Many
of these old bridges, once only wide enough for pack-horses to cross,
then widened for the accommodation of coaches, beautiful and graceful
in every way, across which Cavaliers rode to fight the Roundheads, and
were alive with traffic in the old coaching days, have been pulled
down and replaced by the hideous iron-girder arrangements which now
disfigure so many of our streams and rivers. In future, owing to this
wonderful invention of the grouting machine, these old bridges can be
saved and made strong enough to last another five hundred years. Mr.
Fox tells us that an old Westmoreland bridge in a very bad condition
has been so preserved, and that the celebrated "Auld Brig o' Ayr" has
been saved from destruction by this means. A wider knowledge of the
beneficial effects of this wonderful machine would be of invaluable
service to the country, and prevent the passing away of much that in
these pages we have mourned. By this means we may be able to preserve
our old and decaying buildings for many centuries, and hand down to
posterity what Ruskin called the great entail of beauty bequeathed to
us.
Vanishing England has a sad and melancholy sound. Nevertheless, the
examples we have given of the historic buildings, and the beauties of
our towns and villages, prove that all has not yet disappeared which
appeals to the heart and intellect of the educated Englishman.
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