ANCIENT CASTLES OF DEVON. 135 



* ether by the hand of violence, or by the common 



* course of nature ; whilst, in this narrow compass, 



* so many great and glorious cities, formed for a 

 ' much longer duration, thus lie extended in ruins ? 

 ' Remember then, oh my heart ! the general lot to 



* which man is born, and let that thought suppress 

 ^ thy unreasonable murmurs/ " In like manner the 

 incomparable Addison remarks on the train of ob- 

 servations suggested to his mind by the repositories 

 of the dead. Alluding to the monuments in West- 

 minster Abbey, this refined and elegant writer obser- 

 ves, "When I look upon the tombs of the great, every 

 " emotion of envy dies within me ; when I read the 

 " epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire 

 "goes out; when 1 meet with the grief of parents 

 ''upon a tombstone, my heart melts with com- 

 " passion; when I see the tombs of the parents 

 " themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for 

 "those, whom we must quickly follow; when I see 

 " kings lying beside those who deposed them ; when 

 " I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the 

 " holy men that divided the world with their col- 

 " tests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and as- 

 '' tonishment on the little competitions, factions, and 

 '' debates of mankind ; when I read the several 

 ''dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, 

 " and some six hundred years ago, I consider that 

 " great day, when we shall all of us be contempo- 

 " raries, and make our appearance together.'* 



Why should we retrace the vestiges of the past ? 

 The reflections already produced, in strict consis- 

 tency with the purpose we now have in view, are 

 more than sufficient to prove the useful lessons of 

 antiquity, A survey of our ancient castles, in their 

 present dismantled condition, may give rise to that 

 grave and sober forethought, in which the prospect 

 of the future appears, from the desolations of time, 

 profigured under the mournful emblems of decay. 



The early British fortifications seem to have been 

 little more than intrenchments of eartl). Caisar, 



