The Gorge Becomes Romantic,
Still, And Solitary, And, With Its White Rocks And Wild
Shrubbery, Hangs Over The Clear, Colored
River, in whose
slow course there is here and there a deeper pool.
Over the valley, from side to side,
And ever so high
in the air, stretch the three tiers of the tremendous
bridge. They are unspeakably imposing, and nothing
could well be more Roman. The hugeness, the soli-
dity, the unexpectedness, the monumental rectitude of
the whole thing leave you nothing to say - at the time
- and make you stand gazing. You simply feel that
it is noble and perfect, that it has the quality of
greatness. A road, branching from the highway, de-
scends to the level of the river and passes under one
of the arches. This road has a wide margin of grass
and loose stones, which slopes upward into the bank
of the ravine. You may sit here as long as you please,
staring up at the light, strong piers; the spot is ex-
tremely natural, though two or three stone benches
have been erected on it. I remained there an hour
and got a cornplete impression; the place was per-
fectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely;
the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there
was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It
came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it
a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element
is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is
wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the
end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is
so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity
was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race
which could do nothing small is as defective as a race
that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigidity
the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would
be a great injustice, however, not to insist upon its
beauty, - a kind of manly beauty, that of an object
constructed not to please but to serve, and impressive
simply from the scale on which it carries out this
intention. The number of arches in each tier is dif-
ferent; they are smaller and more numerous as they
ascend. The preservation of the thing is extra-
ordinary; nothing has crumbled or collapsed; every
feature remains; and the huge blocks of stone, of a
brownish-yellow, (as if they had been baked by the
Provencal sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves,
without mortar or cement, as evenly as the day they
were laid together. All this to carry the water of a
couple of springs to a little provincial city! The con-
duit on the top has retained its shape and traces of
the cement with which it was lined. When the vague
twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to
fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if
the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports
of the aqueduct; and it was open to a solitary tourist,
sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has
ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured,
as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the
push they gave to what they undertook.
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