tem of road-making into the city.

Many evils were certainly got rid of by this alteration--the jolting
motion from stone to stone--the slipperiness and unevenness of the
road--and the chance, in case of an accident, of contesting the hardness
of your skull with a mass of stone, which seemed as if it were made on
purpose for knocking out people's brains. For some time contentment sat
smiling over the city. But, as "man never is, but always to be, blest,"
perfect happiness appeared not to be secured even by Macadam. Ruts began
to be formed--rain fell, and mud was generated at a prodigious rate;
repairs were needed, and the road for a while was rough and almost
impassable. Then it was found out that the change had only led to a
different _kind_ of noise, instead of destroying it altogether; and the
perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones
at the top, or ploughing through the wet foundation, was hardly an
improvement on the music arising from the jolts and jerks along the
causeway. Men's minds got confused in the immensity of the uproar, and
deafness became epidemic. In winter, the surface of Macadam formed a
series of little lakes, resembling on a small scale those of Canada; in
summer, it formed a Sahara of dust, prodigiously like the great desert.
Acres of the finest alluvial clay floated past the shops in autumn; in
spring, clouds of the finest sand were wafted among the goods, and
penetrated to every drawer and wareroom. And high over all, throughout
all the main highways of commerce--the Strand--Fleet Street--Oxford
Street--Holborn--raged a storm of sound, that made conversation a matter
of extreme difficulty without such stentorian an effort as no ordinary
lungs could make. As the inhabitants of Abdera went about sighing from
morning to night, "Love! love!" so the persecuted dwellers in the great
thoroughfares wished incessantly for cleanliness! smoothness! silence!

"Abra was present when they named her name," and, after a few gropings
after truth--a few experiments that ended in nothing--a voice was heard
in the city, that streets could be paved with wood. This was by no means
a discovery in itself; for in many parts of the country ingenious
individuals had laid down wooden floors upon their farm-yards; and, in
other lands, it was a very common practice to use no other material for
their public streets. But, in London, it was new; and all that was
wanted, was science to use the mater