard Marsh-the list of terrormongers may be extended at discretion. Analyse any one of these sensation fictions, and you will find that it represents precisely that blend of recognisable probability and delicious threatening horror which characterized the romances of the true Gothistic period and gave to them supremacy over educated folk, who certainly knew better but preferred not to say so.

As for why earlier explorers have only penetrated a little way into this hinterland of Jane Austen, the reason is a simple one. The tracks have been obliterated by time; the very whereabouts of three at least of the seven shrines is only by rarest accident discoverable. There are probably no items in the lumber rooms of forgotten literature more difficult to trace than the minor novels of the late eighteenth century, and for their elusiveness there is good practical cause. During the last quarter of that century the reading of novels became for the first time a widespread fashionable amusement. At once responsible for and consequent on this new diversion was the first great development of the circulating library, which assumed a new and powerful influence among, as Regina Roche might say, "the leisured fair." The reading of novels was, of course, held in contempt by persons

of serious mind, and retained throughout the period something of the furtive allurement of a secret vice. Actual purchase of novels was for that reason greatly exceptional. A few country houses bought, bound up and kept the sheet-issues of the fictionfactories; but the bulk of novel-readers sent their confidential maids to Lane's, Lackington's, Hookhams or Day's to borrow thrills or languishment for their hours of déshabille. From this prevalence of shamefaced novel-borrowing it resulted that the library circulation represented to within a few copies the entire dissemination of an ordinary novel; that the volumes were read to pieces if they were popular, and quickly scrapped if they were not; and that, such fictions being regarded as at best a transient entertainment, it was to no one's interest or satisfaction to care for their survival.

Wherefore the very discovery of texts of most Gothic or sensibility novels is a task beyond the patience of the average student of literature. The Northanger Novels have remained mere names, waiting for some one with the obstinate perseverance to bestow on tracing in one form or another such coy ephemera. And even now, alas, one out of seven is unfound. Who will discover "The Orphan of the Rhine"?

MICHAEL SADLEIR

THE

LONDON BRIDGES

HE romance of bridge-building belongs to all time. It has a fascination more enduring, if one may not say higher, than other forms of architecture. For utility, even in the ages of faith, gave it as popular an appeal as the building of a shrine. They who toiled for their daily bread found comfort in the building which gave conquering generals access to their enemies. But still more, the sense of mystery and awe with which a “great water" was invested added to the marvel of spanning its width. Not without reason are words that mean just "water," Esk and Usk and Ouse and Avon in our language, the most enduring of any. The tribal boundary, the horizon of kingly sway, was "The Water," in which, in actual fact, names are most permanently written. Primitive races, knowing its power and its uncurbed violence, instinctively dread and worship a force beyond their understanding. Anyone who has lived on the banks of the Murray, the Limpopo, or the Hudson, must know the affectionate regard with which a great waterway is honoured by its traffickers, as they wait upon its moods. That feeling tends, in primitive minds, to become, even in the twentieth century, a sort of reverent worship. It issues in erection of a tutelary deity, or an avenging force, an incalculable person, spoken of tenderly as "She." The newcomer must listen to tales of her riotous floodings and killing droughts; must face the ridicule, which is his due, who rashly essays to bridle and tame a Titan. The mental attitude of those, whom Mr. Kipling shows us in "The Bridge-Builders," groaning to see Gunga bridged, has been only slowly outgrown.

And Thames valley of twenty centuries ago, with its vastly greater spread of oak-forest and flooded marsh, made early bridging adventurous. In some sense the more frequent fords lessened the necessity. There were many more of them, before the main channel had been slowly confined and deepened. Often enough they sufficed for the first marches of the legions. But bridges are only links in the chain of permanent ways, and the Roman road-builder could in no case have rested content without spanning Thames and Tyne. Neither was there any possible

choice at Southwark. Geography had settled the question. The site of the Tower is the first spot coming up stream where you have any considerable tract of dry land touching the water—a tract of good gravel, well supplied with water, not commanded by any neighbouring higher ground. The strategic eye, whether Roman or another, must have chosen such a spot for a "strongpoint." Here could be a ferry, but no ford, owing to the narrow neck and deep tide. But here, fortified piers could bar at once the progress of any fleet up stream, and link Kent with the tête du pont which became the Roman camp on the site of St. Paul's.

