Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk Author:Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER II. PAUL TO HIS COUSIN THE MAJOR. AFTER all the high ideas, my dear Major, which your Frequent and minute and reiterated details had given me, conce... more »rning the celebrated fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom, in former years the scene of your martial exploits, T must own its exterior has sadly disappointed me. I am well enough accustomed, as you know, to read the terms of modern fortification in the Gazette, and to hear them in the interesting narratives of your military experiences; and I must own, that bastions and ravelins, half-moons, curtains, and palisades, have hitherto sounded in my ears every whit as grand and poetical as donjons and barbicans and portcullisses, and other terms of ancient warfare. But I question much ,if I shall hereafter be able to think of them with exactly the same degree of respect. A short reflection upon the principles of modern de fence, and upon the means which it employs, might, no doubt, have saved me from the disappointment which I experienced. But I was not, as it happened, prepared to expect, that the strongest fortress in the Netherlands, or, for aught I know, in the world, the masterpiece of Coe- horn, that prince of engineers, should, upon the first approach of a stranger, prove so utterly devoid of any thing striking or imposing in its aspect. Campbell is, I think, the only English poet who has ventured upon the appropriate terms of modern fortification, and you will not be surprised that I recollect the lines of a favourite author,—' the tow'r That, like a standard-bearer, frown'd Defiance on the roving Indian power. Beneath, each bold and promontory mound, With embrasure emboss'd, and armour-crown'd, And arrowy frize, and wedged ravelin, Wove like a diadem its tracery round The lofty summit of that mountain green. But, in ord...« less