Chapter Breck to Bridgenorth of B by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Bride of the Sea. Venice is so called from the ancient ceremony of the doge marrying the city to the Adriatic by throwing a ring into it, pronouncing these words, “We wed thee, O sea, in token of perpetual dominion.”

Bridewell was a king’s palace before the Conquest. Henry I. gave the stone for rebuilding it. Its name is from St. Bride (or Bridget), and her holy well. The well is now represented by an iron pump in Bride Lane.

Bridge. The imaginary bridge between earth and the Mohammedan paradise is called “All Sirat.”

The rainbow bridge which spans heaven and earth in Scandinavian mythology is called “Bifrost.”

Bridge of Gold. According to German tradition, Charlemagne’s spirit crosses the Rhine on a golden bridge, at Bingen, in seasons of plenty, and blesses both corn-fields and vineyards.

Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold.
   —Longfellow:Autumn.

Bridge of Sighs, the covered passage-way which connects the palace of the doge in Venice with the State prisons. Called “the Bridge of Sighs” because the condemned passed over it from the judgment- hall to the place of execution. Hood has a poem called The Bridge of Sighs.

The bridge in St. John’s College, Cambridge, has been facetiously called “The Bridge of Grunts,” the Johnians being nicknamed “pigs” or “hogs”—at least they were so in my time.

Bridges of Cane, in many parts of Spanish America, are thrown over narrow streams.

Wild-cane arch high flung o’er gulf profound.
   —Campbell: Gertrude of Wyoming,ii.16 (1809).

Bridgemore (Mr.), of Fish Street Hill, London. A dishonest merchant, wealthy, vulgar, and purse-proud. He is invited to a soire given by lord Abberville, “and counts the servants, gapes at the lustres, and never enters the drawing-room at all, but stays below, chatting with the travelling tutor.”

Mrs. Bridgemore, wife of Mr. Bridgemore, equally vulgar, but with more pretension to gentility.

Miss Lucinda Bridgemore, the spiteful, purse-proud, malicious daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bridgemore, of Fish Street Hill. She was engaged to lord Abberville, but her money would not out-balance her vulgarity and ill-temper, so the young “fashionable lover” made his bow and retired.—Cumberland: The Fashionable Lover (1780).

Bridgenorth (Major Ralph), a roundhead and conspirator; neighbour of sir Geoffrey Peveril of the Peak, a staunch cavalier.

Mrs. Bridgenorth, the major’s wife.

Alice Bridgenorth, the major’s daughter and heroine of the novel, who marries Julian Peveril, a cavalier.–Sir W. Scott: Peveril of the Peak (time, Charles II.).