p. 403. tab. 15.
[16] Such are the Abbe'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 aera, 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.
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