The Swedes have long had the character of being excellent road engineers. Good rock is very generally met with in Sweden; and they spare no pains in break ing it small. Their roads are spacious and smooth ; and travelling in all their principal lines, is as easy as on the best roads of England. Where the country has been opened in Russia, the roads arc formed on scien tific principles ; but they bear no comparison to the extent of that vast empire. Hence the unwieldy form of such a country, and the application of the Abbi: Raynal's remark, " Let us travel over all the countries of the earth, and wherever we shall find no facility of trading from a city to a town, and from a village to a hamlet, we may pronounce the people to be barbarous ; and we shall only be deceived respecting the degree of barbarism." Roads connected with Mexico and Peru have long existed ; and among the other peculiarities of these states, the description of the excellent condition of some of their ancient roads has excited the surprise of Euro peans. But the advanced state of this department, like many other earlier accounts of the New World, has been greatly exaggerated. More recent travellers have not been able to discover Montaigne's famous road from Quito to Cursoe, said to have been 300 leagues in length, and 25 paces in breadth, constructed with immensely large stones, with a running stream, and a row of trees upon each side.
In the cultivated parts of North America, the roads have latterly been much improved ; and sonic of the prin cipal lines are similar to the generality of English roads, which in construction they resemble. Along some of the morasses and inland parts of the country roads of some extent are actually made with logs of timber dis posed as railways. For bridges, particularly of timber and catenarian arches with chains, the Americans have a considerable name, and have lately executed works of this kind of great extent.
In thus briefly noticing the roads of various countries, thin object has not been so much with the expectation of instructing, as with the view of pressing a subject, upon the notice of travellers, which more or less con cerns every one, that they may be induced to take notes in the course of their journeys in foreign countries upon a topic regarding which conversational remarks are so common, though few of them reach the public in a pre cise and tangible form.
In giving an account of the state of British roads and highways, we may take some retrospect of their advancement to a system. The sites of our ancient towns and cities were, for obvious reasons, chosen upon the wooded banks of rivers, where a supply of water and of fuel were conveniently within the reach of the inhabitants, and no doubt, at the period of their foundation, apparently in great abundance. Though the lapse of time may have been sufficient to clear away the forest, and the river or lake may now fall short of the increased wants of their surrounding po pulation ; yet in every instance, the evidence of the early existence of these may be traced in the imme diate vicinity of all towns and populous districts. The change of circumstances produced by the gradual re moval of fuel and building materials from the early set tlers is very striking, and has of course given rise to the extension and improvement of interior communi cation. At a remote period, when each family formed a kind of community within itself for providing the ne cessaries of life, it is obvious that there could then be little communication with distant parts of the country, and there was therefore no use for roads, which long after the establishment of towns, must have continu ed in the state of footpaths and horsetracks. The
bulky articles of fuel and building materials are likely to have given the first idea of a sledge, the precursor of the wheel-carriage, and to have led ultimately to the construction of something like a road. As before noticed, our first roads were the military ways of the Romans; and even after the experience of ages, this de partment cannot by any means he said to be complete in all its details.
The early roads of all new countries are therefore generally directed to the elevated grounds, with a view to avoid the marshes of the valley s, answering very well for bridle-tracks, but extremely inconvenient as carriage-ways: hence, as the habits of a country change, and the lower grounds are drained, the roads progres sively get upon lower levels, and as they approach large towns and capital cities, become more spacious, and are made to diverge in all directions. As wealth and establishments are necessarily the precursors of improvements, we are naturally led to look to Eng land for the earliest advancement in the road depart ment. In the year 1285, we find the first law respect ing roads and highways, by which it is enacted, that the proprietors of the land shall enlarge and " breadthen the ways where bushes, woods, and ditches be," to prevent robberies, and a train of evils to which the lieges in those days were thereby subject. In 1346 it was enacted, that Edward III. should be enabled to levy a toll on carts and carriages passing from St. Giles' in the Fields to Temple Bar; and also by the road which is now Gray's Inn Lane, both of which had then become impassable. But the famous act of Henry VIII. was the first measure of a general nature upon w hich all the after-improvements and extension of the road sys tem were founded. By this act, the respective parishes were intrusted with the care of the roads, and survey ors appointed to be annually elected to take charge of them. It soon, however, appeared, that the funds allotted for this purpose were insufficient, and as the traffic of the country extended, the roads became hardly passable, while the several trusts were in a state of bankruptcy. The next measure was therefore to make them all turnpike, and toll bars were according!, set up, and those in future who used the roads, were made to contribute directly towards their support, a system which, under various modifications, has hitherto been persevered in. Now the whole face of the country is laid open with carriage ways, placed under various trusts or commissions, and although they had become very general, yet entirely new lines are occasionally formed, besides a constant improvement in the line of draught of the old lines, so that it may truly be said of road-making that it has no end. In England, the agriculture of the country got into a formed and im proved state long before wheel-carriages came into ge neral use; and, in this way, the practice of going over the hill is still too often persevered in, when a level, frequently as short, would be obtained by going round its base.