the first pavier, we fear, is unknown, unless we could identify him with Triptolemus, who was a great improver of Rhodes; but it is the fate of all the greatest benefactors of their kind to be neglected, and in time forgotten.  The first regularly defined paths were probably footways—­the first carriages broad-wheeled.  No record remains of what materials were used for filling up the ruts; so it is likely, in those simple times when enclosure acts were unknown, that the cart was seldom taken in the same track.  As houses were built, and something in the shape of streets began to be established, the access to them must have been more attended to.  A mere smoothing of the inequalities of the surface over which the oxen had to be driven, that brought the grain home on the enormous plaustra of the husbandman, was the first idea of a street, whose very name is derived from stratum, levelled.  As experience advanced, steps would be taken to prevent the softness of the road from interrupting the draught.  A narrow rim of stone, just wide enough to sustain the wheel, would, in all probability, be the next improvement; and only when the gentle operations of the farm were exchanged for war, and the charger had to be hurried to the fight, with all the equipments necessary for an army, great roads were laid open, and covered with hard materials to sustain the wear and tear of men and animals.  Roads were found to be no less necessary to retain a conquest than to make it; and the first true proof of the greatness of Rome was found in the long lines of military ways, by which she maintained her hold upon the provinces.  You may depend on it, that no expense was spared in keeping the glorious street that led up her Triumphs to the Capitol in excellent repair.  All the nations of the Orbis Antiquus ought to have trembled when they saw the beginning of the Appian road.  It led to Britain and Persia, to Carthage and the White Sea.  The Britons, however, in ancient days, seem to have been about the stupidest and least enterprising of all the savages hitherto discovered.  After an intercourse of four hundred years with the most polished people in the world, they continued so miserably benighted, that they had not even acquired masonic knowledge enough to repair a wall.  The rampart raised by their Roman protectors between them and the Picts and Scots, became in some places dilapidated.  The unfortunate natives had no idea how to mend the breach, and had to send once more for their auxiliaries.  If such their state in regard to masonry, we cannot suppose that their skill in road-making was very great; and yet we are told that, even on Caesar’s invasion, the Britons careered about in war-chariots, which implies both good roads and some mechanical skill; but we think it a little too much in historians to ask us to believe BOTH these views of the condition of our predecessors in the tight little island; for it is quite clear that a people who had arrived at