Sim 



' If the Danes had been their builders, it appears unaccountable, 

 that during the two hundred years of their dominion over England, 

 they should not have built even one in that kingdom. Let it not 

 be said that they were in too precarious and unsettled a situation to 

 think of raising ornamental buildings ; since the same objection is still 

 more applicable to Ireland, where in five hundred years of repeated 

 invasion they never succeeded in completely subjugating the king- 

 dom ; they acquired indeed some portions of the coast where they 

 built cities, from whence they sent out armies to ravage, spoil, and 

 oppress ; but in these very cities, where they had full sway, they do 

 not appear to have erected towers. There certainly was one in 

 Dublin, and Ware asserts, in a cursory way, that there had been 

 one in Cork ; but we find no trace of any in their three chief cities. 

 Limerick, Waterford, arid Wexford ; and in the county of Wex- 

 ford, the whole of which they possessed, there is not, and there do^s 

 not seem to have been even one round tower. Neither can it be at 

 all imagined, that ferocious invaders, fighting their way foot by 

 foot, living in a perpetual struggle with the whole body of natives, 

 who detested them as invaders, oppressors, and Pagans, could have 

 been capable of raising such stupendous buildings, and still less 

 that they could have engrafted the taste upon a nation which re- 

 garded them with abhorrence. And frOm whence could they bring 

 this taste ? not from their own country, where there are not only no 

 similar remains, but no record of their ever having had any such 

 buildings. 



In the cities of the Oslmen there are still standing some specimens 

 of their works in masonry ; one especially on a large scale, by 

 which a judgment may be formed of their style. Reginald's tower, 

 in the city of Waterford, is yet in perfect repair ; it was built by 

 Reginald the Dane, A. D. 1003, since which period it has been in 



