The English road system has been so powerfully affected by these two agencies--the one physical, the other political--as to have become wholly differentiated by them from the systems of the Western Continent. The natural feature then is _the omnipresence of waterways_ throughout the island; and the political feature is domestic peace--that is _the absence since the modern development of roads began (during the last 250 years) of strategical necessities on a large scale_. ii I will take these two things in their order. The way in which the whole history of England has been modified by the presence of water is a topographical point of capital importance to the understanding of the national life. There is no other large island in the world which has rivers in anything like the same proportion as we have, either in number or in disposition. Most of the large islands have no navigable rivers at all. Sicily has none, Iceland has none, nor Crete, nor Cyprus, nor Sardinia, nor Corsica. Not only have we a host of navigable rivers, but they are so disposed that they penetrate the very heart of the country. The Trent, for instance, is the most arresting thing upon the map. It looks almost as though it had been specially designed to make the inmost heart of England penetrable to commerce and travel in the east. The Thames, in the same way, goes right into the heart of southern central England; and even the Severn, the rapidity of which has militated against its modern use, had a considerable use in the past and was an artery in the Middle Ages, even for upward traffic, to the neighbourhood of Wenlock Edge. The great rivers alone, however, do not account for the most of this character. It is the mass of small but navigable streams, both tributary to the main systems and isolated along the coast, which have so profoundly affected our history. If you take one of those outline maps of England with the waterways only marked, such as are sold for use in schools, and plot out the highest point upon a stream to which a fairly loaded boat can penetrate, you will be astonished to find how small a central area is left out. One might say that the whole of England, outside the hill country of the Pennines, the Lakes, and the border, is so penetrated by water carriage that if there were no roads at all its life could, under primitive conditions, be carried on by waterways alone. Now this universal presence of waterways, which meant every opportunity for internal traffic and also for approach from outside the island, has had two effects upon the Road. First, it has made for _diversion_--that is, for the modification of the English Road from a direct to an indirect and sinuous line. Secondly, it has _interrupted_ what would otherwise be main lines of travel in the necessity under which men found themselves of turning aside for the lowest bridge upon each stream.