from the inhabitants of Rouen the oath of allegiance, which so soon
afterwards found a ready transfer to another sovereign.

About the middle of the quay is placed the bridge of boats, an object of
attraction to all strangers, but more so from the novelty and
singularity of its construction than from its beauty. Utility rather
than elegance was consulted by the builder. This far-famed structure is
ugly and cumbrous, and a passenger feels a very unpleasing sensation if
he happens to stand upon it when a loaded waggon drives along it at low
water, at which time there is a considerable descent from the side of
the suburbs. An undulatory motion is then occasioned, which goes on
gradually from boat to boat till it reaches the opposite shore. The
bridge is supported upon nineteen large barges, which rise and fall with
the tide, and are so put together that one or more can easily be
removed as often as it is necessary to allow any vessel to pass. The
whole too can be entirely taken away in six hours, a construction highly
useful in a river peculiarly liable to floods from sudden thaws; which
sometimes occasion such an increase of the waters, as to render the
lower stories of the houses in the adjacent parts of the city
uninhabitable. The bridge itself was destroyed by a similar accident, in
1709, for want of a timely removal. Its plan is commonly attributed to a
monk of the order of St. Augustine, by whom it was erected in 1626,
about sixty years after the stone bridge, built by the Empress Matilda
in 1167, had ceased to be passable. It seems the fate of Rouen to have
_wonderful_ bridges. The present is dignified by some writers with the
high title of a _miracle of art_: the former is said by Taillepied, in
whose time it was standing, to have been "un des plus beaux édifices et
des plus admirables de la France." A few lines afterwards, however, this
ingenuous writer confesses that loaded carriages of any kind were seldom
suffered to pass this _admirable edifice_, in consequence of the expence