THE OPEN ROAD.
NOW, if ever, is the time in which to sing the song of "the open road," and thus very timely is Mr. E. V. Lucas's charming little anthology of outdoor holiday poems entitled "The Open Road," and recently published by Mr. Grant Richards (5s.) It is a delightful little book for the pocket, and contains, as all such books should, not only a great many old and well-loved poems, but one or two real discoveries both in prose and verse,—for this golden treasury is not confined to rhyme. We miss, however, one or two poems that ought to have been included, and should certainly figure in the next
edition. Chief among these is "The Song of the Hitchen Mayers," and next Barnes's "Woke Hill," and those verses of his in which occur the line about the long white road " athert the hill." These are poems in which the open road is "of the essence of the contract" of delight made between poet and reader. The fact, however, that the book does not con- tain one or two poems which might well have found place there
• does not in the slightest way detract from its merits, and we recommend it most cordially to all who are taking to the open road this summer. It lies easily in the pocket, and is just the book to be read in the midday rest on a flower. starred mound by the edge of a glacier, or on a bench of rock "seated in hearing of a hundred streams" that are hurrying down the mountain's side. The cyclist may open it as he lunches in some old posting-inn in England or Scotland, as he lies on the Irish turf, or as he sits outside a Norman or Flemish cabaret.
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In its widest sense, "the open road" is the sign and symbol of all outdoor life, of all holiday-making in which the sense of the athlete is awakened,—in a word, of all that is active and adventurous, from sailing and rowing to cliff-climbing and moorland tramping. But fascinating as these are, there is a something even more fascinating in the thought of the open road when we narrow the meaning and confine it to the paths trod by the feet of men and horses and cut by their wheels, restrict it, that is, to those nerves and sinews of the soil which bind village to village, city to city, and land to land. Think of all the many and diverse tracks which, once landed at Calais, if only you keep going eastward, will take you to Moscow or Tobolsk, westward to Lisbon or Madrid, and southward to Rome. What is more intellectually exhilarating to the mind, and even to the senses, than to stand looking down the vista of some great road in France or Italy, or up a long and well-worn horse-track in Asia or Africa, a path which has not yet been trod by the foot or the wheel of the gazing wayfarer, or by the hoof of his horse, and to wonder through what strange places, by what towns and castles, by what rivers and streams, by what mountains and valleys it will take him ere he reaches his destination ? Think, too, by what noble ghosts the roads are thronged. That splendid white road up the valley of the Rhone is new, no doubt ; but even it is deep in associa- tions. Where it begins to climb, it is the first road ever made over the Alps. An Emperor could hardly Bleep till it was finished, for he knew that till the guns could traverse it in winter and summer his kingdom of Italy was not safe. Thus again and again came the feverish question in the far-off Tuileries, "Le canon quand pourra-t-il passer le Simplon ?" Since then the road has been flooded with other memories than those of horse, foot, and artillery. When after the peace all the sentimentalists and romanticists of Europe were let loose upon Italy, it was by the Simplon that they passed the Alps. Byron used it. It threw its influence upon Turner's canvas, as one may see in "The Gate of the Hills." To pass from a new road to one of the oldest, think of the almost intolerable weight of association that lies upon the track that runs across the upper part of the plain of Esdraelon. As one begins to descend from the higher ground between it and Samaria, one notes the long dusty track across the open fields, and re- members that could a necromancer repeople that road with the forms of those who once used it, almost the whole pageant of ancient history would arise before our eyes. Besides, it is the road from Nazareth to Jerusalem. Even if the dim peoples that fought and clamoured there in the night of time remain unnoticed, think of how there Egypt and Assyria strove, and how the hosts of Judah and Israel passed up, down, and across the stony track. The Greeks of Alexander, the mercenaries of Antioch, the Roman legionaries, and Pompey and Titus themselves crossed and recrossed it. Herod, most restless and unhappy of tyrants, the bland Hadrian, and the anxious and austere Marcus Aurelius must all have passed that way. Then came the Arab, and then the Crusaders. Last of all, and lest the modern world should be un- represented, Napoleon and the soldiers of the Army of Egypt struck the track when at the battle of Mount Tabor they drove the Turks into the morasses of the Kishon, and when once again that "ancient river" became the destroyer of men. But, indeed, throughout the whole of Palestine there is
