Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1919 — LED WAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT [ARTICLE]

LED WAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Building of Roads Marked Breaking Up of the Ignorance of the Dark Ages. When light began to glimmer, day to break, on the dark ages (as we call them, and thereby impute to them, I thiijk. along with their own | ness. no little of ours, much as the ! British seaman abroad has been- heard t to commiserate “them poor ignorant i foreigners’’)—when daylight began to [.-spread over the dark ages, what was * the first thing to be seen? I will tell ■ you what is the first thing I see. It is the roads.

I see the roads glimmer up out of the morning- twilight with the many men. like ants, coming and going upon them; meeting. passing, overtaking: knights.merchants, carriers; justiciars with their trains, king’s messengers, riding post; afoftt, friars—black, white and gray —pardoners, poor scholars, minstrels, beggar men; pack horses in files; pilgrims bound for Walsingham, Canterbury, 0r.T0.. Southampton, to ship there for Compost el I a and Rome. I see the old Roman roads —Watllng street. Ermine street, Icknleld street, Aketnan street, the Fosse way and tlie rest—hard metaled, built in five layers, from the foundation or pavimentum of ■ firfe enrth hard beaten In, through layprs of hard stones, small stongS-Xhoth. mixed with mortar), pounded nucleus of lime, clay or chalk, brick and tile, up to the paved surface, summum dorsum; one running north through York and branching, as Hadrian had dlverted It, to pelnt at ter point of the Great Wall; another coastxvlse toward Cornwall; a third for Chester and bn to Anglesey; a fourth embanked and through the Cambridgeshire fens; I see the minor network of crossroads. the waterways with their slow YfeighT.—NtrArthurQuiner-CouchTn “Studies In Literature.”