[Illustration] The Bride of Lammermoor is one of the most finished of Scott’s novels, presenting a unity of plot and action from beginning to end.  The old butler, Caleb Balderston, is exaggerated and far too prominent, but he serves as a foil to the tragic scenes.

In The Bride of Lammermoor we see embodied the dark spirit of fatalism—­that spirit which breathes on the writings of the Greek tragedians when they traced the persecuting vengeance of destiny against the houses of Laius and Atreus.  From the time that we hear the prophetic rhymes the spell begins, and the clouds blacken round us, till they close the tale in a night of horror.—­Ed. Rev.

BRIDE OF THE SEA, Venice, 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 domination.”

BRIDGE.  The imaginary bridge between earth and the Mohammedan paradise is called “Al 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 reasons of plenty, and blesses both cornfields and vineyards.

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

BRIDGE OF SIGHS, the covered passageway 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.

BRIDGEMORE (Mr.), of Fish Street Hill, London.  A dishonest merchant, wealthy, vulgar, and purse-proud.  He is invited to a soiree 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, neighbor 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.  Her marriage with Julian Peveril, a cavalier, concludes the novel.—­Sir W. Scott, Peveril of the Peak (time, Charles II.).

BRIDGET (Miss), the mother of Tom Jones, in Fielding’s novel called The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1750).