Part 2

But it will now be interesting to inquire how far we can trace back the antiquity of suspension bridges in more civilized countries--on the Continent, in the British Isles, and in the United States of America. Scamozzi speaks of suspension bridges existing in Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it is very questionable if he employed that term to designate the same structure to which it is now applied; and this is rendered the more improbable, as no such bridges are now in existence, and other writers are totally silent upon the subject. It does not appear, then, that suspension bridges of other than recent erection have existed on the Continent, and in England the oldest of which we have any account has not been constructed more than a century. The first suspension bridge in the United States was erected in the year 1796. In England the oldest bridge of the kind is believed to have been the Winch Chain Bridge, suspended over the Tees, and thus forming a communication between the counties of Durham and York. Mr Stevenson (Edinburgh Philosophical Journal) expresses his regret at not having been able to learn the precise date of the erection of this bridge; from good authority, however, he concludes it to be about the year 1741. It may also be mentioned here, that at Carric-a-rede, near Ballintoy, in Ireland, there is a rope bridge, which in 1800 was reported to have been in use longer than the present generation could remember.

In the years 1816 and 1817, some _wire_ suspension bridges were executed in Scotland, and, though not of great extent, are the first example of this species of bridge architecture in Great Britain. As, however, full descriptions of these bridges are to be met with elsewhere, it will not be necessary to notice them further.

In 1818, Mr Telford was consulted by government as to the practicability of erecting a suspension bridge over the Menai Strait, and was commissioned to prepare a design, if upon an examination of the localities he found the project feasible. Having accordingly surveyed the spot, he was led to propose the construction of a suspension bridge near Bangor Ferry, and in 1819 an act was obtained, authorising the erection of the bridge, a sum of money having been previously voted by Parliament for that purpose. This structure, which will always be regarded as a monument of the engineering abilities of Telford, was commenced in August 1819, and opened to the public on the 30th January 1826, having occupied six and a half years in its erection. The Union Bridge across the Tweed was designed and executed by Captain Brown, and was the first bar chain bridge of considerable size that was completed in this country. It was commenced in August 1819, and finished in the month of July 1820. After the completion of the Menai Bridge, bridges on the suspension principle began to be universally adopted throughout Europe; but it was not till _iron wires_ had been proved to be more _firm_ than bars _of a greater thickness_ that these bridges received their most extensive applications. Since 1821, Messrs Sequin have constructed more than fifty wire bridges in France with the most complete success. The wire suspension bridge at Freyburg, in Switzerland, the largest in the world, was erected by Mons. Challey, and depends across the valley of the Sarine. It was commenced in 1831, and thrown open to the public in 1834. A suspension bridge has also been erected at Montrose, the size of which is scarcely inferior to that of the Menai Bridge. At Clifton a very large suspension bridge is now in progress of erection by Mr Brunel, and a suspension bridge of 1600 feet in length is about to be erected over the Danube, between Pest and Offen, the design for which is the production of Mr W. Tierney Clark, and under whose able superintendence its construction will be effected.--_Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal._

REMONSTRANCE WITH THE SNAILS.

Ye little Snails, With slippery tails, Who noiselessly travel Along this gravel, By a silvery path of slime unsightly, I learn that you visit my pea-rows nightly. Felonious your visit, I guess! And I give you this warning, That, every morning, I’ll strictly examine the pods; And if one I hit on, With slaver or spit on, Your next meal will be with the gods.

I own you’re a very ancient race, And Greece and Babylon were amid; You have tenanted many a royal dome, And dwelt in the oldest pyramid; The source of the Nile!--Oh! you have been there! In the ark was your floodless bed; On the moonless night of Marathon You crawl’d o’er the mighty dead; But still, though I reverence your ancestries, I don’t see why you should nibble my peas.

The meadows are yours--the hedge-row and brook, You may bathe in their dews at morn; By the aged sea you may sound your _shells_, On the mountain erect your _horn_; The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers, Then why--in the name of wonder-- Should my six pea-rows be the only cause To excite your midnight plunder?

I have never disturbed your slender shells, You have hung round my aged walk; And each might have sat, till he died in his fat, Beneath his own cabbage-stalk; But now you must fly from the soil of your sires, Then put on your liveliest crawl; And think of your poor little snails at home, Now orphans or emigrants all. Utensils domestic, and civil, and social, I give you an evening to pack up: But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight, To-morrow I’ll hang each man Jack up. You’ll think of my peas and your thievish tricks, With tears of slime when crossing the _Styx_.

