it, the more impressed one must become, for there is, in the long grades and stretches and ponderous bridges, that "masterful suggestion of a serious purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart," of which Kenneth Grahame speaks; "and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for the open downs, it seems to declare its contempt for adventitious trappings to catch the shallow-pated."[1] For long distances, this road "of the sterner sort" will be, so far as its immediate surface is concerned, what the tender mercies of the counties through which it passes will allow, but at certain points, the traveler comes out unexpectedly upon the ancient roadbed, for in many places the old macadamized bed is still doing noble duty.
Nothing is more striking than the ponderous stone bridges which carry the roadbed over the waterways. It is doubtful if there are on this continent such monumental relics of the old stone bridge builders' art. Not only such massive bridges as those at Big Crossings (Smithfield, Penn-
- ↑ Grahame's The Golden Age, p. 155.
