The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-14 00:00:00

three arches, costing £247,000 and no more upon

the chosen site at Blackfriars.

In every point of view the plan of Mr.
PAGE possesses an unquestionable superiority
of attractions over all the other plans and
estimates that have been sent in. It is won-
derfully moderate in its cost, as we have seen—
£247,ooo being the outside of the proposed dis-

bursements requisite for carrying the whole design
to a state of completion. It is of the most durable
materials. It is singularly beautiful in its scull:).

tural and architectural decorations. It is—added

to all this—a bridge of THREE and not of five
arches—a bridge consequently giving a wider
span than do many others from star-
ling to starling, impeding the traffic on
the river less, and presenting in every way
greater facilities for navigation up and down the
Silent Highway at all times, at high tide and at
low tide indifferently. Yet with all these un-
deniable advantages visible both in Mr. PAGE'S
design and in Mr. PAGE'S estimates for a three-
arched cast-iron bridge from Surrey to Middlesex
at Blackfriars—although the plan referred to
has been deliberately selected as the very
best, all things considered, by the very
men appointed to make the selection—No !
the city obstructives can't for the life of them see it

in this light at all. The whole question they decide
is to be scrutinised again, de novo, is again to be
discussed ab initio. As we have:seen just now the
matter altogether is set aside—of course, like
Madame Gnisr's Farewell Benefit, for "positively
the last time"—for " further consideration." Yet
all the while those who are better qualified than
almost any other class of men to decide upon
the advantages or disadvantages of this or that
scheme for a new bridge at Blackfriars, have for-
mally and distinctly and deliberately decided in
favour of Mr. THOMAS PAGE'S plan for a three
arched cast-iron bridge, costing £247,000, as the
best out of the whole gallery of designs sent in by the
various architectural and engineering competitors.
The watermen, and lightermen, and men of that
craft upon the river Thames, all look with satisfac-
tion upon this plan of Mr. PAGE'S, all prefer the airy
spanning of the river by three cast-iron arches to
any other that has yet come to be suggested. They
say this, they write this, and they do so with a sort
of emphasis, as if their convictiors were expressed
by their decision—affixing their signatures to what
they write upon the matter, and urgently demand-
ing that a three-arched bridge, such as the one
proposed by Mr. THOMAS PAGE, and not a five-
arched bridge, such as so many others have sug-
gested, and are now loudly advocating, should be
constructed upon the chosen site at Blackfriars. Is
it not vexatious that when utility, beauty, simpli-
city, strength, and economy are all manifestly
cared for in this design of Mr. PAGE'S—the
preference that has already been avowed for it by
the public at large, by the river folk whom the
choice of a good or a bad design will especially and
peculiarly effect, and first of all too by the very
set of men chosen to make a selection in the
matter —is it not vexatious, we say, that
the preference thus authoritatively expressed
in favour of Mr. PAGE'S plan, and Mr. PAGE'S
estimates, should be set at nought now at the
eleventh hour and three quarters, and the whole
metropolitan community baulked, in the very
nick, in its hope of having at once a new and
noble bridge commenced in place of the costly
and ricketty old bridge down at Blackfriars ? How
often have we not had occasion to echo those familiar
words of the Rev. LAWRENCE STERNE inscribed
upon the first page of his Sentimental Journey—
" They manage these things better in France !"
Here, again, are they not once more pain-
fully applicable. Perhaps, it is the one
little compensative good of a despotic Govern-
ment. While we are discussing and delibe-
rating, and postponing one after another of our
metropolitan improvements, Paris is being rebuilt.
New quays border its river; new bridges (such as
they are) span it; new boulevards sweep at a
tangent through this and that squalid and
dilapidated quarter of the capital, replacing
a maze of dirty lanes and alleys, with a broad and
majestic and lamplit and tree-bordered highway,
worthy. any
day of becoming the path for an impe-
rial procession. If one could but for one year bor-
row this particular leaf out of the NAPOLEON Book
of Administration ! Instead of talking about Mr.
PAGE'S economical and noble design for a three-
arched cast iron bridge over the Thames at Black-
friars, we should soon enough, in that case, be in
a fair way to realise it.