The Tay Bridge was a railway track to connect the town of Dundee and the North British Railway System in Fife; it crossed the Firth of Tay about a mile and a half to the West of Dundee. Its length exceeded two miles, and journalists with rapture bragged about it as the longest iron bridge in the world. Even the responsible engineers, Thomas Bouch and A. D. Stewart, did not keep their heads while their work was being done, for they published in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” a long article on their unfinished bridge--a fine example of modern vanity. Soon afterwards, on February 4th, 1877, the building work was badly injured by a gale, yet in a few months--on September 25th, in fact--the over-confident engineers had the bridge tested from end to end, and on the 31st of May, 1878, it was opened to train service. Thomas Bouch became Sir Thomas. No one suspected that a “scientific bridge” might be a trap for railway carriages. The structure was superlatively modern: huge, ugly, vulgar, meretricious, mechanical, and charmed also with a small cost of production, which included twenty human lives and £350,000. At this price, you will understand, the longest metal bridge in the world seemed very cheap and fascinating. Newspapers were overjoyed, of course, and declared that the Tay Bridge was admirably fitted for the rushing enterprise of a commercial time. Yet every part of it was ill with the cancer of cheapness, and in 1879 the disaster came, on a Sunday evening, three days after Christmas. At about seven o’clock a terrific gale struck the eighty-four spans of the bridge, making a gap of about three thousand feet: and a few minutes later a North British mail-train drew near. Into the gap carriage after carriage dived: about eighty passengers perished, down below in the raging waters. It was a lofty bridge, in some places 92 ft. above high tide, so the falling carriages turned more than one somersault before they plunged into the Firth of Tay. The Board of Trade held an enquiry and issued a report, affirming “that the bridge had been badly designed, badly constructed, and badly maintained.” True: but the verdict was without pity. Some excuse should have been made for the engineers’ modernity. The Tay Bridge was no worse than the popular spirit that liked screaming newspapers, and fevered excitements, and wild adventures in the quicksands of jerried workmanship. The Board of Trade published its report on the 3rd of July, 1880; and a few months later, on October 30th, Sir Thomas Bouch died of a broken heart. Perhaps the most humbling trial in his adversity was the foolish article written by his second in command, Mr. A. D. Stewart, who wanted to be quite contemporary with the flying minutes. The “Encyclopædia Britannica” deleted the article from its next edition, and printed ... some tame remarks on the disaster....