As for the bridge, it was repaired, and repaired very well. Twenty years ago it was in use, a shaggy and venerable structure, not yet crippled by old age. Then certain highwaymen, popularly known as road officials, visited Old Shoreham, and there they tried to prove that a bridge admired by landscape painters was unfit for a commercial time. The poor bridge! At this moment it has no charm at all; not only is it dull, it is neat in a shabby way--a discord in good surroundings, like bankruptcy at a wedding breakfast. So we pass from Hamo de Morston to our own roadway officials, and find ourselves in the presence of a public bridge injured by public servants. To Hamo we can give a little sympathy, he fought for his creed of self and paid costs, whereas highway boards have never been fined for spoiling old bridges. Perhaps they do not hate venerable architecture, but they belong to a system of public service that is ill-equipped for its work, receiving neither criticism from the newspaper press nor supervision from county committees of independent architects. That the State has been wronged by these public servants is known to all artists and antiquarians; also the fact is advertised by the great many hideous railway bridges that demean towns and blemish the country. In this matter, as in others, the State must defend her own just rights, so as to get by compulsion what a free egotism has declined to give--efficiency and good taste. It is possible that England has not suffered a great deal more than the Continent; for even in France, despite the excellent administration of the _Ponts et Chaussées_, crimes against noble bridges have been committed, as when the second ancient bridge at Cahors was lost in a storm of local party politics. But England happens to be poor in great old bridges, whereas the Continent is rich; we cannot afford to lose even the modest little ballads of arched stone which have resisted floods for many generations, while working as necessary drudges in the making of England. Trivial they are when compared with the bridges of Isfahan or with many of those in France and Spain, but yet they are hallowed by time, and they mimic the gentle rusticity of English landscapes. It is a crime to spoil them, because modern bridges for heavy traffic can be built at a lesser cost near by the little mute historians.