e obvious a thing
is, the more glory there must be in denying it. And deny it they did (or
at least, so I am told), just as they will deny that Thomas a Becket was
a Papist, or that Austerlitz was fought in spite of Trafalgar, or that
the Gospel of St. John is the Gospel of St. John.

Here then, sitting upon this Roman road I considered the nature of such
men, and when I had thought out carefully where the nearest Don might be
at that moment, I decided that he was at least twenty-three miles away,
and I was very glad: for it permitted me to contemplate the road with
common sense and with Faith, which is Common Sense transfigured; and I
could see the Legionaries climbing the hill. I remembered also what a
sight there was upon the down above, and I got upon my horse again to go
and see it.

When one has pushed one's way through the brambles and the rounded great
roots which have grown upon this street--where no man has walked perhaps
for about a thousand years--one gets to the place where it tops the
hill, and here one sees the way in which the line of it was first struck
out. From where one stands, right away like a beam, leading from rise to
rise, it runs to the cathedral town. You see the spot where it enters
the eastern gate of the Roman walls; you see at the end of it, like the
dot upon an "i," the mass of the cathedral. Then, if you turn and look
northward, you see from point to point its taut stretch across the weald
to where, at the very limit of the horizon, there is a gap in the chain
of hills that bars your view.

The strict design of such a thing weighs upon one as might weigh upon
one four great lines of Virgil, or the sight of those enormous stones
which one comes upon, Roman also, in the Algerian sands. The plan of
such an avenue by which to lead great armies and along which to drive
commands argues a mixture of unity and of power as intimate as the lime
and the sand of which these conquerors welded their imperishable cement.
And it does more than this. It suggests swiftness and certitude of aim
and a sort of eager determination which we are slow to connect with
Government, but which certainly underlay the triumph of this people. A
road will give one less trouble if it winds about and feels the contours
of the land. It will pay better if it is of earth and broken stones
instead of being paved, nor would any one aiming at wealth or comfort
alone laboriously raise its level, as the level of this road is rai