To the Scotch, on the other hand, many a fine old brig is a Burns of the highways; and this sentiment for history and for sylvan poetry has kept from the cruel hands of industrialism some very attractive single-arched bridges, and some long bridges also, notably the rhythmical Brig of Stirling, which Brangwyn has chosen as an example of quiet good taste in mediæval civic architecture. The Brig of Stirling is a Scotch citizen of the dour old school, but warmed with an undercurrent of that kindly emotion which even the canniest Scot is glad to show off when he is away from business. I am inclined to think that not even a militant suffragette would have folly enough to attack the Scotch brigs; she would be fascinated by their names, and this would keep her out of mischief. Such a name as the Brig o’ Doon is music combined with a racial vigour. No weak people would have invented it, and no dull people could have retained such a poetic name. [Illustration: THE OLD WAR-BRIDGE OF STIRLING] The Irish also are fond of bridges, like the true unspoiled Welsh. As late as a century ago Irish peasants were pious in their attitude to any bridge that crossed a dangerous river; they saluted it reverently because of its friendliness to poor wayfarers, and because good thoughts come from simple hearts. As for the Welsh, thanks partly to their Celtic blood and partly to the waywardness of their rivers, they have been known as pontists for a very long time. In the romantic hills their bridges seem to belong to Nature herself, so lovingly have they been united to the spirit of ancestral landscapes; whereas the industrial parts of Wales make the bridges of trade into vile objects, as if beauty has no right to a home where money is earned out of coal mines, and ironworks, and the debilitating factory system. Far too often the industrial bridge everywhere is like an ill-used highway uniting the purgatory of a seared district to some hell or other invented by poets or by priests. There are many such bridges in the Staffordshire Black Country, and in the scarred Potteries, where an ebon meanness lives with jerry-builders, and where puny drab children take from the present generation the youth that endures. What would a Dante think in the stricken fields of industrialism? And why is it that only a person here and there, after compelling himself to leave the atmosphere of custom, sees our industrial war clearly, and views it in its relation to the body social?