For instance, Telford himself had suggested--and there was nearly achieved--a reformed stretch of the Great North Road between Peterborough and York on a straight line, avoiding the windings of the old trace, and twenty miles shorter: worthy to rank in every way with the great roads of the Continent. This, had it been realized, might well have proved only the first of a great number of similar constructions, until we should have had all the great centres of England united in the same fashion and a habit of broad, straight, and excellent roads established. Unfortunately, a great historical accident intervened to sidetrack the whole business. It was an example of the way in which the advantages of spontaneity and inventiveness, making normally for the benefit of the community as a whole, will, if there is no central direction, do incidental hurt which has later to be repaired, if at all, at great expense of energy. The reason we have to-day the innumerable narrow winding roads of England, the lack of any general system, the absence of any system of good roads from London to the ports (to this day half the exits from London are blocked by absurd “bottle necks,” the most notorious of which, of course, is that on the West road, which is now at last being remedied), is that the English genius produced the locomotive. v Stephenson’s great revolution was begun in 1829. The great Holyhead Road was completed in 1830. The coincidence of dates is significant. England developed immediately an immense system of railways. Not only was she twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in the business, but she alone, for a long time, could produce railways. The railways on the Continent had to be built often by English engineers and always upon an English model. The transformation which this effected in the national life was so rapid that it warped judgment. Men began to talk as though the road would fall out of use. It was the same sort of exaggeration as led people about ten years ago to tell us that shortly horses would no longer be seen in the streets of London or even on the country roads.