ROADS.

Good Roads an indication of a Civilized Country-Those of Greece, South America, France, Germany, and ItalyVerrie's comparison-English Inns-Highwaymen now rare-Stage Coaches.

"What a delightful thing's a turnpike road,

So smooth, so level, such a mode of shaving
The earth, as scarce the eagle in the broad

Air can accomplish with his wide wings waving :
Had such been cut in Phaeton's time, the god

Had told his son to satisfy his craving

With the York mail."

Byron's Don Juan, Canto X.

THE prosperity and civilization of a country may be estimated in a hundred

different ways.

Some measure it by the

population, some by the quantity of money in circulation; this by the state of its literature, and that by the state of its language. David Hume said, that where good broadcloth is made, astronomy is sure to be known, and the sciences to be cultivated. Sterne, from the hyperbole of the barber who dressed his wig, and the finery of the Parisian gloveress, deduced two qualities of the French nation, one amiable, and the other ridiculous. Pangloss, when he was shipwrecked on the coast of Portugal, drew the inference, from the sight of men hanging in chains, that he was in a civilized country. Why may we not also draw an inference of the civilization of a country from the condition of its roads? Where there are no roads, or but few, however magnificent, we may take it for granted that there are few or no books,

few or no manufactures, many and unjust laws, few legislators or only one, a great many friars and very few learned men, many miracles and little money. Whoever has travelled in Europe, must have seen with his own eyes the truth of this doctrine. Russia, Poland, Turkey, Greece, Transylvania, Hungary, Croatia, Bukovinia, Spain, and Portugal, which are certainly the least civilized portions, are also those which have the fewest roads. In the Peloponnesus, where, when poems, tragedies, and histories, were written, there were so many roads and cart-tracks, there is now no longer a carriageable road; not in the whole kingdom of the king of men, Agamemnon

Of countries vast the ruler sole-supreme,
The best of kings, in war supremely brave!"

who had Automedon for his charioteer, the best coachman in all Greece. From Velez-Malaga to Grenada, in the oncewealthy kingdoms of the Arabian dynasties, there is no other road than a precipitous mule-track. From the city of Mexico to Guatemala, there is nothing that can be called a road. To get over the twelve hundred miles of intervening distance, the deputies from Guatemala, when that republic was united to Mexico, were obliged to undertake four months' disastrous travelling, From Omoa to Guatemala it is the same: to traverse these three hundred and fifty miles, takes sometimes from six to seven months, in the case of the transportation of merchandize on the backs of mules. The other SpanishAmerican colonies all alike had over-few