So you go on mile after mile, and as you tread that line you have in the
horizons that you see, in the very nature and feel of the soil beneath
your feet, in the skies of England above you, the ancient purpose and
soul of this Kingdom. Up this same line went the Clans marching when
they were called Northward to the host; and up this went slow, creaking
wagons with the lead of the Mendips or the tin of Cornwall or the gold
of Wales.
And it is still there; it is still used from place to place as a high
road, it still lives in modern England. There are some of its peers, as
for instance the Ermine Street, far more continuous, and affording
problems more rarely; others like the ridgeway of the Berkshire Downs,
which Rome hardly touched, and of which the last two thousand years has,
therefore, made hardly anything; you may spend a delightful day piecing
out exactly where it crossed the Thames, making your guess at it, and
wondering as you sit there by Streatley Vicarage whether those islands
did not form a natural weir below which lay the ford.
The roads are the most obvious things. There are many more; for
instance, thatch. The same laying of the straw in the same manner, with
the same art, has continued, we may be certain, from a time long before
the beginning of history. See how in the Fen Land they thatch with
reeds, and how upon the Chalk Downs with straw from the Lowlands.
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