. In a similar way an historical controversy
in his hands reveals its principal streams, its watershed, and the
character of its soil.

At this point, just as we distinguished in his history the practical
from the poetic motive, we can see the blending of the two motives for
travel. Mr. Belloc's researches into history and pre-history do show
these motives inextricably mixed: in _The Old Road_ you cannot separate
the purpose of research from the purpose of this pleasure.

In this book he gives us a few remarks on the origin of the prehistoric
track-way which ran from Winchester to Canterbury, an itinerary as exact
as research can make it, and a little discourse on the reasons why it
is both pious and pleasant to pursue such knowledge.

Searching for Roman roads or the earlier track-ways and determining as
near as possible the exact sites of historical events is with him a
sport. The method pursued is that of rigid and scientific inquiry.
_Paris_ especially, _Marie Antoinette_ and _The Historic Thames_ in a
lesser degree, bear witness to this, which, in a don, we should call
minute and painstaking research, but which in our subject we guess to be
the gratification of a desire.

In _The Old Road_ Mr. Belloc describes with severe accuracy but with an
astonishing gusto how, having read all that was printed about this track
and studied the best maps of the region through which it passes, he set
out to examine the ground itself, and thus to reach his final
conclusions. We have not space here to recount his methods at length or
to show, as he has shown, how this parish boundary is a guide here,
those trees there, that church a mile further on. It is but one example
out of many of his spirit and tastes in the numerous tasks of
identification which he has undertaken.

And here is the proper place, perhaps, to disengage what we have called
the poetic motive of travel. He manifests a particular reverence for
these rests of antiquity which he has sought out. It is both in a
religious and in a poetic spirit that he considers The Road as a symbol
of humanity. He writes in a grave and ritual tone:

Of these primal things [he says] the least obvious but the most
important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those
others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take
it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men,
indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explo