Now in the case of bridges we have to identify primitive men with the terror inspired by storms and floods; a terror difficult for us to understand in our sheltered lives. Have you read Matthew Paris, who lived in the reign of Henry III? If not, go to him and study the tempests that he described, and see how villages were desolated by winds and inundations. Amid these disasters the ignorant would cling to ancient superstitions; fear would be pagan out of doors whatever faith might say in church; and I have no doubt at all that the many so-called Devil’s Bridges were as supernatural to the mediæval peasant as were witches. The Dutch of the Middle Ages were more advanced in domestic civilization than our own ancestors; and yet at heart they were cruel pagans, even as late as the seventeenth century, as Mr. Baring-Gould has shown. How very humble human nature ought to be! Let us pass on, then, to a convention that does not reek like a stricken field. One of the best historians in architecture, Viollet-le-Duc, found in the hills of Savoy a primeval bridge whose structure had been changed very little, if at all, since the days when its ancestors were described by Cæsar and used by the Gauls. It is a timber bridge, known in France as _un empilage_, a thing piled together rudely, and not constructed with art. Indeed, it needs no carpentry, so it is far behind the social genius of prehistoric lake-dwellers. To make a simple Gaulish bridge, as to-day in Savoy, we must choose a deep-lying river with rugged banks; then with water-worn boulders we make on each bank a rough foundation about fifteen feet square, or more. Upon this we raise a criss-cross of tree trunks, taking care that the horizontal trees jut out farther and farther across the water, narrowing the gap to be bridged by four or five pines. Each criss-cross must be “stiffened” or filled in with pebbles and bits of rock; and across the unfinished road of pines thick boards are nailed firmly. Viollet-le-Duc says:-- “Cette construction primitive ... rappelle singulièrement ces ouvrages Gaulois dont parle César, et qui se composaient de troncs d’arbres posés à l’angle droit par rangées, entre lesquelles on bloquait des quartiers de roches. Ce procédé, qui nest qu’un empilage, doit remonter à la plus haute antiquité; nous le signalons ici pour faire connaître comment certaines traditions se perpétuent à travers les siècles, malgré les perfectionnements apportés par la civilisation, et combien elles doivent toujours fixer l’attention de l’archéologue.” Does anyone suppose that Savoy would have been loyal to a prehistoric bridge if all primitiveness had vanished from her social life?