From the garden of the Rocher des Doms, which rises abruptly to a height of three hundred feet above the river and looks across the island of Barthelasse to the town of Villeneuve, there stretches far into the distance a landscape which excites the imagination of the romantic poet, delights the eye of the artist, and even moves the prosaic to express themselves in superlatives. The old bridge of St. Benezet, or, to be more exact, the three arches that remain of it, is a distinguished relic of [Illustration: PONT S^{T} BENEZET AVIGNON.] the twelfth-century Avignon. It ends abruptly about two-thirds of the distance across the left branch of the river, which at this point is divided by the low-lying island of Barthelasse. Grey in colour, desolate, for traffic has long ceased to clank and rattle over its narrow causeway, this “fragment” gives a very good idea of what the ancient bridge must have been when it extended completely over the two channels of the river, and the island that divides them, right up to the foot of the menacing square tower of Philip the Fair that guards the opposite bank. The silent flowing river with unruffled surface breaks into sound as it rushes past these remaining piers. The gurgling swish of the hurrying waters and the sparkling little ripples occasioned by the resistance of the solid masonry, are the only breaks in the calm monotonous silence with which the river makes its way down the great flat valley to the sea. The ancient bridge is deserted, “all the world” no longer dances, if ever it did attempt such a feat, upon the parapetless ten-foot way; and the ancient rhyme-- “Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse, danse, Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse en rond,” would to-day be more applicable to the little white ripples that dance and sparkle in the sunlight as they burst forth from under the venerable archways. Fifteen other arches continued the bridge in days gone by, but the townsfolk got tired at last of continually making good the damage unceasingly inflicted by their enemies upon this highway, and since the latter part of the eighteenth century it has remained the fragment that one sees to-day. [Illustration: PONT S^{T} BENEZET AVIGNON.]