Pont du Gard

“ When the vague twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist, sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the push they gave to what they undertook. The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have left ”

“ It went well with my plans for reaching the main route back to Paris to make a little journey through the fragrant olive groves along the high road to Remoulins in order to visit the world-famous Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near to which a gipsy told Tartarin he would one day be a king, and thence by the banks of the river Gardon to Beaucaire and Tarascon. Not often have I made a literary pilgrimage of so pleasant or profitable a nature. ”

“ As in the case of the arenas, mere measurement fails to convey any idea of its vastness. That it is 880 feet or so long and 160 feet high may be interesting to builders and engineers, but to the majority of spectators these figures utterly fail to express anything of the magnificence of the Pont du Gard. Like the Maison Carrée and the amphitheatres of Nîmes and Arles, the aqueduct has figured in many a picture and engraving. ”

“ We passed them to go nearer to the bridge: one of them followed us; his accent announced him to be an Irishman, and his uniform to be an officer in the French service. He conversed with us a few minutes, and promised to call on me at Nismes.
At the side of the lower part of the Pont du [Pg 290] Gard and forming part of it, is a bridge over the Gardon: this bridge has been widened in modern times, but the ancient wheel-track is still seen on the side nearest to the aqueduct. ”

“ It was then, too, that these luxurious citizens used to assemble in their thousands to see beasts and men fight for dear life in the great amphitheatre; and then that some Roman built the curious Tour Magne that puzzles the learned and dominates the town to this day. The Pont 216 du Gard must have presented precisely the same aspect to those old Romans as it does to us, for scarcely a stone has been disturbed in all these centuries. ”

“ Slab-Bridges with Stone Piers, 125-8; see also 61-3, 100-5. Sleep is united by bad dreams to the law of battle, vii. Smeaton, John, English civil engineer, b. 1724—d. 1792, his big “scientific” bridge over the Tyne at Hexham was a tragic failure, 339. Smiles, Samuel, Scottish author and pontist, 104. Smith, Sir William, English classical scholar, the Pons Sublicius, 140; the Porta dell’ Arco at Arpino, 157; the stones employed in the Pont du Gard, 171 footnote; the masonry of the Pont du Gard, 175 footnote; Roman aqueducts, 189 footnote ”

“ In the wizard country of the French Pyrenees there are some very notable bridges, such as the Pont Napoléon, near Saint-Sauveur, the Pont d’Espagne, beyond Cauterets, and the Vieux Pont at Orthez. To study these three works, side by side, is to learn that modern bridge-building has achieved in stone a few great works as daring as any that the Middle Ages produced. The Pont d’Orthez has a graceful distinction, and for nearly six hundred years it has borne the formidable spates of the Gav-de-Pau. In the tierce-point arches, and particularly in the largest one, there is good drawing ”

“ For a pontist never need be idle; not only has he a thousand problems to reconsider, but in all his walks and rides he is a wayfarer with his hobby. When he feels cocksure he can visit a detestable railway bridge and drink the wormwood of pessimism; and when for a whole week he has tried in vain to follow a devious fact through all its golf-ball antics from bunker to bunker, let him go to a [Pg 6] classic bridge such as the Puente Trajan over the Tagus at Alcántara; or let him be as a delighted pupil to Turner’s Walton Bridges or to Brangwyn’s magnificent vision of the Pont St. ”

“ The profits of this establishment in 1839 to the government were 66,001,841 francs, upwards of 2,500,000£. We will now proceed along the quai, and notice the bridges; first the Pont de Iena, terminated in 1813, it is completely in a horizontal line, and is certainly a perfect structure, uniting elegance, beauty, and simplicity.
The Pont des Invalides is a handsome suspension bridge for carriages as well as foot passengers; a toll is paid in passing over it. ”

“ At a point where the river Aven—breaking through its narrow channel, dashing under bridges and turning numerous water-wheels—spreads out into a broad estuary, is the little port of Pont-Aven, built four miles from the sea. The majority of the houses are of granite, and sheltered under wooded hills; the water rushes past flour-mills and under bridges with perpetual noise, and a breeze stirs the poplar trees that line its banks on the calmest day. ”

“ The numerous places and things in and around Paris that call for remarks are legion, but I must forbear, only to give one passing reference to the river Seine and its many bridges. Pont Notre Dame or the bridge of Our Lady, dates from the fifteenth century; a bridge of later date, we were told, was made of wood, and fell into the river taking sixty houses with it. This is a fine bridge built of solid masonry. The Pont d’Arcole is a suspension bridge for foot passengers only. The Pont Neuf was built by Henry IV. There is a bronze horse on the bridge which was cast in Tuscany. ”

“ Even if we cannot see all the bends and [120] creeks of the river from Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed. Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch, and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted shields that bear so many famous arms. ”

“ This image is rather more pronounced in the case of the earlier bridge, for the length of Bénézet’s piers, in the direction of the current, is enormous, being not less than thirty metres.
For the rest, the Pont Saint-Esprit seems to have an enchanted size, his most confident historians giving neither the same dimensions nor the same number of arches. Men with tape measures have grown tired of their job, seemingly; and even in photographs some arches are omitted while others are blurred by distance. ”

“ A boat from Vallon to the Pont costs 10 frs.; to St. Martin it costs 35 frs., time 7 hrs. St. Martin is 3 m. from the railway station of St. Just, on the railway on the west side of the Rhône (see p. 98) . The landlord of the Louvre can procure either a guide for the Pont, 2 frs., or for the caves, 5 frs., or the boatman for sailing down the Ardèche. The Pont d’Arc is a natural bridge across the Ardèche, composed of a calcareous rock, pierced with a span of 180 ft., through which the river flows majestically. The soffit of the arch is 100 ft. ”

