I have just now the favour of your letter by express, with an account of the Rebels’ approach near your city. The spirit and resolution with which you exert yourselves is very commendable, and I hope will contribute to disappoint the Rebels of any design they may have formed against you. ..... _I cannot follow them, the way they may probably take being impassable for Artillery_ ..... but I hope to meet them in Lancashire, and make them repent of their rashness. ... I wish you all imaginable success, And am, Gentlemen, your Most obedient humble servant, GEORGE WADE.[35] [Sidenote: THE IMPORTANCE OF MILITARY ROADS.] Thus, for want of a military road across the Isthmus, the importance of which had been perceived by the Romans sixteen centuries previously, the safety of the kingdom was perilled, and a hostile force permitted to pour itself into the heart of England. After such terrible warnings, government at last interfered, and an act of Parliament was passed which set forth in the preamble:— Whereas the making and keeping a free and open communication between the city of Carlisle and the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by a road for the passage of troops, horses, and carriages, at all times of the year, would be of great use and service to the public, and it hath been found by experience, that the want of such road, passage, and communication, hath been attended with great inconvenience and danger to this kingdom. ....: Be it enacted, &c. The road now known in the district by the name of the Military Road was accordingly made at the public expense. It is not a little remarkable that it takes precisely the track which the engineers of Rome had so many centuries before selected. In the map of the Wall which accompanies this work, the modern military road is delineated.