en a highway is once established it is
impossible to say how long the tide of humanity and commercial traffic
will seek passage over it. While the ordinary processes of
Nature--rain, thaw, and frost--are ever at work lowering the hills and
mountains and filling up the valleys and lowlands, the public highways
of a country remain in the same relative positions from age to age.

The great commercial and military highway which in the early dawn of
Roman history led from the banks of the placid Euphrates to the banks
of the many-mouthed Nile--over which Abraham once wended his weary
steps on his way to Canaan, over which the hosts of Xerxes and the
brave phalanxes of Alexander the Great once passed in all the pride and
glory of war, over which the wise men of the East probably journeyed in
search of him who was born King of the Jews, over which Mary fled with
Christ in her flight into Egypt, and along which the early Christians
travelled as they went forth to preach the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of men--is to-day the highway over which is carried on the
overland intercourse between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.

Many of the present roads in Italy and the neighboring countries are
identical with the roads over which Caesar, Cicero, and other Romans
travelled in the olden days; and the modern British roads are the same,
in many cases, as those used by the ancient Britons before the
Anglo-Saxon conquest.

The law of the survival of the fittest is applicable to the location of
roads, and any well-located road is liable to be used as a public way
during the occupancy of the earth by the human race; and if it is not
made famous by the passage of illustrious persons or sanctified by the
footsteps of saints, yet it is liable to be travelled through coming
ages by "mute inglorious Miltons" and by "care-encumbered men." It
sometimes happens that men and women, in doing faithfully and well the
nearest duty, perform work which turns out better than they expect.

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

* * * *

He builded better than he knew."

The originators of many great reforms in law and religion, in working
to establish principles applicable and needful to local issues, have
thereby, unconsciously to themselves, established principles which have
proved beneficial and applicable to the whole human