It has been contended that we should follow the example of Augustus and Trajan, and employ our troops in the construction of highways. But in that case the soldier must necessarily have an increase of pay; and a kingdom, which was nothing but a province of the Roman Empire, and which is often involved in debt, can rarely engage in such undertakings as the Roman Empire accomplished without difficulty. It is a very commendable practice in the Low Countries, to require the payment of a moderate toll from all carriages, in order to keep the public roads in proper repair. The burden is a very light one. The peasant is relieved from the old system of vexation and oppression, and the roads are in such fine preservation as to form even an agreeable continued promenade. Canals are much more useful still. The Chinese surpass all other people in these works, which require continual attention and repair. Louis XIV., Colbert, and Riquet, have immortalized themselves by the canal which joins the two seas. They have never been as yet imitated. It is no difficult matter to travel through a great part of France by canals. Nothing could be more easy in Germany than to join the Rhine to the Danube; but men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness. ROD. The Theurgists and ancient sages had always a rod with which they operated. Mercury passes for the first whose rod worked miracles. It is asserted that Zoroaster also bore a great rod. The rod of the ancient Bacchus was his Thyrsus, with which he separated the waters of the Orontes, the Hydaspus, and the Red Sea. The rod of Hercules was his club. Pythagoras was always represented with his rod. It is said it was of gold; and it is not surprising that, having a thigh of gold, he should possess a rod of the same metal. Abaris, priest of the hyperborean Apollo, who it is pretended was contemporary with Pythagoras, was still more famous for his rod. It was indeed only of wood, but he traversed the air astride of it. Porphyry and Iamblichus pretend that these two grand Theurgists, Abaris and Pythagoras, amicably exhibited their rods to each other. The rod, with sages, was at all times a sign of their superiority. The sorcerers of the privy council of Pharaoh at first effected as many feats with their rods as Moses with his own. The judicious Calmet informs us, in his "Dissertation on the Book of Exodus," that "these operations of the Magi were not miracles, properly speaking, but metamorphoses, viz.: singular and difficult indeed, but nevertheless neither contrary to nor above the laws of nature." The rod of Moses had the superiority, which it ought to have, over those of the Chotins of Egypt.