that, even on Caesar's invasion, the Britons careered about
in war-chariots, which implies both good roads and some mechanical
skill; but we think it a little too much in historians to ask us to
believe BOTH these views of the condition of our predecessors in the
tight little island; for it is quite clear that a people who had arrived
at the art of coach-making, could not be so very ignorant as not to know
how to build a wall. If it were not for the letters of Cicero, we should
not believe a syllable about the war-chariots that carried amazement
into the hearts of the Romans, even in Kent or Surrey. But we here
boldly declare, that if twenty Ciceros were to make their affidavits to
the fact of a set of outer barbarians, like Galgacus and his troops,
"sweeping their fiery lines on rattling wheels" up and down the
Grampians--where, at a later period, a celebrated shepherd fed his
flocks--we should not believe a word of their declaration. Tacitus, in
the same manner, we should prosecute for perjury.

The Saxons were a superior race, and when the eightsome-reel of the
heptarchy became the _pas-seul_ of the kingdom of England, we doubt not
that Watling Street was kept in passable condition, and that Alfred,
amidst his other noble institutions, invented a highway rate. The
fortresses and vassal towns of the barons, after the Conquest, must have
covered the country with tolerable cross-roads; and even the petty wars
of those steel-clad marauders must have had a good effect in opening new
communications. For how could Sir Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, or Sir
Hildebrand Bras-de-Fer, carry off the booty of their discomfited rival
to their own granaries without loaded tumbrils, and roads fit to pass
over?

Nor would it have been wise in rich abbots and fat monks to leave their
monasteries and abbeys inaccessible to pious pilgrims, who came to
admire thigh-bones of martyred virgins and skulls of beatified saints,
and paid very handsomely for the exhibition. Finally, trade began, and
paviers flourished. The first persons of that illustrious profession
appear, from the sound of the name, to have been French, unless we take
the derivation of a cockney friend of ours, who maintains that the
origin of the word is not the French _pave_, but the indigenous English
pathway. However that may be, we are pretty sure that paving was known
as one of the fine arts in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; for, not to
mention the anecdote of Raleigh and his c