have begun at Totness, in Devonshire, and to have proceeded by Bristol, Cirencester, Chipping Norton, Coventry, Leicester, and Newark, to Lincold. Watling-street is said to have commenced at Dover, to have proceeded thence through Kent, by Canterbury, to London; then to have passed towards the north, over Hampstead Heath, to Edgeware, St. Alban's, Dunstable, Stoney Stratford, in Northamptonshire, along the west side of Leicestershire, crossing the Fosse near Bosworth, and hence to York and Chester-le-Street, in the county of Durham. Some carry it, in later times, from this point as far as to Lanark and Falkirk, in Scotland; and others even to Caithness, at the extremity of the island. The Ermine-street is understood to have run from St. David's, in Wales, to Southampton, crossing the Fosse between Cirencester and Gloucester. The Ichenild is supposed by some to have been so called from having begun in the country of the Iceni, on the east coast. It is commonly thought to have crossed Watling-street, at Dunstable, and thence to have taken a north-easterly direction, through Staffordshire, to the west side of the island. The utmost, however, that can be conceded in regard to these roads being of British origin is, that lines of communication in such directions may have existed in the time of the Britons. It was the Romans, undoubtedly, by whom they were transformed into those elaborate and almost monumental works which their remains declare them to have been. Roads constructed to last for ever were laid down by that extraordinary people, as the first foundations of their empire, wherever they planted themselves, and seem to have been considered by them as the indispensable veins and arteries of all civilization. In Britain it is probable that they began their operations with the great native high roads, the course of which would be at least accommodated to the situation of the principal towns and other more important localities throughout the country. These they no doubt levelled, straightened, and paved, so as to fit them not only for the ordinary purposes of pedestrian and carriage communication, but also for the movements of large bodies of
