ore
than two miles. Struck with astonishment, I thought it the grandest
sight I had ever beheld; and was amazed, so noble a monument of
antiquity should be so little regarded.

The poets have long contended for the line of beauty--they may find it
here. I was fixed as by enchantment till the sun dropt, my prospect with
it, and I left the place with regret.

If the industrious traveller chooses to wade up to the middle in gorse,
as I did, he may find a roughish journey along this famous
military way.

Perhaps this is the only road in which money is of no use to the
traveller; for upon this barren wild he can neither spend it, nor
give it away.

He will perceive the Coldfield to be one vast bed of gravel, covered
with a moderate depth of soil of eight or ten inches: During this
journey of three miles, he will observe all the way, on each side, a
number of pits, perhaps more than a thousand, out of which the Romans
procured the gravel to form the road; none of them many yards from it.
This great number of pits, tends to prove two points--That the country
was full of timber, which they not choosing to fall, procured the gravel
in the interstices; for the road is composed of nothing else--And, that
a great number of people were employed in its formation: They would
also, with the trees properly disposed, which the Romans must inevitably
cut to procure a passage, form a barrier to the road.

This noble production was designed by a master, is every where straight,
and executed with labour and judgement.

Here he perceives the date of his own conquest, and of his civilization.
Thus the Romans humbled a ferocious people.

If he chooses to measure it he will find it exactly sixty feet wide,
divided into three lands, resembling those in a ploughed field. The
centre land thirty-six feet, and raised from one to three, according to
the nature of the ground. The side lands, twelve each, and rising seldom
more than one foot.

This centre land no doubt was appropriated for the march of the troops,
and the small one, on each side, for the out-guards, who preserved their
ranks, for fear of a surprize from the vigilant and angry Britons.

The Romans held these roads in great esteem, and were severe in their
laws for their preservation.

This famous road is visible all the way, but in some parts greatly hurt,
and in others, compleat as in the first day the Romans made it. Perhaps
the inquisitive traveller may find here, the onl