POSTSCRIPT.

If darkness should not let thee read this, Furtive Snail, Go ask thy friend, the Glow-worm, For his tail.

--_From a Newspaper._

* * * * *

That man should be happy, is so evidently the intention of his Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal. Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his will.--_Harriet Martineau._

IRISH SUPERSTITIONS.--No. III.

GHOSTS AND FAIRIES.

BY W. CARLETON.

When a superstition is once impressed strongly upon the popular credulity, the fiction always assumes the shape and form which the peculiar imagination of the country is constituted to body forth. This faculty depends so much on climate, temperament, religion, and occupation, that the notions entertained of supernatural beings, though generally based upon one broad feature peculiar to all countries, differ so essentially respecting the form, character, habits, and powers of these beings, that they appear to have been drawn from sources widely removed. To an inquiring mind there can be no greater proof than this of their being nothing but the creations of our own brain, and of assuming that shape only which has uniformly been impressed upon our imagination at the precise period of life when such impressions are strongest and most permanent, and the reason which ought to combat and investigate them least capable of doing so. If these inane bugbears possessed the consistence of truth and reality, their appearance to mankind would be always uniform, unchangeable, and congruous; but they are beheld, so to speak, through different prejudices and impressions, and consequently change with the media through which they are seen. Hence their different shape, character, and attributes in different countries, and the frequent absence of rational analogy with respect to them even in the same.

Where now are the multitudinous creations of the old Greek and Roman mythologies? Where are their Lares, their Penates, their Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs, Dryads, Hamadryads, Gods, and Goddesses? And yet the peasantry of the two most enlightened nations of antiquity were so firmly fixed in a belief of their distinct and individual existence, that the worship of them formed an essential part of their religion. Where are they now? And who believes in the existence of a Faun, a Dryad, or a Hamadryad? They melted into what they were--nothing--before the lustre of Revelation, which, by bringing the truth of immortality to light, banished the whole host of such incongruous monsters from the earth, and impressed the imagination of mankind with truer notions and simpler imagery. The pure but severe morality of the Christian religion, by making man sensible of his responsibility in another life, opened up to the good and rational the bright hopes of future happiness. But we have our fears as well as our hopes, and as these preponderate in proportion to our fitness for death, so will we view the world that is to come either with joy or terror. Every truth is abused and perverted by man’s moral delinquencies: and the consequence is, that an idle fear of ghosts and apparitions is an abuse of the doctrine of our immortality. Judgment and eternal life were brought near us by Revelation, but we fear them more than we love them, and hence the terrors of our imagination on thinking of any thing that is beyond the grave. As the old monsters of the mythologies disappeared before reason and religion, so also will ghosts, fairies, and all such nonsense, vanish when men shall be taught to reason upon them as they ought, and to entertain higher notions of God than to believe that his purposes could be thwarted by the power or malignity of a fairy. Why, what, for instance, is every ghost story that we have heard, granting them to be true, but a direct revelation, and so far antiscriptural and impious? What new truth has the information of a spectre ever conveyed to us? What knowledge of futurity beyond that which we already know have these dialogues with the dead ever brought to light? What view of our moral, religious, or social duties, with which we were not acquainted before, have apparitions ever taught us? None. Away, then, with these empty and pusillanimous chimeras, which are but the mere hallucinations of a weak judgment, acted upon and misled by a strong fancy or a guilty conscience.

The force of imagination alone is capable of conjuring up and shaping out that which never had existence, and that too with as much apparent distinctness and truth as if it was real. We all know that in the ease of a female who is pregnant, a strong impression made upon the imagination of the mother will be visible on the body of the child. And why? Because she firmly believes that it will be so. If she did not, no such impression would be communicated to the infant. But when such effects are produced in physical matters, what will not the consequence be in those that are purely mental and imaginative? Go to the lunatic asylum or the madhouse, and there it may be seen in all its unreal delusion and positive terror.

Before I close this portion of my little disquisition, I shall relate an anecdote connected with it, of which I myself was the subject. Some years ago I was seized with typhus fever of so terrific a character, that for a long time I lay in a state hovering between life and death, unconscious as a log, without either hope or fear. At length a crisis came, and, aided by the strong stamina of an unbroken constitution, I began to recover, and every day to regain my consciousness more and more. As yet, however, I was very far from being out of danger, for I felt the malady to be still so fiery and oppressive, that I was not surprised when told that the slightest mistake either in my medicine or regimen would have brought on a relapse. At all events, thank God, my recovery advanced; but, at the same time, the society that surrounded me was wild and picturesque in the highest degree. Never indeed was such a combination of the beautiful and hideous seen, unless in the dreams of a feverish brain like mine, or the distorted reason of a madman. At one side of my bed, looking in upon me with a most hellish and satanic leer, was a face, compared with which the vulgar representations of the devil are comeliness itself, whilst on the other was a female countenance beaming in beauty that was ethereal--angelic. Thus, in fact, was my whole bed surrounded; for they stood as thickly as they could, sometimes flitting about and crushing and jostling one another, but never leaving my bed for a moment. Here were the deformed features of a dwarf, there an angel apparently fresh from heaven; here was a gigantic demon with his huge mouth placed longitudinally in his face, and his nose across it, whilst the Gorgon-like coxcomb grinned as if he were vain, and had cause to be vain, of his beauty. This fellow annoyed me much, and would, I apprehend, have done me an injury, only for the angel on the other side. He made perpetual attempts to come at me, but was as often repulsed by that seraphic creature. Indeed, I feared none of them so much as I did the Gorgon, who evidently had a design on me, and would have rendered my situation truly pitiable, were it not for the protection of the seraph, who always succeeded in keeping him aloof. At length he made one furious rush as if he meant to pounce upon me, and in self-preservation I threw my right arm to the opposite side, and, grasping the seraph by the nose, I found I had caught my poor old nurse by that useful organ, while she was in the act of offering me a drink. For several days I was in this state, the victim of images produced by disease, and the inflammatory excitement of brain consequent upon it. Gradually, however, they began to disappear, and I felt manifest relief, for they were succeeded by impressions as amusing now as the former had been distressing. I imagined that there was a serious dispute between my right foot and my left, as to which of them was entitled to precedency; and, what was singular, my right leg, thigh, hand, arm and shoulder, most unflinchingly supported the right foot, as did the other limbs the left. The head alone, with an impartiality that did it honour, maintained a strict neutrality. The truth was, I imagined that all my limbs were endowed with a consciousness of individual existence, and I felt quite satisfied that each and all of them possessed the faculty of reason. I have frequently related this anecdote to my friends; but, I know not how it happened, I never could get them to look upon it in any other light than as a specimen of that kind of fiction which is indulgently termed “drawing the long bow.” It is, however, as true as that I now exist, and relate the fact; and, what is more, the arguments which I am about to give are substantially the same that were used by the rival claimants and their respective supporters. The discussion, I must observe, was opened by the left foot, as being the discontented party, and, like all discontented parties, its language was so very violent, that, had its opinions prevailed, there is no doubt but they would have succeeded in completely overturning my constitution.

_Left foot._ Brother (addressing the right with a great show of affection, but at the same time with a spasmodic twitch of strong discontentment in the big toe), Brother, I don’t know how it is that you have during our whole lives always taken the liberty to consider yourself a better foot than I am; and I would feel much obliged to you if you would tell me why it is that you claim this superiority over me. Are we not both equal in every thing?

_Right foot._ Be quiet, my dear brother. We _are_ equal in every thing, and why, therefore, are you discontented?

_Left foot._ Because you presume to consider yourself the better and more useful foot.

_Right foot._ Let us not dispute, my dear brother; each is equally necessary to the other. What could I do without _you_? Nothing, or at least very little; and what could you do without _me_? Very little indeed. We were not made to quarrel.

_Left foot_ (_very hot_). I am not disposed to quarrel, but I trust you will admit that I am as good as you, every way your equal, and begad in many things your superior. Do you hear that? _I_ am not disposed to quarrel, you rascal, and how dare you say so?

Here there was a strong sensation among all the right members, who felt themselves insulted through this outrage offered to their chief supporter.

_Right foot._ Since you choose to insult me without provocation, I must stand upon my right----

_Left_ (_shoving off to a distance_). RIGHT!--there, again, what right have you to be termed “_right_” any more than I?--(“Bravo!--go it, _Left_; pitch into him; we are equal to him and his,” from the friends of the Left. The matter was now likely to become serious, and to end in a row.)

“What’s the matter there below?” said the Head; “don’t be fools, and make yourselves ridiculous. What would either of you be with a crutch or a cork-leg? which is only another name for a wooden shoe, any day.”

_Right foot._ Since he provokes me, I tell him, that ever since the world began, the prejudice of mankind in all nations has been in favour of the right foot and the right hand. (Strong sensation among the left members). Surely he ought not to be ignorant of the proverb, which says, when a man is peculiarly successful in any thing he undertakes, “that man knew how to go about it--_he put the right foot foremost_!” (Cheers from the right party.)

