Lawrence from all ports on the east coast of
the Atlantic between Halifax and Boston.
Without the bridge, a Canadian railway
system is a local affair; the bridge destroys
the insulation of the province, and provides
free way for the outpouring of her commerce.
It will cost a million or two of money, and be
worth all that it costs.

It is a tubular bridge, like that over our
Menai Straits; but the Britannia Bridge is a
doll's bridge, one thousand eight hundred
and eighty feet long, compared with this,
the Victoria Bridge at Montreal. Five
Menai Bridges, or seven Waterloo Bridges,
one beyond another, would not complete the
measure of Goliath, whose length from bank
to bank will be only one hundred and seventy-
six feet less than two miles.

There will be twenty-four piers leaving
twenty-five spans for the tube, the centre
span being three hundred and thirty feet wide,
each of the others two hundred and forty-two
feet wide. The piers will be fifteen feet wide,
those in the centre wider, and they will all
turn a sharp edge to the current, as well as
a smooth and solid surface to the battery
of winter ice that sometimes piles near
Montreal to the height of more than forty
feet and damages stone buildings on the
quays. The masonry of the bridge will
exceed two hundred thousand tons, in blocks of
stone weighing from seven to ten tons each,
all clamped with iron, and having the
interstices filled up with lead. The weight of
iron in the tubes will be more than ten
thousand tons.

On each bank of the river the abutments
of the bridge are about two hundred and
fifty feet long and ninety broad, approached
by embanked causeways: one of seven
hundred, one of fourteen hundred feet. It is
only between the centre piers that the river
is navigable by the steam vessels which ply
through the Lachine Rapids. The height of
the floor of the bridge above the ordinary
summer level of the water in that central
part, is sixty feet. The height of the tubes of
the bridge, varies from nineteen feet to
twenty-two feet six inches. Each tube is
to be nine or ten feet wider than the rail
track it encloses.

Such is the nature of this wonder among
bridges, which has been loyally named
Victoria by the Canadians. A model of it may
be seen in the Canadian department of the
Crystal Palace. By the close of next year it
will probably be finished.

THE BLOOD OF THE SUNDONS.
I.

SEATED, one dark December night, in the
room known as the Amber Room, at Holm
Hollies, with shelves of pedigree, and charts
of pedigree, and titles of honour and
emblazons circling me about; with every step
in that golden and ivory stair which led
me back up to the Conqueror's day, made
out brightly and distinctly, I dreamt of the
glories of the House of Sundon, of which
I, Piers, was the last surviving representative.
Last, indeed, of a line of noble gentlemen
and peerless ladies, whose pictures hung
below in the old dining-room, and whose
broad lands, won by their good swords or
brightest smiles, stretched away for many an
acre—fairest prospect from the window of
the Amber Room. On the shelves were
Memoirs with noble prints by Strange and
Holler of the Sundon Worthies: men who had
done as famous service to the State in politics,
as in armies and navies; whose blood had
never been contaminated by mean alliances.
"The purest stock in England," my father
said many and many a time over; and
never with such satisfaction as when he turned
his back upon a dazzling manufacturing
alliance, freighted with two hundred thousand
pounds. Those moneys would have
come in usefully enough: the wild animal
known as the Wolf having even then
presented himself with terrible frequency at
the door. But my father kept his face
steadily away from the manufacturing
Dalilah.

There had once been such a thing as a Baron
Sundon, of Holm Hollies, in the county of
Dorsetshire; which title of honour had, by a
cruel heraldic trick, slipped away from us
long since. With vain trying to lure it back
again, many a broad acre and tall tree had
slipped away after it, and so had given,
encouragement to that wolf. In fact, this
fruitless striving had left me sitting in the
Amber Room, well nigh a poor man; but
wealthy enough in that one hope: that
faithless ignis fatuus, or Will-o'-the-wisp.
More broad acres, more timber, had to go
for feeding and keeping alive of that fire.
Poleaxe, Herald and Pursuivant at Arms,
was working the thing for me, and was never
so confident as now. If I could only help him a
little by speaking to some of the great ones!
Ah! if I could; but the great ones were not
my friends. I was too stately a chief for
that; and the pure blood running in my
veins would not let me come down to such
wooing. So Poleaxe must work it through
of himself. I knew nobody; saw nobody.
The Sundons of the olden time were company
enough for me. I knew well enough what
the folk about, thought of me. A stiff,
proud churl, who was setting himself over
his neighbours. They were not good enough,
for him, forsooth! Nor were they. Had
they come to my board, I should have set
every man of them below the salt. Well, no.
There was one person who was not to be set
below the salt. Sir Thomas Hackleton the
newly-made Baronet, and retired merchant.
Newly-retired also—I must say it—from the
leather business. In spite of their impure
blood, neither he nor his little daughter was
to be set below the salt.