From Wootton Bassett on to Cricklade I have now no recollection of the road, beyond that we caught a glimpse on the way of a delightful old Tudor, or Elizabethan, home of many mullioned windows and a great porch that spoke a welcome--a picture rather than a place. Of Cricklade I have a pleasant memory of a stone-built, old, and grey-roofed town, with little of life about it, and of a tall canopied cross in the churchyard at the farther end of its long street. If Cricklade has more to show I missed seeing it. So quiet the town was, it looked like a town asleep and not anxious to wake again. Its long street was free of traffic, excepting for a solitary cart; not even a dog troubled to bark at us. But you cannot see or understand any place by simply driving through it; these, therefore, are but passing impressions. On a long journey you have not time to loiter everywhere you would, or the journey would take a whole year, perchance even more; already I had loitered long at Wootton Bassett, and Cricklade looked less attractive. After Cricklade we came upon a level, long stretch of straight road, so straight indeed that it suggested Roman origin, and on consulting my map I found it there marked "Roman road from Cirencester to Speen" (where the Speen alluded to is, or was, I am not sure, but there is one in Berkshire and one in Buckinghamshire, neither of importance nowadays). This straight road extending far as the eye could trace with all revealed ahead, nothing left to imagination, is not an attractive one, except, perhaps, to an engineer's eye, but it has a look of set purpose that impresses the mind; it concerns itself with nothing but its destination, turning not aside for this or that; a road of importance, or rather once it was. This very road, of old, the Roman Legions trod; that takes one back some centuries! The spirit of the past still seems to linger over it; it impressed itself on me. In this old land history greets you volumes deep; you cannot escape it. "Happy is the country that has no history," runs the ancient proverb; and true though the proverb may be, to travel in I prefer a country with a storied past--an eventful past that lends an interest to the present. When touring in California, in spite of its glorious scenery, I felt a vacancy; why, I could not imagine for some time; then I realised it was the absence of any ancient history, legend, or tradition connected with anything I saw beyond poor Indian legend, for something more than mere scenery is needed to satisfy the reflective mind.