PREFACE 



Europe — would have been something much more in its 

 mere name had it not been for the accident of London : 

 one of the greatest Occidents. It ivould have been considered 

 a part of the great road to Chester and to Holyhead : the 

 route diagonally across England, from sea to sea, which 

 really in the first instatice it was. 



For the Dover Road is actually the initial limb of the 

 Watling Street : that prehistoric British trackway 

 adopted by the Romans and by them engineered into a 

 road ; and it would seeju that those Roman engineers, 

 instructed by the Imperial authorities, considered rather 

 the military and strategic needs of those times than those of 

 LoNDiNiuM ; for London was not on the direct road they 

 made ; and it was only at a later date, zvhen it was groivn 

 commercially, they constructed an alternative route that 

 served it. 



It would be rash to declare that more history has been 

 enacted on this road than on any other, although we may 

 suspect it ; but certainly history is more spectacular along 

 these miles. Those pageants and glittering processions 

 are of the i^ci'^t : they ended in 1840, when raihvays were 

 about to supplant the road ; when the last distinguished 

 traveller along these miles. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg 

 Gotha, came up by carriage to zved Queen T^ictoria. 



CHARLES G. HARPER. 

 February, 1922. 



