I was going to say, "But is this the Thames?" but held my peace in my
wonder, and turned my bewildered eyes eastward to look at the bridge
again, and thence to the shores of the London river; and surely there
was enough to astonish me. For though there was a bridge across the
stream and houses on its banks, how all was changed from last night!
The soap-works with their smoke-vomiting chimneys were gone; the
engineer's works gone; the lead-works gone; and no sound of rivetting
and hammering came down the west wind from Thorneycroft's. Then the
bridge! I had perhaps dreamed of such a bridge, but never seen such
an one out of an illuminated manuscript; for not even the Ponte
Vecchio at Florence came anywhere near it. It was of stone arches,
splendidly solid, and as graceful as they were strong; high enough
also to let ordinary river traffic through easily. Over the parapet
showed quaint and fanciful little buildings, which I supposed to be
booths or shops, beset with painted and gilded vanes and spirelets.
The stone was a little weathered, but showed no marks of the grimy
sootiness which I was used to on every London building more than a
year old. In short, to me a wonder of a bridge.

The sculler noted my eager astonished look, and said, as if in answer
to my thoughts -

"Yes, it IS a pretty bridge, isn't it? Even the up-stream bridges,
which are so much smaller, are scarcely daintier, and the down-stream
ones are scarcely more dignified and stately."

I found myself saying, almost against my will, "How old is it?"

"Oh, not very old," he said; "it was built or at least opened, in