Returning to the river, we pass under new Westminster Bridge, but think rather of its predecessor, the work of Charles Labelye, a native of Switzerland, yet a naturalised British subject. This structure lasted from 1750, when it was completed, to 1853, when its destruction was commenced. Until the building of Labelye's bridge, there was actually no way over the Thames, within the metropolis, but at London Bridge; and the proposal to execute this most necessary work encountered violent opposition in the City. Old Westminster Bridge was a ponderous erection, in which, if we may accept the statement of the architect, twice as many cubic feet of stone were employed as in St. Paul's Cathedral. With its fifteen arches, diminishing in span from the centre, its lofty parapet and wide alcoves, it presented a rather handsome appearance, and many Londoners, not yet old, retain it in kindly memory. It was badly constructed, however, and several of the piers gave way in 1846. There was no alternative but to take the whole structure down; but it has an abiding place in literature, owing to the noble sonnet which Wordsworth composed there on the 3rd of September, 1803. Another literary association with the bridge is of a painful nature. When Crabbe the poet first came to London, in 1780, he was in such deep distress that, after appealing in vain to many persons of distinction, he delivered a letter at the door of Burke's house--a letter to which the great orator and statesman afterwards replied with the utmost kindness; but, pending the answer, Crabbe was in such a state of agitation that, as he told Lockhart in later days, he walked Westminster Bridge backwards and forwards until daylight. It was by such experiences as this that Crabbe acquired his realistic power of delineating the sufferings of the poor, with whom the fear of hunger or the workhouse is one of the permanent facts of life.