Secondly. The method of surveying, tracing, and laying out extensive lines of road.
Thirdly. Road-mak:ng. embracing some consideration of its principles; drainage, slopes, cuttings, and embankments ; the value and proper use of different kinds of material.
And lastly. Some account of patents taken out by ingenious individuals for improvements on roads.
Ilietory.—We are but little acquainted with the municipal affairs of the Greeks, and other nations who in early times inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean ; considerations on their means of intercommunication, there fore, must be of necessity conjectural We are told, however, that the senate of Athens watched over the stale of the public roads; and that the Lacedemo nitwits and Thebans confided the care of them to eminent men ; but no remains of these works have reached the present day, to enable us to judge how these eminent persons discharged the duties entrusted to them. The magnificent works which the Greeks have bequeathed to us, bear testimony to the grandeur of their genius, and the refinement of the most elegant taste. They command the admiration, and will ever excite the wonder, of posterity. That the roads and highways of such a people were unworthy of them, may perhaps be attributed to the limited extant of their territory, and to the absence of com mercial enterprise. The Persians and Egyptians attained to a very high state of civilisation, and their public works were on a scale of gigantic magnitude, requiring a concentration of resources scarcely attainable without the facilities of good roads : but it remains for some future Belzoni to discover, amidst the mouldering mummy-dust of the Pyramids, the hieroglyphical reports of some Egyptian Board of Trust. It is, however, to a commercial people, that posterity is indebted for that improvement in the construction of roads, which endures even to the present day. To the Carthaginians is generally attributed the invention of paved roads ; and the readiness of the Romans to follow the example of the rival state does honour to the Roman name. The insatiable ambition of Rome led her to grasp the sovereignty of the world ; and her legions, ever victorious, extended their conquests to the utmost limits of the earth. Happy was it for the barbarous nations who sunk under her resistless yoke, that civilisation and the arts, following the armies of the conquerors, improved the condition of the conquered, and in some measure recompensed them for the loss of their freedom. The wise policy of the Ionians taught
them to lay open the subdued countries by roads, which might afford an easy mode of transport for their troops and supplies. In accordance with this design, they constructed the great roads, known to us as the Via Appia, extending from Rome to Brundusnim, about 300 miles ; the Via Aurelia, leading from the Aurelian gate to Milan, the key to Gaul and the North of Europe ; the Via Flaminia, and others, varying in extent and importance, but forming im mense trunks, or main lines, from which branches ramified in every conceivable direction. In Italy alone this great people constrneted above 14,000 miles of roads. Under Augustus were completed the great roads, with which Gaul was every where intersected. Of these roads a writer in the French Encycloptedia. under the head " Chemin," observes, "Four of these are remarkable for their length, and the difficulty of the country ; one traversed the mountains of Auvergne, and penetrated to the bottom of Aquitaine; another was extended to the Rhine at the mouth of the Meuse, and followed the course of the river to the German Ocean; the third crossed Burgundy, Champave, and Picardy, and elided at Boulogne-sur-Mer ; the fourth extended abng the Rhone, entered the bottom of Languedoc, and terminated at Marseilles : from these roads there were numberless branch roads, leading to Tr eves, Stras , Belgrade, Ike." In Britain some remains of the Roman roads are yet . ; at Chester, the Castrum of the Romans, remnants of the old Roman pavement are frequently discovered, when the superinciunbent soil, of several feet deep, has been removed. In Scotland, a portion of Roman causeway may still be seen leading from Musselbinh Bay to Abercorn, or the Frith of Forth. "The Roman roads," says Mr. " ran nearly in direct lines ; newt.' obstructions were removed or overcome by the efforts of labour or art, whether they consisted of marshes, lakes, rivers, or mountains. In fiat districts the middle part of the road was raised into a terrace..