And this life-tax claimed by rivers was not the only trouble. The keepers of a ford knew no pity, but got their toll in relentless ways, taking bread from the beggar’s wallet and “a hood or a girdel” from “the pore penyles.” Very often, too, great woods encircled riverside towns and manors, so that outlaws after dark could steal up close to the houses and the bridge; it was then that pilgrims welcomed with the greatest relief the cresset-lights that glimmered from some friendly building on the bridge--from a chapel, or a defensive gateway, or a small bickering windmill, or a good watermill buttressed against a pier and rising high above the parapet. And now we must pass in review six old species of bridge:-- 1. The Housed Bridge, such as we find in Brangwyn’s beautiful monochrome of the quaint bridge at Kreuznach, in Germany. [Illustration: OLD BRIDGE WITH HOUSES AT KREUZNACH, ON THE RIVER NAHE, IN PRUSSIA. AN OLD MILL BRIDGE, SEEMINGLY] 2. The Shrined Bridge, as in Brangwyn’s alert impression of the Gothic bridge at Elche, in Spain. 3. The Bridge of Mills, as represented in the very romantic sketch of the old and broken bridge at Millau, in Southern France, at the confluence of the Tarn with the Dourbie. Another example, much modernised, exists in France, at historic Meaux, about thirty-two miles from Paris. 4. The Chapelled Bridge, as at Wakefield, and Rotherham, and Pisa, and Avignon (see Frontispiece), and elsewhere. 5. The War-Bridge, which in Brangwyn’s art receives the most varied and vigorous recognition. Never before have they been studied so completely by an artist. 6. The Bridge of Shops, as at Venice in the Rialto. II We ought not to be surprised that mediæval bridges were connected in a self-evident manner with all the principal motive-powers of social life. They were excellent places where kings and nobles could show off their military ambition, and where the Church could be active in good work done for the safety of wayfaring. Shops on a bridge were valued because of the continuous traffic that brought trade to their doors; and a few private houses on a market bridge gratified a middleclass vanity, that took pride in paying the higher rents of a business thoroughfare. To live on Old London Bridge was a distinction; to be a tradesman on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or on a timber bridge in Paris, was to be prosperous, for no bridge of shops was wide enough to be unpopular among those who had money to spend. Can anyone explain why the feminine joy of going to market has ever been most adventurous in narrow streets, or in short streets of a medium width?[83]