The river is crossed by many fine bridges; among them are London, Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Hungerford, Westminster, Vauxhall, and Chelsea, besides two or three large ones for the railroads. London and Waterloo bridges are of stone, and are respectively 928 feet and 1,242 feet long, and 53 feet and 42 feet wide. The first has five arches, and the other nine. Built in 1831 and 1817, they cost $10,000,000 and $5,750,000, respectively. Southwark, Blackfriars, Westminster, and Vauxhall are iron bridges. Hungerford is a suspension bridge, and Chelsea is wooden. Blackfriars and Westminster are elegant structures, somewhat recently built. Steamers in great numbers ply between London and Westminster bridges, and to Chelsea and points beyond. So frequent are these in their passages up and down the river, that the passenger makes no especial calculation as regards time, but goes to the nearest floating-station, and need not wait long for a conveyance. This is a comfortable method of travel, of which hundreds of thousands daily avail themselves. It has been aptly called the Silent Highway, for, in spite of the traffic on the shores, there is a peculiar quiet on the river. We can hardly think of a subject we should be more pleased to write about, and there are few by which our readers would be more entertained, than these old bridges in London. Only one of them can have attention, and that shall be London Bridge, more especially the old one. A London Bridge is mentioned in a charter of William the Conqueror, granted to the monks of Westminster Abbey in 1067; but the earliest historical account of any is that made by the old chroniclers of its destruction, Nov. 16, 1091, "on which day a furious southeast wind threw down six hundred private houses in the city, besides several churches; and the tide in the river came rushing up with a violence that swept the bridge entirely away." Next, in 1097, we learn from a Saxon chronicle, the credit of rebuilding it is given to King Rufus. It was of wood, and destroyed in 1136, by a fire which "laid the city in waste from St. Paul's to Aldgate." The historian Stow speaks of it as having been wholly rebuilt in 1163 by Peter Colechurch, priest and chaplain.