_Roads._――I was at first disposed to make some few exceptions to this sweeping commendation of the excellence of Roman roads, by referring simply to my general impressions of the comparative perfection of these and modern works of the same character; but on revising the facts by an examination of authorities, I have been led to strike out the exceptions. Napoleon’s great road over the Simplon, the great northern road from London to Edinburgh, and some similar works in Austria, seemed, before comparison, in extent, durability, and in their triumphs over nature, to equal, if not surpass, the famed Roman WAYS; but a reference to the minute descriptions of these mighty works, sets the ancient far above the modern art. The Via Appia, “_regina viarum_,” (_Papinius Statius in Surrentino Pollii_,) stretching three hundred and seventy miles from Rome to the bounds of Italy, built of squared stone, as hard as flints, and brought from a great distance, so laid together that for miles they seemed but a single stone, and so solidly fixed, that at this day, the road is as entire in many places as when first made,――the Via Flaminia, built in the same solid manner,――the Via Aemilia, five hundred and twenty-seven miles long,――the Via Portuensis, with its enormous double cause-way,――the vaulted roads of Puzzuoli and Baiae, hewn half a league through the solid rock, and the thousand remains of similar and contemporaneous works in various parts of the world, where some are in use even to this day, as far better than any modern highway,――all these are enough to show the inquirer, that the commendation given to these works in the text, is not over-wrought nor unmerited. The minute details of the construction of these extraordinary works, with many other interesting particulars, may be much more fully learned in Rees’s Cyclopædia, Articles _Way_, _Via_, _Road_, _Appian_, &c.