Roads, though they have in many places been materially improved in the line of direction, as well as in the mode of formation, are still lamentably deficient in both. The improvements have chiefly been confined to the main roads, but even these have not been improved to an equal extent in all places, and hills are tolerated in some districts that would not be permitted in others. In certain beautiful tracts of country, which would admit of roads perfectly level, they are carried over hills and through hollows, without regard to natural inequalities; while the same expense, or very little more, would have carried the route round these, and formed a road of the most perfect ease, and, with reference to the display of the surrounding scenery, of the greatest degree of beauty. We may refer to the road from Newby Bridge to Grasmere, and to that from High Hesketh to Wetherall. The country through which the latter road passes has been enclosed since we last saw it, and therefore there can be no sufficient excuse for its present line of direction. In some other places the roads are not only hilly, circuitous, and badly made, but too narrow. As an example, we may refer to the road from Farley to the Ashbourne road, and, also to the roads about Grasmere. One of the greatest defects in roadmaking is the manner in which steep hills are ascended or descended, always abruptly proceeding in a direct line up or down, instead of skilfully taking an oblique direction, and so advancing by an easy slope, without reference to its length. For want of attending to this principle, there are some county and parish roads that we could mention, which, if they were described to an enquirer who had never been far from London, would be considered as imaginary. When we descended from the Dog and Partridge public-house, in the neighbourhood of Ashbourne, to Illam in Dove Dale, and saw the splendid Gothic mansion of Illam Hall, lately erected in the bottom, we concluded that we were on a country road, that could not possibly be used as one of the main approaches to the house. On arriving at the entrance lodge, after descending between two and three miles, we were not a little surprised at being informed that the road by which we had come was one of the only two public roads, both equally bad, of which that country could boast. We are not surprised to meet with such roads in a country without gentlemen's seats; but what enjoyment a proprietor can have in setting down a splendid mansion in the midst of such bars to all general improvement, we cannot understand. The first step towards amelioration in a wild country should always be to facilitate the means of communication between one point and another. The roads to, through, and from Dove Dale might, with the greatest ease, and with very little expense, owing to the excellence of the materials every where at hand, be reduced to a slope, which, in the steepest parts, should not exceed two inches in six feet.
