For a long time the old bridge at Bâle, over the Rhine, remarkable for its length and for its beautiful site, was not only freakish but exceedingly insolent. At one end, on the side of greater Bâle, was a tower decorated with a grotesque head called Laellenkoenig, which, in answer to the working of a clock, put out its tongue and rolled insulting eyes at the opposite bank. Eight or ten times an hour this abusive pantomime was repeated, and it never failed to anger little Bâle, which had the pugnacious vanity of a small organism. I do not know how many duels were fought, but at last a touch of Rabelaisian humour suggested a mechanical revenge, far more regular in its action than were fights and punctured bodies. A tall post was set up by the inhabitants of Bâle junior, and on the top of it stood a hateful statue that affected to turn its back on the enemy with a shameless movement. It is risky at the present time to say that a bridge has certain old characters: change is so rapid that no pontist can keep in touch with its vagaries; but I believe the old bridge at Bâle is alive, and that it keeps in use the Gothic tower, a triangular defence of red sandstone erected on the middle pier, and devoted now to a thermometer, a barometer, and a table of weights and measures. Laellenkoenig has gone, of course, and Bâle junior has grown much bigger and less techy. The Bridge of Sighs, at Venice, must be included among the exceptional bridges, being equally celebrated in history and in art. Who can say how many times she has been etched and painted and engraved? She is not very important as a work of architecture, yet artists are drawn towards her invariably, and seldom do they fail to make her impressive. Brangwyn loves the Bridge of Sighs, and does her much more than justice in one of his finest etchings. There is something trivial in her Renaissance ornament, and her proportions are not great, being only two metres wide and six high; on the other hand, her abutments are famous buildings, the ducal palace and the State prison. It is from the second storey of the palace that we enter the gloom of her covered passage, concerning which a Frenchman writes as follows: “_On pourrait presque le comparer, en agrandissant les proportions, à nos fourgons d’armée_.” It is said that only a prisoner here and there went over this bridge more than once--in his compulsory walk from a dungeon in the prison to the Council of the Ten. Those who awaited their trial in the dungeons were looked upon as already condemned; their appearance before the Ten was a formality, at least in public opinion; and for this reason the dark corridor across the canal was called the Bridge of Sighs.