104 flower's barrow. 



fortification seems "a corner of the earth;" the last point to 

 which a defeated, and unwarlike people would fly for refuge; 

 and where their enemies could only, with common advantage, 

 attack them on one side. On the other three, as has been seen, 

 they would be comparatively safe against assault, from the broken 

 and sloping nature of the ground. Its remote and inconvenient 

 situation, which disqualified it for the Roman choice, would be 

 the most obvious recommendation to the defeated and harassed 

 Britons. In addition to which, the very circumstance of the 

 broken and precipitous nature of the ground, rendering it a dif- 

 ficult undertaking to assault it openly, must have much impeded 

 a besieging force in the attempt to maintain any thing like a 

 close blockade. Thus the Britons within might have been able 

 to hold intercourse with their friends without, and drawn from 

 them the supplies which they needed. 



I have not touched upon the argument used by Mr. Milner, 

 respecting the form of the camp, which also deserves consider- 

 ation ; and tends, I think, to confirm the conclusion to which it 

 appears to me, we may reasonably arrive, that Flower's Barrow 

 is not a Roman, but a British Camp. 



It is difiScult to leave this interesting spot without glancing, 

 for a few moments, upon those buildings which lay on the north- 

 ern side of its base. They now are merely those of a farm house ; 

 but they formed some years ago a part of the Monastery of 

 La Trappe. There, under the generous hospitality of Mr. Weld, 

 the Monks of the Order, ( driven by the sequestration of their 

 property, and the horrors of the French Revolution, to seek an 

 asylum in foreign lands,) found, for a season, a quiet home and 

 resting place. They cultivated the adjoining farm by spade hus- 

 bandry for their subsistence, and drew from the soil, with some 

 assistance, enough to supply their own scanty wants, as well as 

 charitably to contribute to those of the poor around them. From 

 the ridge of this hill might be seen, at that time, thirty or more 

 of them together, dressed in their white frocks, and with their 

 wooden shoes, working in the fields. The Monastery partly re- 

 mains ; but the chapel is removed. The enclosure, we see, with 

 a few shrubs raising their heads above the wall, was once their 

 burying ground ; and there rest the remains of those exiles, who 

 died during their stay in England, In th^t cemetery, a grave 



