From many points of view the modern French may be regarded as representing most fully among the peoples of Europe the Romans of the Empire. The sturdy physique and unrivalled endurance, the unsurpassed gallantry and devotion to duty of their soldiers, recall the qualities of the legions. Their absorbing pride in and love for their native land is an echo of the tremendous sentiment of Roman citizenship. The logical coherence of their legal system is frankly based on the jurisprudence of Rome. Their faculty, for producing the most perfect work in the more refined forms of engineering and the manufacture of delicate tools and machines is a natural development of Roman thoroughness in constructive matters. And like the Romans they are the slaves of convention. Everything Roman was according to a settled plan. The empire was a vast aggregation of cities which aspired to be little Romes. From the borders of Scotland to the fringe of the Sahara, from Portugal to Asia Minor, cities were raised more or less, as circumstances permitted, fulfilling the conventional design; conventional not only in town-planning, and in the scheme of public buildings, but in the architecture of private houses and the most minute details of decoration. We grow weary in the museums of to-day of the repetition of the same motives in sculpture, in mosaic and in bronze-work. The only variety is in the quality of the execution. So, too, must a French town, a French house, a Frenchman’s manners and a Frenchwoman’s clothes be in accordance with a sealed pattern deposited in the temple of the great goddess Comme-il-faut. The French are the most law-abiding of nations, but their laws are _les convenances_. The occasional licence exhibited in their art and literature and morals is but the effort of a few eccentric individuals, not always of unmixed French breeding, to break through the trammels in which the mass of the race is bound. In this country the French have set themselves from the first to carry on the Roman tradition in the making of roads. In a land which for twelve centuries has known little but destruction and decay they have built, as the Romans built before them, solid, uncompromising, inevitable highways, roads on which armies may march secure of ambush, and almost regardless of the hostility of natural forces;—roads which create not only peace, but prosperity in their course. The road is one of the most effective as it is one of the most permanent works of man. In England quite a large proportion of our main roads still follows the lines laid down by the Romans. We are ourselves rather road-menders than road-makers. Our genius finds its work in other directions. We have been in South Africa far longer than the French in North Africa, and what have we to show there at all comparable with the Algerian roads?