Dull must be the imagination of anyone who has not
felt the fascination of Roads. Because they lead somewhere, because they represent intelligence and industry, because they are an index-number, as it were, of civilization, they stimulate all discerning minds. Many poets have sung of them, many painters have taken them for subject. What thrills we get when we look at the remains of that great causeway on the top of the Roman Wall in Northumberland, or trace the track of pilgrims by the North Downs ! Pro- fessor J. W. Gregory gives us in The Story of the Road (Macle- hose, 12s. ed.) rather the prose than the poetry of his theme ; but, even so, he has written a book to stir and stimulate as well as to inform. To say that he exhausts the subject would be unwise, since it is inexhaustible, but he does seem to have covered the ground from earliest times to the motor highways of the present with vast knowledge and exceeding skill. Whether it is the straight Roman mad, driven forward as an emblem of Roman mentality, or the Chinese road with many turns in it so as to dodge evil spirits, Telford's roads or Macadam's, dirt roads or tarmac, all are made interesting, all help us to understand history.
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