“My first impression of the Pont du Gard was one of simple fear. ‘It was so high that it was dreadful,’ as Ezekiel says. Then I said, again and again, ‘A great people and a strong. There hath been none like before them, nor shall be again for many generations.’ As, after fifteen miles of the sea of mulberry, olive, and vine, dreary from its very artificial perfection, we turned the corner of the limestone glen, and over the deep blue rock-pool, saw _that thing_ hanging between earth and heaven, the blue sky and green woods showing through its bright yellow arches, and all to carry a cubic yard of water to Nismes, twenty miles off, for public baths and sham sea-fights (_naumachiæ_) in the amphitheatre, which even Charlemagne, when he burnt the Moors out of it, could not destroy!--Then I felt the brute greatness of that Roman people; and an awe fell upon me as it may have fallen on poor Croc, the Rook, king of the Alemans--but that is a long story--when he came down and tried to destroy this city of the seven hills, and ended in being shown about in an iron cage as _The Rook_. But I doubt not when he and his wild Alemans came down to the Pont du Gard they said it was the work of dwarfs--of the devil? We walked up to the top, through groves of _Ilex_, _Smilax_, and _Coronella_ (the first time I have seen it growing), and then we walked across on the top. The masonry is wonderful, and instead of employing the mountain limestone of the hills, they have brought the most splendid Bath oolite[65] from the hills opposite. There are the marks cut by the old fellows--horse-hoofs, hatchets, initials, etc., as fresh as paint. The Emperor (1864) has had it all repaired from the same quarries, stone for stone. Now, after 1600 years, they are going to bring the same water into Nismes by it. When we crossed, I was in a new world. _Genista anglica_, the prickly needle furze of our commons (rare with us), is in great golden bushes; and box, shrubby thyme, a wonderful blue lily, bee-orchis and asters, white, yellow, purple (which won’t dry, for the leaves fall off). Then wild rosemary, and twenty more plants I never saw. We went below into a natural park of ilex and poplar (two or three sorts), and watched such butterflies and the bridge, till C---- said, ‘This is too perfect to last,’ which frightened me and made me pray. And there was reason--for such a day I never had in my life of beauty and wonder ... and yet there is one thing more glorious and precious than the whole material universe--and that is a woman’s love....” [Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD FROM ABOVE THE FIRST TIER; SHOWING BELOW THE MODERN BRIDGE FOR GENERAL TRAFFIC OVER THE GARDON]