"No picture," it has been said, "with a bridge in it can wholly fail"; and possibly there is more in this than the bare charm to the eye; the mystery of arches which lose their base in sunken supporting piles, the gleam and swirl of unceasing flow beneath, the graceful lines of added superstructural growth. There may well be suggestion of the long-drawn toil and multiform danger, whereby through generations the separating obstacle has been vanquished, and larger fellowship achieved. Wellgrounded was the instinct which made Pontifex Maximus the chief title for Rome's high priest. There is no doubtful connection between bridging of material gulfs and spiritual linking of the known with the unknown. Assuredly he is the bridgemaker par excellence who can achieve that task; and " pontifical remains the term to denote the highest function of bridge-making between man and his Maker. Thus there is not only æsthetic delight in "a noble river spanned ": there is memory and religion; there is history and dear-won science of craftsmanship; there is joy in learning from early crude knowledge, how the material of the day could be shaped to suit the need, combining utility with beauty.

Pleasing is the conjecture that such a one as the Emperor Hadrian might have been the first to throw his bridge across Thames water. Bridges across the Tyne, Pons Aelii at Newcastle, and another at Hexham, which lasted till the eighteenth century, were his. In 1883 the head of a statue-Hadrian's-was dragged up from the river-bed. Doubtless it was one of many, of Consuls and Procurators and Cæsars, which had adorned the bridge; it may have commemorated a visit he had made. The earliest coins, quantities of them, which may have been toll-money, or thank-offerings to the deity, thrown into the stream, date from

the period of the Roman Wall, when Agricola was busy consolidating our island fortifications. The bare-headed Hadrian, first of his line to wear a beard, who marched on foot at the head of his legions from Tyne to Tigris, must have passed from Southwark, up Fish Street Hill and along Watling Street. But he may have crossed the Thames on a very temporary bridge of boats, such as Julius threw across the Rhine. Professor Lethaby thinks that A.D. 78 may be the date of the first bridge, but it is not till 600 years later, in Alfred's time, that we have any real information. In 1835, when the bed of the river had to be deepened, and the ancient wooden piles pulled up, mementoes of four centuries of Roman rule came to light. There were medals and coins and bronzes, medallions of Aurelius and Commodus and Faustina; tiles and Samian pottery, bracelets and ornaments; a treasure heap, which marked the old line of the bridge. Very intimate and eloquent are these precious relics, revealing the daily life and work of a people who, for as long a time as from now backwards to Elizabeth's reign, shaped our early destinies and left their abiding mark. If roads be their chief abiding contribution to our civilization, the beginnings of the bridge, with one end resting on "London Stone," cannot be forgotten.

Far too little, it may be feared, do Londoners, who pass now, on their lawful occasions, over or under this same water, bethink them of the centuries wherein London Bridge was The Bridge. It is so marked in the maps as late as 1640. There were fords and ferries, and a host of small boats, in which men could fare from bank to bank, with varying convenience. But down stream, past the Pool and Greenwich to Gravesend, there was no other bridge. Up stream, to Wallingford or Oxford, you must go before meeting another. Three generations of men who have grown up to daily use of Westminster and Waterloo, Southwark and Lambeth and Tower Bridges, to say nothing of tunnels and tubes, cannot readily appreciate what of disaster meant the old refrain: "London Bridge is Broken Down."

It was a recurring mischance through successive reigns, sometimes from assault or flood, more often from fire. But always it was the same humiliation and pang to the citizens-they might be but a poor 60,000 in all-who were dutifully proud of their protecting piers. The safety of their loved city was endangered;

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