. THE ROADS IN EUROPE. 79 



The question is which of the two you can best accomplish. I 

 think every man ought to learn to be a much better road- 

 builder than he is, and if you could get your surveyors to 

 appreciate a standard, it would be a great gain. But you cannot 

 do even that. You could not get one-half of your surveyors 

 to read the prize essays in the last report ; or, if they did read 

 them, they would say, " That is a standard we cannot come 

 up to." 



• What are the facts abroad ? It is the poorest countries in 

 Europe which have the best roads. I will not say that it is so in 

 all the countries of Europe, because I have not been into Spain ; 

 but in Switzerland, it is not the Simplon road merely, it is not 

 the roads alone over the passes of the Alps, that are good. Why, 

 those roads would be cheap at $100,000 a mile, and they would 

 probably cost more than that if they were made in our day, 

 with our system of labor and wages ; but, as I have said, they 

 would be cheap even at that price, because they made that 

 which was before inaccessible, accessible, and opened up land 

 which was good for nothing. They made avenues where there 

 was no avenue, and where, but for these roads, there could be 

 no avenue. I do not care whether you go among the Alps, or 

 into the valleys, you will find everywhere, even in the poorest 

 cantons, good roads. They are not wide roads. I agree with 

 Dr. Loring in that matter ; I think twenty-two feet, well built or 

 worked, is wide enough for our common country roads. You 

 never find a road in England made wider than that, except near 

 the cities. The highways through the country towns are more 

 like narrow lanes than roads : they are not more than twenty or 

 twenty-five feet between the hedges. Not being in danger of 

 obstruction by snow, and having no sidewalks, — as most of them 

 have not, — they are sufficiently wide for their purpose. But go 

 to the poorest canton in Switzerland, much poorer than any dis- 

 trict in Massachusetts, and you find the roads made always with 

 even grades, never with a pitch or a hollow to suit the natural 

 surface of the country, but always upon even pitches up and 

 down, sometimes bridging across dry valleys, the engineering and 

 masonry of the most excellent character. Those roads are con- 

 stantly watched, as a mother watches her child, as the track- 

 men upon our railroads tend the track that the engines pass 

 over ; watched day by day, and swept week by week. This is 



