the Thames and Uriconium on the Severn, the helmeted road-makers of the Roman legions evidently began this great thoroughfare; linking by it camp to camp until they met somewhere perhaps in Staffordshire or Warwickshire. The solidity and permanent character of this road illustrate Roman firmness and strength. It was not a corduroy road, such as the people of our Western States would make over their prairies and swamps. It was made to last for ages, as deep, compact, and solid as if it had been one of the ways leading out of Rome itself. Our host of The Bell, at Tong, said he had taken up a section of it at Oaken Gates, and found it like quarrying the solid rock itself. Many of the slabs of stone laid down were from three to four feet in length and two in depth. These were covered with rubble or broken bits of stone from the same quarry, and must have made a roadway as solid and as perfect as the best city streets of the present day. If the great governments and nations of Christendom could utilize their standing armies as Rome did, or set them to work upon roads, harbours, drainage, ship channels, and the like, the toiling myriads who have to support them would feel the burden lightened. Certainly, the officers of the Roman legions, who superintended these utilitarian works, had as much right to magnify their order and assert its dignity as the
