houses, without noting one excellent piece of design in the railings which surround them, in which an original, characteristic, and successful treatment of metal has been attained, and which, as works of art, are really of more value than the houses they protect. [Illustration: POST AND RAILING, W. H. VANDERBILT’S HOUSE.] [Illustration]_THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AS A MONUMENT_ The total length of the bridge is 5989 feet, of which the central span between the towers is 1595 feet 6 inches, the “land spans” from the towers to the anchorages each 930 feet, the approach on the New York side 1562 feet 6 inches, and on the steeper Brooklyn side 971 feet. These dimensions do not make this the longest bridge in the world. But when it was built there was no single span which approached the central span over the East River; and though it has since been exceeded by two spans of the Forth Bridge, in Scotland (1710 feet each, sustained by cantilevers), it remains by far the largest example of a chain-bridge. It is half as long again as Roebling’s Cincinnati Bridge (1057 feet between towers), and nearly twice as long as the same engineer’s Niagara Bridge (821 feet). The span of the ill-fated bridge over the Ohio at Wheeling, which was built in 1848, and blown down in 1854, was 1010 feet. Noteworthy suspension-bridges in Europe are Telford’s, over the Menai Straits (589 feet), finished in 1825; Chaley’s bridge, at Fribourg (870 feet), finished in 1834; and Tierney Clark’s bridge over the Danube at Pesth (670 feet), finished in 1849. The longest spans bridged otherwise than by a roadway hung from cables are the central spans of Stephenson’s Britannia (box girder) Bridge (459 feet), of Eads’s St. Louis Bridge, of steel arches (520 feet), and of the beautiful Washington Bridge, of steel [Illustration: THE BRIDGE FROM THE BROOKLYN SIDE.] arches, at New York (510 feet). The largest span of an arch of masonry known to have been built in a bridge (251 feet) was in that built in the fourteenth century, and destroyed by Carmagnola in the fifteenth, which crossed the Adda at Trezzo. The largest now standing (220 feet) is an American work, the arch designed and built by General Meigs to carry the Washington Aqueduct over Cabin John Creek. The second is that of the Grosvenor Bridge at Chester (200 feet), and the third the central arch of London Bridge (152 feet).