destinies of the place.

In the first place, seven great roads go out like the seven rays of a
star, plumb straight, darting along the line, across the vast, bare
fields of Flanders, past and along the many isolated woods of the
provinces, and making to great capitals far off--to Cologne, to Paris,
to Treves, and to the ports of the sea.

These roads are deserted in great part. Some of them are metalled in
certain sections, and again in other sections are no more than lanes,
and again no more than footpaths, as you proceed along their miles of
way; but their exact design awfully impresses the mind. You know, as you
follow such strict alignment, that you are fulfilling the majestic
purpose of Imperial Rome. It was the Romans that made these things.

Then, intrigued and excited by such remains of greatness, you read what
you can of the place.... And you find nothing but a dust of legend. You
find a story that once here a king, filled with ambition and worshipping
strange gods, thrust out these great roads to the ends of the earth;
desired his capital to be a hub and navel for the world. He put them
under the protection of the seven planets and of the deities of those
stars. Three he paved with black marble and four with white marble, and
where they met upon the market place he put up a golden terminal. There
the legend ends.

It is only legend--a true product of the Dark Ages, when all that Rome
had done rose like a huge dream in the mind of Europe and took on
gorgeous and fantastic colouring. You learn (for the rest) very
little--that ornaments and money have been found dating from two
thousand years, that once great walls surrounded the place. It must have