_Left._ That’s mere special pleading--the right foot there does not mean you, because you happen to be termed such; but it means the foot which, from its position under the circumstances, happens to be the proper one. (Loud applause from the left members.)

_Right foot._ You know you are weak and feeble and awkward when compared to me, and can do little of yourself. (Hurra! that’s a poser!)

_Left._ Why, certainly, I grant I am the gentleman, and that you are very useful to me, you plebeian. (“Bravo!” from the left hand; “ours is the aristocratic side--hear the operatives! Come, hornloof, what have you to say to that?”)

_Right hand_ (_addressing his opponent._) You may be the aristocratic party if you will, but we are the useful. Who are the true defenders of the constitution, you poor sprig of nobility?

_Left hand._ The heart is with us, the seat and origin of life and power. Can you boast as much? (Loud cheers.)

_Right foot._ Why, have you never heard it said of an excellent and worthy man--a fellow of the right sort, a trump--as a mark of his sterling qualities, “his heart’s in the _right_ place!” How then can it be in the _left_? (Much applause.)

_Left._ Which is an additional proof that mine is _that_ place and not yours. Yes, you rascal, we _have_ the heart, and you cannot deny it.

_Right._ We admit he resides with you, but it is merely because you are the weaker side, and require his protection. The best part of his energies are given to us, and we are satisfied.

_Left._ You admit, then, that our party keeps yours in power, and why not at once give up your right to precedency?--why not resign?

_Right._ Let us put it to the vote.

_Left._ With all my heart.

It was accordingly put to the vote; but on telling the house, it was found that the parties were equal. Both then appealed very strenuously to Mr Speaker, the Head, who, after having heard their respective arguments, shook himself very gravely, and informed them (much after the manner of Sir Roger De Coverley) that “much might be said on both sides.” “But one thing,” said he, “I beg both parties to observe, and very seriously to consider. In the first place, there would be none of this nonsense about precedency, were it not for the feverish and excited state in which you all happen to be at present. If you have common sense enough to wait until you all get somewhat cooler, there is little doubt but you will feel that you cannot do without each other. As for myself, as I said before, I give no specific opinion upon disputes which would never have taken place were it not for the heat of feeling which is between you. I know that much might and has been said upon both sides; but as for me, I nod significantly to both parties, and say nothing. One thing, however, I do say, and it is this--take care you, _right foot_, and you, _left foot_, that by pursuing this senseless quarrel too far it may not happen that you will both get stretched and tied up together in a wooden surtout, when precedency will be out of the question, and nothing but a most pacific stillness shall remain between you for ever. I shake, and have concluded.”

Now, this case, which as an illustration of my argument possesses a good deal of physiological interest, is another key to the absurd doctrine of apparitions. Here was I at the moment strongly and seriously impressed with a belief that a quarrel was taking place between my two feet about the right of going foremost. Nor was this absurdity all. I actually believed for the time that all my limbs were endowed with separate life and reason. And why? All simply because my whole system was in a state of unusually strong excitement, and the nerves and blood stimulated by disease into a state of derangement. Such, in fact, is the condition in which every one must necessarily be who thinks he sees a spirit; and this, which is known to be an undeniable fact, being admitted, it follows of course that the same causes will, other things being alike, produce the same effects. For instance, does not the terror of an apparition occasion a violent and increased action of the heart and vascular system, similar to that of fever? Does not the very hair stand on end, not merely when the imaginary ghost is seen, but when the very apprehension of it is strong? Is not the action of the brain, too, accelerated in proportion to that of the heart, and the nervous system in proportion to that of both? What, then, is this but a fever for the time being, which is attended by the very phantasms the fear of which created it; for in this case it so happens that the cause and effect mutually reproduce each other.

The conversation detailed above is but a very meagre outline of what was said during the discussion. The arguments were far more subtle than the mere skeletons of them here put down, and very plentifully sprinkled over with classical quotations, both of Latin and Greek, which are not necessary now.

Hibbert mentions a case of imagination, which in a man is probably the strongest and most unaccountable on record. It is that of a person--an invalid--who imagined that at a certain hour of the day a carter or drayman came into his bedroom, and, uncovering him, inflicted several heavy stripes upon his body with the thong of his whip; and such was the power of fancy here, that the marks of the lash were visible in black and blue streaks upon his flesh. I am inclined to think, however, that this stands very much in need of confirmation.