This progress is too minute for the human eye, but the effects are visible.  The powers above mentioned operate nearly as yeast in a lump of dough, that enlivens the whole.  Nature seems to wish that the foot would leave the path, that she may cover it with grass.  He will find this vegetative power so strong, that it even attends the small detached parts of the soil where-ever they go, provided they are within reach of air and moisture:  He will not only observe it in the small pots, appropriated for garden use, but on the tops of houses, remote from any road, where the wind has carried any small dust.  He will also observe it in cracks of the rocks; but in an amazing degree in the thick walls of ruined castles, where, by a long course of time, the decayed materials are converted into a kind of soil, and so well covered with grass, that if one of our old castle builders could return to his possessions, he might mow his house as well as his field, and procure a tolerable crop from both.

In those pits, upon an eminence, the soil will be found deep enough for any mode of husbandry.  In those of the vallies, which take in the small drain of the adjacent parts, it is much deeper.  That upon the road, which rather gives than receives any addition from drain, the average depth is about four inches.

The soil is not only increased by the causes above, but also by the constant decays of the growth upon it.  The present vegetable generation falling to decay, adds to the soil, and also, assists the next generation, which in a short time follows the same course.

The author of the History of Sutton says, “The poor inhabitants are supplied with fuel from a magazine of peat, near the Roman road, composed of thousands of fir trees cut down by the Romans, to enable them to pass over a morass.  The bodies of the trees are sometimes dug up found, with the marks of the axe upon them.”

Are we then to suppose, by this curious historical anecdote, that the inhabitants of Sutton have run away with this celebrated piece of antiquity?  That the cart, instead of rolling over the military way, has rolled under it, and that they have boiled the pot with the Roman road?

Upon inquiry, they seemed more inclined to credit the fact, than able to prove it; but I can find no such morass, neither is the road any where broken up.  Perhaps it would be as difficult to find the trees, as the axe that cut them:  Besides, the fir is not a native of Britain, but of Russia; and I believe our forefathers, the Britons, were not complete masters of the art of transplanting.  The park of Sutton was probably a bed of oaks, the natural weed of the country, long before Moses figured in history.

Whilst the political traveller is contemplating this extraordinary production of antiquity, of art, and of labour, his thoughts will naturally recur to the authors of it.

He will find them proficients in science, in ambition, in taste:  They added dominion to conquest, ’till their original territory became too narrow a basis to support the vast fabric acquired by the success of their arms:  The monstrous bulk fell to destruction by its own weight.—­Man was not made for universality; if he grasps at little, he may retain it; if at much, he may lose all.