It enters Leicestershire in the neighbourhood of Rockingham; continues a strait road for many miles till it nearly reaches Leicester, and passing thro' the town it is found to leave the county near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The other road, called the _Via_ _Fossata_ or Fosse, always known, and every where remarkable, traverses the island in a north-east direction, from near Grimsby on the coast of Lincolnshire, passes thro' Bath, and terminates at Seaton, a village situated on the coast of Devonshire, a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles. This road enters Leicesteshire at a place called Seg's Hill, on the wolds, or antiently wild and uncultivated parts of the county; from thence it passes the village of Thurmaston and approaches the East gates of Leicester, by the street called the Belgrave Gate. On the south-west of the town it is again recognized in the Narborough road, and from that village it proceeds again a solitary lane till it enters Warwickshire at High Cross, where it crosses the no less celebrated Roman road, the Watling-Street. It is well known that in the formation of these roads, the Romans spared no cost and labour. From the remains of some of them it appears that upon a bed of sand they spread a coating of gravel, upon which the pebbles, and sometimes hewn or squared stones were laid, firmly compacted together in a bed of cement. This, we have reason to believe, was the structure of such of the roads in this island as are distinguished by the title of _Street_, a word derived from the Latin _Strata_, meaning formed of layers. But such pains were not, it is probable, taken in all cases; and from the name of one of the roads passing thro' Leicester, the _Fosse_, an abbreviation of the Latin _Via Fossata_, meaning the way ditched, or dug, we cannot but conclude that it was a road raised by the spade and formed with a rampart, and probably covered with gravel in the manner of our present turnpike roads. The same may also be said of the _Via Divana_, whose rampart, now covered with grass, the ingenious discoverers observed in many places. When the Saxons subdued this island, after the departure of the Romans, to preserve a ready communication between distant places formed no part of then rude and simple policy. Hence the best roads of the Romans were neglected by them, and since the Romans had either forbidden, or the inclination of the Britons had dissuaded them from erecting villages on the line of public roads, those roads became useless, and their lasting materials are only to be found, tho' not distinguished, in the foundations of the neighbouring habitations. As it would always be more easy to carry away the materials of a Roman road than dig for them in a quarry, it has happened that those materials have been in general so intirely removed, as to leave almost no where any other trace, than history and tradition, of their existence.