It is full of parable. There is something of it in Nature. There are men
who will walk all day through a June wood and come out atheists at the end
of it, finding no signature thereupon; and there are others who, sailing
over the sea, come back home after seeing so many things still puzzled as
to their authorship. That is one parable.
Then there is this: the corrective of ambition. Since so much remains, the
very names of whose authors have perished, what does it matter to you or
to the world whether your name, so long as your work, survives? Who was
it that carefully and cunningly fixed the sights on Gumber Corner so as
to get upon a clear day his exact alignment with Pulborough and then the
shoulder of Leith Hill, just to miss the two rivers and just to obtain the
best going for a military road? He was some engineer or other among the
thousands in the Imperial Service. He was at Chichester for some weeks
and drew his pay, and then perhaps went on to London, and he was born in
Africa or in Lombardy, or he was a Breton, or he was from Lusitania or
from the Euphrates. He did that bit of work most certainly without any
consideration of fame, for engineers (especially when they are soldiers)
are singular among artists in this matter. But he did a very wonderful
thing, and the Roman Road has run there for fifteen hundred years--his
creation.
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