XXIX.--THE BIBLE AND THE BUTTERFLY



Vanishing Roads




I

VANISHING ROADS


Though actually the work of man's hands--or, more properly speaking, the
work of his travelling feet,--roads have long since come to seem so much
a part of Nature that we have grown to think of them as a feature of the
landscape no less natural than rocks and trees. Nature has adopted them
among her own works, and the road that mounts the hill to meet the
sky-line, or winds away into mystery through the woodland, seems to be
veritably her own highway leading us to the stars, luring us to her
secret places. And just as her rocks and trees, we know not how or why,
have come to have for us a strange spiritual suggestiveness, so the
vanishing road has gained a meaning for us beyond its use as the avenue
of mortal wayfaring, the link of communication between village and
village and city and city; and some roads indeed seem so lonely, and so
beautiful in their loneliness, that one feels they were meant to be
travelled only by the soul. All roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs
also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no traveller
knows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal.