a fig for ancient Greece if all her mute historians had perished with her incompetent social order? The Middle Ages exist for us, not in records of their freebooting social aims, but in the work done by a few men of genius and their pupils and assistants. More than one mediæval century is represented by a few churches, a few castles, a few bridges, a few books, a damaged house here and there, and some weapons, tools, and furniture. All else in the story of its life is tragic and sinister, a wild pilgrimage whose shrines are battlefields and whose ranks are visited periodically by the plague. Again, what are we as pontists to say about the fallen master of many Christian periods, the Roman genius, whose architecture and road-making were copied? The Roman baths were not copied, of course, for a clean body was not regarded as sacred in a Christian way; but the Roman bridges, roads, aqueducts, were favourite models for imitation. Many a ruler, from Charlemagne to the Moorish zealots in Spain, not only valued their service, but restored them carefully. Mediæval architects invented very little in bridge-building; their first work tried to recover the lost Roman art; and then, little by little, they added some ideas to their acquired knowledge. Here and there they equalled the Romans, as in the great bridges at Montauban and Cahors, which Brangwyn has painted with a vigorous enjoyment; but in most of their efforts the design was either too rustic or too lubberly, so ponderous was the technical inspiration. Far too often their ideal of strength was a mere man-at-arms, brave but underbred. Rivers were obstructed by immense piers, for instance, by which spates were turned into dangerous inundations; and footways along bridges were so narrow that safety recesses for pedestrians had to be built out from the parapets into the piers. Even in exceptions to this rule of ungainliness, as in much Spanish workmanship, architects were overapt to make the use of bridges a tiring penance that wayfarers could not avoid. Thus the bridge over the Sella at Cángas de Onis has a lofty footway shaped like a gable; to-day it is little used, for the climbing exercise that it offers to everybody is put out of vogue by a modern bridge, its neighbour and rival. In brief, many gabled bridges in Spain[6] were made narrow enough to be useless to wheeled traffic and friendly to pack mules; friendly in a mediæval manner, for a seasoning of peril was added to their inconvenience. Most of them are without parapets; and when their rivers flood into roaring spates, and across their giddy pathways a gale sweeps eagerly, an Alpinist can enjoy a mad crossing, after dark, between dinner and bedtime.