something memorable and awe-inspiring about the roads, or rather the stony tracks that once were roads so good that Jelin could drive his horses at full speed, and the Eunuch of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, could sit in his chariot and read, though he could not understand, the prophecies of Isaiah. The special and peculiar polity of the Hebrews made them a road-using people. An im- perative duty rested on the men who dwelt on the coasts of Judea, in the Jewish cities beyond Jordan, on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, and by the Waters of Merom, to go up to Jerusalem at the Feast and to worship in the Temple. Hence there was no possibility in ancient Judea of finding people, such as may be found to-day in every English county from Surrey to Westmoreland, who had never been outside their own villages. But, above all, the immemorial tracks of the Holy Land are fraught with a pathos and with a significance so momentous because they were used by One who not only passed the greater part of His life as a wayfarer, but who made an open road for all mankind. Our Lord's active life was spent in journeyings from place to place, and we know that all the chief tracks in Palestine must have been used by Him. His feet must certainly have trod the track that leads from the northern end of the Sea of Galilee to Cmsarea Philippi, and it may be that the little Roman bridge still standing a mile or two from the mound that marks the site of Dan is the very bridge by which He passed. In any case the land is full of His wanderings. There are doubts about the site of almost every occurrence in the Bible narrative, but it is impossible to doubt the authenticity of the roads and paths. They at least have not been lost. Nothing changes so little as a track between two villages. An engineer may alter the face of Nature for a railway line, but paths and tracks are the most unalterable things in the world. It is possible that the zigzags of the modern carriage-road between Jerusalem and Jericho do not always follow the old path, bat even in this case a. good deal of the road is only the ancient track enlarged and made smooth.
We have dwelt upon the heart-shaking memories that surround "the open road" in Palestine because they are the best examples that can be given of that part in the fascination of the open road which belongs to association. Every road, however, has them, though in a lesser degree. Think of what a new Macaulay might write about the North Road, of the road between Dover and London, or of the Portsmouth Road, —down which Nelson posted on his way to death and Trafalgar. Even the by-road between two villages, overhung by elm branches, is full of associations, though only of the kind which Gray found in the village churchyard. But though association will account for much of the fascination of the open road, it will not account for all. There is a more physical charm which needs explanation. We believe it to be due to the fact that a road is like a river. It leads us on. It is a guide whom we may follow, and follow to infinity. And herein lies the superior charm of the road when compared with the river. A river is a finite thing. Sooner or later it reaches the sea and is swallowed up. It has a definite end. After so many miles of wandering it is finished for good and all. But the road never ends. We walk, or cycle, or ride, or drive by road to our immediate destination—say, to some old city in France or Italy—but that is never the end of the road. The road, or track, or path always points us on to another town or village. No doubt, scientifically, there is an end, but no man's mind or imagination can grasp all the ramifi- cations of the roads and tracks and paths even in an island like Great Britain, and so the open road seems, as we have said, to have in it something of infinity. We stand at the roadside and we know that both to the left and to the right we can follow the wheel-marks indefinitely. Again, the most part of mankind have the wanderer's blood in them. -Unless perhaps it be the people in the Delta of the Nile, men have always the sense in them that they have only "come on" from somewhere up the road, and will very possibly themselves pass down it to a new resting-place. Chaucer talks of men in the spring of the year wanting to go on pilgrimage, and by this he means, of course, the yearning for the open road.
To pass before we end to a still more literal aspect of the open road, we may be sure that before very long the roads of
all eountries will obtain socially and commercially an entirely new significance. The bicycle has restored the roads to the pleasure-seeker. The motor car and motor - waggon will restore them to the non-athletic lover of the open air, and to the trader. The new century will see the railways relegated to their proper place as providers of very swift and very heavy transit, while the roads, which have always this ad- vantage, that they pass all men's doors, will .once again be thronged by carriages and carts. In a few years' time the man of business who lives six nr seven miles out of London wil never dream of taking, as he does now, a fifteen minutes' drive in a carriage to the station, then twenty minutes in a train, and then ten minutes more in a cab, to reach the office. Instead he will drive from door to door in a motor-victoria and save money, time, and temper. When, too, he wants to go to Brighton or Hastings, he will probably go by road. That change may not increase the charm of the open road, but it will at least make the road a far greater factor in our lives than it is at present,—as great as it was in the " twenties " and "thirties."
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