the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some
political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions,
or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable) of drawing
out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of
honour or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His
words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon
one. And, indeed, from some passages in writers of the Augustan era,
it would seem that this custom was not confined to people of
distinction, but was familiar to a class of travellers so low in rank
as to be capable of abusing their opportunities of concealment for the
infliction of wanton injury upon the woods and fences which bounded
the margin of the high-road. Under the cloud of night and solitude,
the mischief-loving traveller was often in the habit of applying his
torch to the withered boughs of wood, or to artificial hedges: and
extensive ravages by fire, such as now happen not unfrequently in the
American woods (but generally from carelessness in scattering the
glowing embers of a fire, or even the ashes of a pipe), were then
occasionally the result of mere wantonness of mischief. Ovid
accordingly notices, as one amongst the familiar images of daybreak,
the half-burnt torch of the traveller; and, apparently, from the
position which it holds in his description, where it is ranked with
the most familiar of all circumstances in all countries--that of the
rural labourer going out to his morning tasks it must have been common
indeed:

"Semiustamque facem vigilatâ nocte viator
Ponet; et ad solitum rusticus ibit opus."

This occurs in the _Fasti_: elsewhere he notices it for its danger.