We close this part of our subject, which must not expand into an archæological dissertation, with the following extract from the most eloquent and learned of the English historians who have treated of Rome.
“All these cities were connected with one another and with the capital by the public highways, which, issuing from the Forum of Rome, traversed Italy, pervaded the provinces, and were terminated only by the frontiers of the empire. If we carefully trace the distance from the wall of Antoninus to Rome, and from thence to Jerusalem, it will be found that the great chain of communication, from the north-west to the south-east point of the empire, was drawn out to the length of four thousand and eighty Roman miles. The public roads were accurately divided by milestones, and ran in a direct line from one city to another, with very little respect for the obstacles either of nature or of private property. Mountains were perforated, and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams. The middle part of the road was raised into a terrace, which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several strata of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with large stones, or, in some places near the capital, with granite. Such was the solid construction of the Roman highways, whose firmness has not entirely yielded to the effect of fifteen centuries. They united the subjects of the most distant provinces by an easy and familiar intercourse; but their primary object had been to facilitate the marches of the legions; nor was any country considered as completely subdued till it had been rendered in all its parts pervious to the arms and authority of the conqueror. The advantage of receiving the earliest intelligence, and of conveying their orders with celerity, induced the emperors to establish throughout their extensive dominions the regular institution of posts. Houses were everywhere erected at the distance only of five or six miles; each of these was constantly provided with forty horses, and by the help of these relays it was easy to travel a hundred miles on a day along the Roman roads.”
Wherever the Romans conquered they inhabited, and introduced into all their provinces, from Syene, “where the shadow both way falls,” to the ultima Thule of the Scottish border, the germs of Latin civilization. To this imperial people England and France owe their first roads; for the drift-ways along the dykes of the Celts scarcely deserve the name. The most careless observer must have remarked the strong resemblance between the right lines and colossal structure of the Roman Viæ and the modern Railroad. We have indeed arrived at a very similar epoch of civilization to that of the Cæsarian era, but with adjuncts derived from a purer religion, and from more generous and expanded views of commerce and the interdependence of nations, than were vouchsafed by Providence to the ancient world.
Roads being so essential a feature of all political communities, it might have been expected that if no other feature of Roman cultivation had survived the wreck of the Empire, the great arteries of intercourse would at least have been retained. But the works of man’s hand are the exponent of his ideas; and the ideas of the Teutonic and Celtic races who divided among themselves the patrimony of the Cæsars were essentially different from those entertained and embodied by Greece and Rome. The State ceased to be an organic and self-attracting body. The individual rather than the corporate existence of man became the prevalent conception of the Church and of legislators; and nations sought rather to isolate themselves from one another, than to coalesce and correspond. Moreover, the life of antiquity was eminently municipal. The city was the germ of each body politic, and the connection of roads with cities is obvious. But our Teutonic ancestors abhorred civic life. They generally shunned the towns, even when accident had placed them in the very centre of their shires or marks, and when the proximity of great rivers or the convenience of walls and markets seemed to hold out every inducement to take possession of the vacant enclosures. The castle and the cathedral became the nucleus of the Teutonic cities. Hamlets crept around the precincts of the sacred and the outworks of the secular building: but it was long before the Lord Abbot or the Lord Chatelain regarded with any feelings but disdain, the burgher who exercised his trade or exposed his wares in the narrow lanes of the town which abutted on his domains, and enriched his manorial exchequer.
In many cases indeed the Roman cities were allowed to decay: the forest resumed its rights: the feudal castle was constructed from the ruins of the Proconsul’s palace and the Basilica, or if these edifices were too massive for demolition, they were left standing in the waste – the Mammoths and Saurians of a bygone civilization. The great Viæ were for leagues overgrown with herbage, or concealed by wood and morass; and for the direct arms of transit which bound Rome and York together as by the cord of a bow, were substituted the devious and inconvenient highways, which led the traveller by circuitous routes from one province to another. The contrast indeed between the ‘Old Road and the New’ is represented in Schiller’s fine image – rendered even finer in Coleridge’s translation: —
“Straight forward goes
The lightning’s path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon ball. Direct it flies, and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
My son! the road the human being travels,
That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river’s course, the valley’s playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honouring the holy bounds of property:
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end.”
It was long however before much security was found on the new roads. In the dark ages the days described by Deborah the prophetess had returned. “The highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through bye-ways: the villages were deserted. Then was war in the gates, and noise of the archers in the places of drawing water.” Danger and delay were often the companions of the traveller. Occasionally a vigorous ruler, like Alfred, succeeded in restoring security to the wayfarer, and proved his success (so said the legend) by hanging up, in defiance of the plunderer, golden armlets on crosses by the roadside. But these intervals of safety were few and far between, and the traveller journeyed, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, “in fear and dread,”
“Because he knew a fearful fiend
Did close behind him tread.”
The man-at-arms in the days of Border-war was a more formidable obstacle to progress than a wilderness of spectres. In the reign of Edward the Confessor the great highway of Watling Street was beset by violent men. If you travelled in the eastern counties, the chances were that you were snapped up by a retainer of Earl Godwin, and if in the district now traversed by the Great Northern Railway, Earl Morcar would in all likelihood arrest your journey, and without so much as asking leave clap a collar round your neck, with his initials and yours scratched rudely upon it, signifying to all men, by those presents, that in future your duty was to tend his swine or rive his blocks. Outlaws, dwelling in the forests or in the deep morass which girded the road, pounced upon the traveller on the causeway, eased him of his luggage if he carried any, and if there was no further occasion for his services, they either let him down easily into the next quagmire, or if they were, for those days, gentlemanly thieves, left him standing, as Justice Shallow has it, like a “forked radish,” to enjoy the summer’s heat or the winter’s cold. The cross and escallop shell of the pilgrim were no protection: “Cucullus non fecit monachum” in the eyes of these minions of the road; or rather, perhaps, the hood gave a new zest to the wrongs done to its wearer by these “uncircumcised Philistines.” Convents, the abodes of men professing at least to be peaceful, were obliged to keep in pay William of Deloraine to mate with Jock of Thirlstane: and ancient citizens were fain to put by their grave habiliments, and “wield old partisans in hands as old.” There is extant an agreement made between Leofstan, Abbot of St. Albans, and certain barons, by which the Abbot