“ Reichenau, John Grubenmann’s Bridge at, 142.
Relief Bays for Flood Water, they were introduced by the Romans, 284, and were copied by mediæval bridgemen; witness the Pont des Consuls at Montauban, 255, 256, and the Pont St. Esprit, 293, 297. Pontists should note both the difference of shape in flood-water bays and the variation of their position in the architecture. At Mérida, for example, in the great squat Roman bridge, they are long and round-headed, and rise from the low and bold cutwaters, which are overgrown with grey-green mosses and grass. ”

“ Besides, sportsmen in a controversy should be fair. Yet a [Pg 92] good many books of reference say: “The Pont du Tarn at Albi, whose first construction goes back to the year 1035 or 1040, is thirteenth-century work”—a calumny on a very beautiful period in the evolution of Gothic architecture. We should have far too much admiration for the Valentré Bridge at Cahors to give the Pont du Tarn to the thirteenth century; and several other bridges in France do ample justice to the successors of Saint Bénézet. ”

“ The fords were superseded by the old Grand Pont, and Grand Pont in turn by Folly Bridge.{23}
Folly Bridge, as it now stands, was built a little south of Grand Pont, the old river-course to the north having been filled up by an embankment. The river now marks the Shire boundary which was once marked hereabouts by the Shire Ditch. Crossing the bridge to the Berkshire shore, the road, wherein you may still trace the piers of the old Grand Pont “linked with many a bridge,” leads up to Hincksey. There the modern golf-links are, and the “lone, sky-pointing tree” that Clough and Arnold loved. ”

“ On the right bank of the river stands the old feudal city, with its ancient castle and its irregularly built houses whose slate roofs and pointed gables peep from the groves of trees which clothe the hill. On the left bank the regularly built new town extends far into the plain. The river, here 80 yds. broad, is crossed by the handsome railway viaduct, a beautiful stone bridge called Pont Neuf, and the Pont Vieux with three pointed arches, built in the 16th century. There is communication by steamer as far as Angers. Laval may justly claim to be one of the loveliest of French towns. ”

“ These suburbs communicate with the island by two stone bridges; the Grand Pont towards the north in the direction of the English sea, and the Petit Pont which looks towards the Loire. The former bridge, broad, rich, commercial, is the centre of a fervid activity, and innumerable boats surround it laden with merchandise and riches. The Petit Pont belongs to the dialecticians, who pace up and down disputing. In the island adjacent to the king's palace, which dominates the whole town, the palace of philosophy is seen where study reigns alone as sovereign, a citadel of light and immortality. ”

“ Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers’ Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d’Autriche, set up there. ”

“ Esprit over the Rhône, 293. Florence, the Ponte Vecchio, 211, 222; the Ponte della Trinità, Ammanati’s masterpiece, 316. Fo-Cheu, Pont De, a Chinese bridge described by Gauthey, 314-15. Footpaths, the earliest were made by quadrupeds, 3; human footpaths, their number, and what it has cost to make them, 17; they belong not to the illusion called peace but to the reality named strife, 17. Footways over Mediæval Bridges, usually they were narrow, very often they were steep, and sometimes, as in the Pont St. Esprit and the Pont St. Bénézet, they formed an elbow with the angle pointing up-stream. ”

“ The Pont des Trous at Tournai, for instance, guarded at each end by a huge round tower, has more to say to us about the turbulent old Flemish pride than have many chapters written by good historians. It is a bridge enlivened by art, yet blinded by an excess of warlike caution. ”

“ In his time there was a bridge that carried the Via Domitiana over the Vidourle at Pont Ambroise; the vaults of its five arches were built in precisely the same manner, in four parallel arcs or bands that touched each other; and the bridge was notable for other reasons, and thus attractive to all bridge-builders. In the first place, a Bull of Pope Adrian IV, dated 1156, now treasured at Nîmes in the Church of Nôtre Dame, has proved that in the twelfth century a chapel was built either on or from the middle of the bridge ”

“ From the decadence of the Western Empire and the invasion of the Barbarians, these fine roads were practically abandoned. Many good bridges were destroyed, and the work of road-building ceased completely, the people finding their way about by mere trails.
With the advent of Christianity in Gaul there was a partial renaissance of these Roman roads, thanks to great fairs and pilgrimages. The monastic orders became in a way the parents and protectors of bridges and roads, with St. Bénèzet at their head, who in the twelfth century constructed the wonderful Pont d’Avignon, which still stands. ”

“ The celebrated Pont Transbordeur, while being essentially practical, is a weird exotic, not entitled to be classed with those masterpieces in stone built throughout France in the middle ages, many of which exist even to-day.
The first bridge at Rouen was probably not built before the year 1000, and the first document which makes mention of any bridge here is an acte de donation of Richard II. in favour of the Abbey of Jumièges, dated at Fécamp in 1024. Therein was conceded to the monks at Jumièges, the right to fish from Pont de l’Arche up to the Pont de Rouen. ”

“ It would be easy in a shallow river to make a fish-pool by heaping boulders into a dam of this rude sort, and the completed work would rank no higher than the beavers contests against running water. So I tell myself that many a tribe in the great period of prehistoric art, about 50,000 years B.C., ought to have built for itself a bridge as elementary as the Pont-y-Pant and a perforated dam as uncouth as the one at Thirlmere. ”