e
title of _Street_, a word derived from the Latin _Strata_, meaning formed
of layers. But such pains were not, it is probable, taken in all cases;
and from the name of one of the roads passing thro' Leicester, the
_Fosse_, an abbreviation of the Latin _Via Fossata_, meaning the way
ditched, or dug, we cannot but conclude that it was a road raised by the
spade and formed with a rampart, and probably covered with gravel in the
manner of our present turnpike roads. The same may also be said of the
_Via Divana_, whose rampart, now covered with grass, the ingenious
discoverers observed in many places.

When the Saxons subdued this island, after the departure of the Romans,
to preserve a ready communication between distant places formed no part
of then rude and simple policy. Hence the best roads of the Romans were
neglected by them, and since the Romans had either forbidden, or the
inclination of the Britons had dissuaded them from erecting villages on
the line of public roads, those roads became useless, and their lasting
materials are only to be found, tho' not distinguished, in the
foundations of the neighbouring habitations. As it would always be more
easy to carry away the materials of a Roman road than dig for them in a
quarry, it has happened that those materials have been in general so
intirely removed, as to leave almost no where any other trace, than
history and tradition, of their existence.

From the departure of the Romans in 445, to the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the roads of this Island received little or no
improvement from the legislative powers, except by an order in the reign
of Henry the second, that roads should be cleared of woods and made open
that travellers might have leisure, if they should find it prudent, to
prepare to resist the almost armies of robbers which were spread over the
face of almost every county. Roads, being no longer regulated by any
system, to pass from place to place so as to avoid as well as might be
the inconveniences of woods, bogs, and sloughs, became the only business
of the traveller. It was thus by accident the line of our present roads
was formed, and to this their frequent circuits and other inconveniences
are owing.

During the period above mentioned they were in general so bad as to be
useless for the passage of any other carriages than carts, and for these
only in the summer season; so that the people inhabiting the same country
as the Britons, who