On Saturday, the Prince of Wales, on behalf of the
Queen, opened the new Tower Bridge "for traffic by land. and water." The City, which built the bridge to some extent to show how munificent and beneficial it can be, took care that the pageant should be in every way splendid, and the fineness of the weather allowed East and South London a very successful holiday. One feature of the ceremony was specially interesting. The Prince returned by water, thus recalling the time when our Royalties went to and from the City in their State barges. It is true the vessel used on this occasion was nothing more romantic than a steamer, but the act suggests the possibilities for picturesque pageant still possessed by the Thames. One is rather tired of the cry, " greatest engineering triumph of the age ; " but the Tower Bridge, which cost over a million, and will want some 26,000 a year to keep it going, is certainly a very magnificent achievement. It is in form a double drawbridge, the huge arms, which drop to form the roadway and rise to make the waterway, being worked by a• piece of mechanism as ingenious as it is powerful. In the lofty towers, from which the leaves of the bridge are swung, are lifts which, when ships are passing through, convey foot-passengers to a flying footway. This footway jr as the towers high above the masts of vessels. The bri le will be of great use to London below London Bridge, which now ceases to be the last link above "round bet,- een the north, and south sides of the Thames.
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