They are buttressed on the outer edge
by similar blocks set four or five inches lower, and themselves
forming one side of the solidly paved water-way or gutter
which was constructed as part of every such road on a steep
gradient, to secure it from abrasion by flood or sudden rush
from heavy rainfall. There are many excellent examples of
this in the Forest of Dean. We are on the watch, however,
for some part where the _"margines"_ remain on _both_ sides
of the way. At last we come upon such a place, and alighting
from the carriage we strain the tape measure across at two
or three points. The mean we find to be thirteen feet and
seven inches. As the Roman foot was just over three per cent.
less than ours, this means that the Romans built the road
here for a fourteen-foot way. So far as I have examined
their roads they were always constructed to certain standard
widths--seven feet, nine feet, eleven feet, thirteen feet,
fourteen feet, or fifteen feet.

It is not too much to say that most of the main roads in
England are Roman; but the very continuity of their use has
caused this to be overlooked. All the _old_ roads in the
Forest of Dean have been pronounced by the Ordnance Surveyors,
after close examination, to bear evidences of Roman paving,
although for some centuries since then wheel carriages went
out of use here!

There is a vivid description in Statius of the making of
an imperial-road through such another Forest (if not indeed
this very one!) especially worth recalling here, because it
was written at very nearly the period of the building of
this track over which we are journeying; _i. e.,_ near the
end of the first century.

The poet stands on a hill from which he can see the effect
of the united work of the army of men who are engaged in
the construction: perhaps a hundred thousand forced laborers,
under the control of the legionary soldiers who act as the
engineers. He makes us see and hear with him the tens of
thousands of stone cutters and the ring of their tools squaring
the "setts"; and then one platoon after another stepping forward
and laying down its row of stones followed by rank after rank
of men with the paviours' rammers, which rise and fall at
the sweep of the band-master's rods, keeping time in a stately
music as they advance; the continuous falling and crashing
of the trees as other thousands of hands ply the axes along
the lines, that creep, slowly, but visibly, on through the