Note 16 — LETTER III.

Such are the Abbé's principal arguments; but he goes on to say, that the height of the ramparts proves almost to demonstration their having been erected since the use of fire-arms, a mode of reasoning that would, I fear, be equally conclusive against the antiquity of a very celebrated earth-work, the Devil's-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;—that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;—that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger for the reception of wooden towers, as if time would not wear away vestiges of this nature;—that the disposition is not in regular order like that of a Roman encampment, a matter equally liable to be defaced;—and, finally, that the out-works to the west are fully decisive of a more modern æra, as if intrenchments were not, like buildings, frequently the objects of subsequent alterations;—In his inferences he is followed, and, apparently without any question as to their authenticity, by Ducarel, whom I suspect from his description never to have visited the place. The Abbé Fontenu, in a paper in the same volume, gives it as his opinion that, from the term Civitas Limarum, it might safely be believed there was a city in this place; and he tries to persuade himself that he can trace the foundations of houses.