grown with herbage, or concealed by wood and morass; and for
the direct arms of transit which bound Rome and York together as by the
cord of a bow, were substituted the devious and inconvenient highways,
which led the traveller by circuitous routes from one province to
another. The contrast indeed between the 'Old Road and the New' is
represented in Schiller's fine image--rendered even finer in Coleridge's
translation:--

"Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon ball. Direct it flies, and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
My son! the road the human being travels,
That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honouring the holy bounds of property:
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end."

It was long however before much security was found on the new roads. In
the dark ages the days described by Deborah the prophetess had returned.
"The highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through
bye-ways: the villages were deserted. Then was war in the gates, and
noise of the archers in the places of drawing water." Danger and delay
were often the companions of the traveller. Occasionally a vigorous
ruler, like Alfred, succeeded in restoring security to the wayfarer, and
proved his success (so said the legend) by hanging up, in defiance of the
plunderer, golden armlets on crosses by the roadside. But these
intervals of safety were few and far between, and the traveller
journeyed, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, "in fear and dread,"

"Because he knew a fearful fiend
Did close behind him tread."

The man-at-arms in the days of Border-war was a more formidable obstacle
to progress than a wilderness of spectres. In the reign of Edward the
Confessor the great highway of Watling Street was beset by violent men.
If you travelled in the eastern counties, the chances were that you were
snapped up by a retainer of Earl Godwin, and if in the district now
traversed by the Great Northern Railway, Earl Morcar would in all
likelihood arrest your journey, and without so much as asking leave clap
a collar round your neck, with his initials and yours scratched rudely
upon it, signifying to all men, by those presents, that in future your
duty was to tend his swine or rive his bloc