The reaction of the Road upon society, its political reaction, has many other departments. For instance, in the communication of ideas the trace of a road will give you the advance of some religious development otherwise inexplicable. I have pointed out through more than one historical allusion in other work how the spread of the Christian religion may be directly followed along the trace of the chief Roman roads, and especially of the great trunk road of the Empire running from Egypt to the Wall in Northumberland. You have only to make a list of names standing on that trunk road to show that it corresponds to a list of dates and names in the story of the conversion of Europe--Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, Athens, Brindisi, Naples, Rome, Lyons, Autun, Canterbury, London, St. Albans. Again, a road which for some reason has become established along an artificial line, a line not directly dictated by the formula of minimum effort, will “canalize” traffic, so that, even when an alternative and better way has been provided, institutions and towns and all that goes for human activity will have taken root along the old way and all history will be deflected by the deflection of the Road. We have a very interesting example of this here in England in the case of the great road to the north-west. In the earliest times Chester was the one terminal and London the other. Chester was the port for Ireland, and, because it was much easier going along the coast than over the mountains, Chester was also the base point of departure for the penetration of North Wales. Chester was also the great garrison whence troops could be detached for the Lancashire plain and for the western end of the Wall. Nevertheless, Chester, though it maintained for centuries its inevitable importance, had a rival in the Roman town of Uriconium, under the Wrekin: one of the very few Roman towns which have disappeared--though it has its modern counterpart in Shrewsbury. The campaigns against the Welsh were based for hundreds of years as much on this middle section of Shrewsbury as on the northern one of Chester. Finally, when modern engineering made possible a direct trajectory through the mountains, this middle Shrewsbury section fixed the Holyhead road, which would otherwise have gone round by Chester. The main railway system to the north-west, as we know, has been compelled to follow the coast, and but for the deflection of the ancient road round by Shrewsbury that road would have done exactly what the modern railway does. Now, why was there this strange bend westward and southward towards Shrewsbury in the road making ultimately for Chester? It was because, when the Roman Empire was at the height of its material power, when things were working best and public works were most energetically created and maintained, _the Romans had not fully conquered the North_.