High road

“ A footpath has its own character, while that of the high-road is imposed upon it by those who dwell beside it or pass over it; indeed, roads become picturesque only when they are called lanes and make believe that they are but paths. ”

“ He may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet, follow vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose the shadow or the sun-shine, suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. ”

“ But the high road itself shaved the edge of the precipice so closely that, it is related, in the old coaching days, many people preferred leaving the vehicle at the top of the hill to swinging down such a slope. ”

“ The principal part of the road lay through retired narrow lanes, beautifully overarched with groves of nut and other trees, which screened the traveller from the rays of the sun, and afforded many interesting objects for admiration, in the flowers, shrubs, and young trees, which grew upon the high banks on each side of the road. ”

“ The high road is something very very long, of which one cannot see the end—like human life, like human dreams. There is an idea in the open road, but what sort of idea is there in travelling with posting tickets? Posting tickets mean an end to ideas. Vive la grande route and then as God wills. ”

“ For miles we drive along this giddy road, the only protection being a stone wall not two feet high. The road, however, is excellent, our little horses steady and sure-footed, and our driver very careful. ”

“ Our road lay through a narrow valley, with high hills on either side, and very stony rough going it was, as, in accordance with the customs of this country, there was nothing that one could call a road or even a pathway, and consequently we had to go slowly except when now and then we got out on a bit of grassy ground where we could have a canter. ”

“ A road of many moods: a gentle road; a brave, true road; a morning road; a smiling, sunset road; a devil-may-care, starlit road; a lover's moon-whitened road; a road that goes and goes, never returns, yet always is homeward bound. Home to the dingle, the glen, the sheltering greenwood, the chattering little river; the camp of the gipsy. A road bordered by flower-faced fields with drowsing villages, now and then, like ancient inns with bread and cheese and milk.
Such is Jean François' great highway. ”

“ Fine but narrow roads wound along among the hills, free almost entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid driving, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. Beautiful villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like the great swells of the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there could be no passage. ”

“ About a road that ends there is no glamour. It may be pretty or useful, but as a road it is a failure. For the Road is the symbol of endless possibility. From the faintest footpath across a meadow, where as a child one has always felt that some elf or gnome may appear, or along which, if one were to wander with sufficient negligence, one might be led into the realm of "faerie" to the broad turnpike which fares through open country, plunges through the surging cities, and escapes to broad lands beyond—any path, any road, makes this appeal. ”

“ The study of any highway for itself alone might prove of indifferent value, even though it were an Appian Way; but the story of a road, which shows clearly the rise, nature, and passing of a nation's need for it, is of importance. ”

“ We may go far up within the country now by the most retired and level road, never climbing a hill, but by broad levels ascending to the upland meadows. It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the flow of a river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn cup may float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist and spray, and attract the traveller from far and near. ”

“ Our path lay through a wood, and as twilight deepened we sometimes doubted whether we had not gone astray through the gloom of the thicket. You know that a mile of unknown road, with some suspicion hovering in the mind as to whether you are in the right path, becomes at least three, or rather one feels as if it would never end. ”

“ As we are whirled along in a railway train even, the thing that stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. I can still remember glimpses of these that I had years ago—a footpath over a rounded hilltop through long yellow grass, a rough logging-road beside a foaming mountain river, a brushy wood road leading through bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, curving past a low farmhouse with lights in the windows. ”

“ Some ten minutes’ driving, up a hill or two, while lamps grow less and less frequent, and we are out of the town, rolling along a road which is as good as an ordinary English turnpike-road—passing every now and then through spots of perfect darkness, where clumps of firs overhang the road on each side, and new again looking over a broad spread of water stretching away from our feet, with a row of distant wooded slopes appearing more and more clearly as the moon slowly rises. ”

“ The road rises as it leaves the town, and a little way beyond my windows it climbs to a summit, so that, walking forward, one sees nothing in front but the sharp, slightly curved edge of the road against the sky. Though I have travelled this way so often, each time that I set eyes on the clean cut of the road and the great emptiness beyond, something in me is thrilled, faintly yet perceptibly, like taut wires troubled by a gust of wind. ”

“ Each position is taken in the open field. There is no resort to quibbles or technicalities—no hiding. Nothing is secreted in the sleeve—no searching for blind paths—no stooping and looking for ancient tracks, grass-grown and dim. Each argument travels the highway—"the big road." ”

“ But no man ought ever to come to the end of the road; there ought always to be a further stretch of highway, an inviting turn under the shadow of the trees, a bold ascent, an untrodden summit shining beyond. ”

“ An hour before sunset, Cancut steered us toward a beach, and pointed out a vista in the woods, evidently artificial, evidently a road trodden by feet and hoofs, and ruled by parallel wheels. A road is one of the kindliest gifts of brother man to man: if a path in the wilderness, it comes forward like a friendly guide offering experience and proposing a comrade dash deeper into the unknown world; if a highway, it is the great, bold, sweeping character with which civilization writes its autograph upon a continent. ”

“ The road, for the entire distance, is one uninterrupted ascent toward the summit of one of the lesser hills on which the village stands, affording from every point—unless when now and then a jutting mountain crag overhangs the path, and for a moment, intercepts the vision—a view of the broad expanse of sea, the valley widening as you rise—each footstep of the ascent adding some new beauty of form and color, light and shadow to the scene. ”

“ For a while the murmur of the running stream of Time shall be our fellow-wayfarer—till, at last, up there against the sky-line, we too turn and wave our hands, and know for ourselves where the road wends as it goes to meet the stars. And others will stand as we today and watch us reach the top of the ridge and disappear, and wonder how it seemed to us to turn that radiant corner and vanish with the rest along the vanishing road. ”

“ We diverge from the highway into a mountain road, which resembles the body of a serpent when in motion, going literally up one elevation, and down another. To the right, deep glens, gullies, and ravines; but the darkness with which they are now filled is thick and impervious to the eye, and nothing breaks the silence about us but the rush of the mountain torrent over some jutting precipice below us. ”

“ Amand the highway is a straight line and, as we descend, it stretches away until lost in perspective, a magnificent route for high speed, and as Jean puts the auto to its best; we skim along scarcely seeming to touch the earth,—hills rise and fall, and the motion is joyous, while the spring winds sweep the dreams of dead kings off and away, leaving only the smell of the grasses and blossoming fruit trees. ”

“ The road—if road it could be called—wound for the first five miles through the heart of an immense forest, and being, in every sense of the word, a by-path, was completely overshadowed by projecting branches of trees, so closely interwoven, as to prevent a single sunbeam from making its way, even at noon, within the arch. ”

“ The road is built above and overlooks the plain. No pains in the original construction of twenty-odd centuries ago, nor since in its remodification or repair, has been spared towards making it an eternal highway down which as a vast speedway a half-dozen cars might race abreast. ”

“ And all around them was a bright light, and the light of the stars was darkened. Then the wayfarers saw that there was not one road only, but many side-tracks and by-paths. And each road seemed to some one the shortest road to take. ”

“ The mountain road, to one who has never traveled it, is a thing of delicious thrills and near-terror. A narrow, perilous ribbon of road, cut in the side of the rock itself; a road all horseshoe curves and hairpin twists. ”

“ The sun is new risen and the dew still glistens on the leaves of trees and the petals of flowers. A road like a grey ribbon thrusts into the quiet mountain gorge—a stone-paved road which yet looks as soft as velvet, so that one almost has a desire to stroke it. ”

“ Soon after, we commenced our slow progress up the mountain, which might have been tedious had it not been that every successive moment which increased our elevation, revealed new beauties. The road itself is one of the curiosities of this region; it would scarcely seem possible for the ingenuity and energy of man to construct so safe and so delightful a passage over these rough and almost perpendicular ridges. ”

“ The highway itself stands as a memorial of the most venerable customs and the most ancient races. As I lift my eyes from its beaten road-bed, and look out upon it through the imagination, it escapes all later boundaries and runs back through history to the very dawn of civilisation; it marks the earliest contact of men with a world which was wrapped in mystery. The hour that saw a second home built by human hands heard the first footfall on the first highway. ”

“ He knows they will never return. Far off—on a smooth dark road—he hears them faintly. The road, like a sombre river, quietly flowing, Moves among murmurous walls. A deeper breath Swells them to sound: he hears his steps more clearly. ”

“ The splendid view to be obtained from such a promenade in a dust-free and smoke-free country can hardly be pictured to a city bred man or a countryman jogging along the hedge and weed throttled country road. ”

“ Thus every traveller on a country road is surrounded by monuments more ancient, more impressive, and more beautiful than the ancient or modern world can show as the production of human hands.
He finds much enjoyment in the study of the forms and characteristics of the different trees by the wayside. If the road passes over highland, on a breezy day he can look down upon or across the tops of undulating forest trees, whose swaying movements remind him of the waves of the sea. ”

“ A ROAD AND SOME MOODS I HAVE been living lately near a fine highway, which cuts across the blurred edge of a town and makes straight for the open country. By this road a man may quickly escape from the town and start upon almost any journey. ”

“ A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge ”

“ The road that leads us onward may perhaps pass unrecognized as such by travellers who are used to the smooth surface over which the motor races in a cloud of dust in Western countries. But let the Author assure them that this broad track, one side supplied with rough stones picturesquely dispersed, the other chiefly consisting of ruts and holes, is indeed a road, and that, too, one whereon we have to travel. Moving along we soon forget its shortcomings in the beauty of the scenery on either hand. ”

“ As it proceeds, other paths, each thronged with busy workers, come in from the sides, until the main road often gets to be seven or eight inches broad, and more thronged than the streets of the city of London. ”

“ How different from an English road, which winds around the hills in soft and graceful sweeps, avoiding deep valleys or reverend trees, instead of following the one inveterate idea of a straight line, at a sixfold cost, through thick and thin, over hill and valley. ”

“ What should commend my counsel to you is even this: a road most pleasant and most brief, a carriage road of downward slope, shall bring you in all delight and ease, at what leisurely effortless pace you will, through flowery meadows and plenteous shade, to that summit which you shall mount and hold untired and there lie feasting, the while you survey from your height those panting ones who took the other track; they are yet in the first stage of their climb, forcing their slow way amid rough or slippery crags, with many a headlong fall and many a wound from those sharp rocks. ”

“ But the road takes our geography farther afield and peoples our imaginings. We have softened the immediacy of our ‘æsthetic geography’ by the aid of intelligence; the road softens it by bringing in humankind to stand with us facing the gulf between the living and the inanimate. As the water alters our view of the mountains by bringing to light the importance of time, so does the road alter our view of ourselves. As we look up a pass from below, the view of the road appearing and vanishing round the folds of the valley brings to us two pictures of men. ”