In one of the most notable books of our generation, Mr. Hilaire Belloc has set before us the uses, the influence, the interest, and the fascination of the road. In the course of an exploration of one of those ancient highways which we English have permitted to fall into decay and in part to disappear, he has taken occasion to impress on us the part which the road has played in the spread of civilizing influences. Algeria—roadless and anarchical for centuries, orderly and webbed with roads to-day—may add point to his argument. “More than rivers and more than mountain chains, roads have moulded the political groupings of men. The Alps with a mule-track across them are less of a barrier than fifteen miles of forest or rough land separating one from that track. Religions, which are the principal formers of mankind, have followed the roads only, leaping from city to city and leaving the ‘Pagani,’ in the villages off the road, to a later influence. Consider the series, Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Athens and the Appian Way; Rome, all the tradition of the Ligurian Coast, Marseilles and Lyons. I have read in some man’s book that the last link of that chain was the river Rhone; but this man can never have tried to pull a boat upon the Rhone upstream. It was the Road that laid the train. The Mass reached Lyons before, perhaps, the last disciple of the apostles was dead; in the Forez, just above, four hundred years later, there were most probably offerings at night to the pagan gods of those sombre and neglected hills. And with religions all that is built on them: letters, customs, community of language and idea, have followed the Road, because humanity, which is the matter of religion, must also follow the road it has made. Architecture follows it, commerce of course, all information; it is even so with the poor thin philosophies, each in its little day drifts, for choice, down a road.”[2] Footnote 2: “The Old Road,” 1904, p. 5.