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 different; they are
smaller and more numerous as they ascend. The preservation of the thing is
extraordinary; 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 conduit on the top has retained its shape and traces of the
cement with which it was lined.
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