HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EXISTING STREET ARRANGEMENTS, 



FIRST STAGE. 



They were at the outset, in most eases, entrenched camps, in which a 

 few huts were first built, with no thought of permanence, and still less 

 with thought for the common convenience of their future citizens. The 

 wealth of their founders consisted chiefly in cattle, and in the servants 

 who were employed in herding and guarding these cattle, and the trails 

 carelessly formed among the scattered huts within the entrenchments 

 often became permanent foot-ways which, in some cases, were subse- 

 quently improved in essentially the same manner as the sidewalks of 

 our streets now are, by the laying upon them of a series of flat stones, 

 so that walkers need not sink in the mud. If the ground was hilly, 

 and the grades of the paths steep, stairs were sometimes made by lay- 

 ing thicker slabs of stone across them. Convenience of communication 

 on foot was, of course, the sole object of such improvements. 



If, in these early times, any highways were more regularly laid out, 

 it was simply with reference to defence. For example, although two 

 nearly straight and comparatively broad-ways were early formed in 

 Paris, so that reinforcements could be rapidly transferred from one gate 

 to another when either should be suddenly attacked, no other passages 

 were left among the houses which would admit of the introduction of 

 wheeled traffic ; nor in all the improvements which afterwards occurred, 

 as the city advanced in population and wealth, were any of the original 

 pathways widened and graded sufficiently for this purpose until long 

 after America had been discovered, and the invention of printing and 

 of fire-arms had introduced a new era of social progress. 



The labor required for the construction of permanent town walls, and 

 the advantage of being able to keep every part of them closely manned 

 during an attack, made it desirable that they should not be unnecessa- 

 rily extended. To admit of a separate domiciliation of families within 

 them, therefore, the greatest practicable compactness in the arrange- 

 ment of dwelling-houses soon became imperative. As families increased, 

 the demand for additional house-room was first met by encroach- 

 ments upon the passages which had been left between the original 

 structures, and by adding upper stories, and extending these out- 

 ward so as to overhang the street. Before this process had reached 

 an extreme point, however, the town would begin to outgrow its 

 walls, and habitations in the suburbs would occur, of two classes : 

 first, those formed by poor herdsmen and others who, when no enemy 

 was known to be near at hand, could safely sleep in a temporary shelter, 

 calculating to take their chance in the town when danger came ; and, 

 second, those formed by princes, and other men of wealth and power, 



