Nothing,' of course, could be worse than first to build
a- dull or pretentious bridge, and then stick it all over with statuary, as a child sticks his tin soldiers -upon a set of arches made from 'Dr. Richter's ashen-grey or muddy-vermilion bricks. The statuary must spring up with and from the design of the bridge, and the bridge itself must be frankly monumental, and not ashamed of play- ing a great, or let us say the greatest, part among the monuments of London. Above all things, it must not be an example of what Renan called I's.r adntinistratij—a structure as coarse as it is com- petent, as common as it is useful; in a word, a bridge capable of fitting Johnson's famous description of " Lycidas "—" easy, rnlgar, and therefore disgusting." But if we do not take care it is inst. the
sort of bridge we shall get, and; as the cynics will tell us, just the sort of bridge which we shall deserve for our national want of artistic sense and training.
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