It is with sincere satisfaction that we turn from the monotonous details of war to the arts of peace; and though it is usually said that the stain of blood can never be wiped out, we are glad to find that the marks and traces of discord are doubtful and few, while the evidences of the nobler pursuits of man are numerous and genuine. Among the most enduring monuments of the art and industry of the Romans, may still be traced the remains of the celebrated Via Appia, or Appian Way, the secret for the formation of which would be invaluable to the inhabitants of our large towns, and particularly to the Paving Boards of the Metropolis. While parts of the Via Appia remain perfect after upwards of twenty centuries, the streets of London are torn to pieces year after year; and it might melt a heart of stone--if stone possessed a heart--to see the granite continually disturbed by the remorseless pickaxe. The Via Appia was constructed of large blocks placed very closely together; and though modern Paving Boards have done their best by laying their heads together to imitate the plan, success has never rewarded their labours. Not less wonderful than the road of Appius, was the aqueduct that bore his name, and which had solved the question so apparently incapable of solution in our own times, of the means of securing a supply of water to a great Metropolis. Though water was not commonly drunk by the Romans as it is by ourselves, and though the Tiber was purity itself compared with the Thames, the liquid was so clearly or rather so thickly undrinkable, that a supply was brought from a distance of eight miles, in the manner we have mentioned. While all admit the grandeur of the aqueducts of ancient Rome, objection has been made to their construction as a needless expense; and it has been said, that their lofty arches proved only the height to which folly and extravagance could be carried. Pipes have been suggested as capable of answering every useful purpose; but considering the difficulty of obtaining them sufficiently large, of keeping them always free from obstruction, and other obvious disadvantages, it is doubtful whether the pipe, after payment of the piper, would prove so economical in the main. The aqueduct, indeed, has been recently adopted on a large scale, by a people not likely to retrograde in arts and sciences, though the rapidity with which they go a-head may cause them to run through the whole circle of ingenuity, till the most modern invention, arriving at the same point as the most ancient, affords an illustration of the meeting of extremes. New York now receives its supply of water through an aqueduct,[33] carried on solid masonry, over valleys and rivers, under hills and tunnels, for a distance of forty miles; a proof that when a city has the will to obtain pure water, there is always a way--though it may be forty miles in length--for getting what is required.