The Road and the Roadside

The development of the means of communication between different communities, peoples, and races has ever been coexistent with the progress of civilization. Lord Macaulay declares that of all inventions, the alphabet and printing-press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially. 'The road', Bushnell says, 'is that physical sign or symbol by which you will best understand any age or people. If they have no roads, they are savages; for the road is the creation of man and a type of civilized society. If you wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going into universities and libraries, something also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches or in them, but quite as much by looking at he roads; for if there is any motion in society, the road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact.