Is there any reason why England should not have a great bridge of shops, or of watermills, or of houses? Let Brangwyn and Mr. Lutyens collaborate, and then we shall have a masterpiece indeed! Here and there we have a small bridge with a watermill close at hand; there is one in Sussex between Midhurst and Easebourne, for example, but I know not one that warms my patriotism with a glow of pride. Viollet-le-Duc draws three charming pictures of French mill bridges which have disappeared. There was the Pont aux Meuniers at Paris, that crossed the great arm of the Seine below the Pont au Change, facing the Palais; it resembled the Millers’ Bridge at Meaux. A great stone bridge at Châlon-sur-Saône was decorated with round towers above the piers, and between these towers, on the right of every arch, a little mill was busy. This mediæval arrangement, so rich with a quaint citizenship, lasted till the seventeenth century. Over the Loire at Nantes was another picturesque bridge that united in itself the merits of many good burgesses. Impudent houses with peaked roofs were balanced on the piers and throve well as shops; a footway of wood was corbelled out from the parapet; and between some of the piers windmills behaved like human creatures, for the harder they toiled over the business of daily bread, the more loudly they complained. Their noise implied that corn was very hard to crush; and the reluctant movement of their revolving wind-sails was an image of self-pity. [Illustration: THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE AT VENICE, OVER THE CANAL OF ST. GIOBBE. BRICK AND STONE. RENAISSANCE] As mediæval towns of importance were encompassed by walls and defended by castles, there was little free space; hence the building of a new bridge was always a great event; it enlarged the civic life and prepared a foundation for a new street or for a fresh line of defensive works. Thus the Bridge of Saintes was a long line of fortifications (p. 300), while the bridges of Paris were housed and populous, unlike many a village where poor Jacques, in the midst of unceasing war, lived the life of a hunted wolf. Unfortunately, the tenants of Paris bridges wanted to thrive at their landlords’ expense, and at last they ruined the landlords, who were bridges, not men, I am sorry to say. The great corbels that supported the houses pressed too heavily on the spandrils; caves and hiding-places were dug into the piers; and when the houses were removed from the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont Saint-Michel, it was found that every tenant had misused his home, even to the extent of excavating secret chambers behind the haunches of an arch. For human nature has ever claimed the privilege of doing justice to itself in actions of foolish violence.