stringers is
required, and a thin layer of sand or soil being placed over all, the
road is made; and, as the material for construction is carried along as
the work progresses, the rapidity of execution is astonishing. When
completed, it is as smooth as a bowling-green. The only objection I ever
heard to these roads is, that the jarring sensation produced by them is
very injurious to the horses' legs; but it can hardly be thought that,
if the cart were up to the axle and the horse up to the belly-band in a
good clay soil, any advantage would be derived from such a primitive
state of things. Taking an average, the roads may be said to last from
eight to ten years, and cost about L330 a mile. Those in Canada are
often made much broader, so as to enable two vehicles to pass abreast,
and their cost is a little above L400 a mile. The toll here is about
three-farthings a mile per horse. They have had the good sense to avoid
the ridiculous wheel-tollage to which we adhere at home with a tenacity
only equalled by its folly, as if a two-wheeled cart, with a ton weight
of cargo, drawn by a Barclay and Perkinser, did not cut up a road much
more than the little four-wheel carriage of the clergyman's wife, drawn
by a cob pony, and laden with a tin of soup or a piece of flannel for
some suffering parishioner. But as our ancestors adopted this system "in
the year dot, before one was invented," I suppose we shall bequeath the
precious legacy to our latest posterity, unless some "Rebecca League,"
similar to Taffy's a few years since, be got up on a grand national
scale, in which case tolls may, perhaps, be included in the tariff of
free-trade. Until that auspicious event take place,--for I confess to an
ever-increasing antipathy to paying any gate,--we might profit in some
of our bleak and dreary districts by copying the simple arrangement
adopted at many American tolls, which consists of throwing a covered
archway over the road; so that if you have to unbutton half-a-dozen
coats in a snow-storm to find a sixpence, you are not necessitated to
button-in a bucketful of snow, which, though it may cool the body, has a
very opposite effect on the temper.

It is bad enough in England; but any one who wishes to enjoy it to
perfection had better take a drive from Stirling, crossing the Forth,
when, if he select his road happily, he may have the satisfaction of
paying half-a-dozen tolls in nearly as many minutes, on the plea that
this piece of g