But we are now fairly in the centre of the village--a fact of which, in
the case of most southern and western villages, it is necessary in so
many words to apprize the traveller. In those parts, the scale by which
towns are laid out is always magnificent. The founders seem to have
calculated usually upon a population of millions; and upon spots and
sporting-grounds, measurable by the olympic coursers, and the ancient
fields of combat, when scythes and elephants and chariots made the
warriors, and the confused cries of a yelping multitude composed the
conflict itself. There was no want of room, no risk of narrow streets
and pavements, no deficiency of area in the formation of public squares.
The houses scattered around the traveller, dotting at long and
infrequent intervals the ragged wood which enveloped them, left few
stirring apprehensions of their firing one another. The forest, where
the land was not actually built upon, stood up in its primitive
simplicity undishonored by the axe.
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