of the north. The towns of the unconquered were mere forts ftill; and the forts of the conquered had become stations of Roman foldiery, with regular towns of Britons, at the fide of them. Nor were the houses of the Britons what Mr. King avers them to have been," small hovels formed of loose stones, with fticks, and boughs; and covered with grafs, or reeds; nearly like thofe defcribed by many of our navigators and travellers in the South-Sea iflands in Africa, and in America."* When the fancy is let loofe to float in air, without any reftraint from hiftorical authority, it flies at once from Pole to Pole, and unites the North with the South in an instant. The buildings of the Britons, we know, from the first Roman who viewed them, were 66 very numerous" in themselves," and very nearly fimilar to thofe of the Gauls," who had regular towns among them, and who, therefore, built not their private houses like those of the roving favages in America, Africa, or the ifles of the Southern Sea. The conceit, indeed, that they did, would be as unworthy of Mr. King as it would be contradictory to Cæfar; and Mr. King therefore fays, with a tacit reference to Cæfar," that, though of the fame form" with the Gallic houfes, "they [the British houfes] were in general of ftill lefs dimenfions, and of lefs nice conftruction, than those of the Gauls." Mr. King will find a great difference between the houses, though Cæfar fays there was little. We have actually an account of a Gallic houfe from Cæfar, which fhews the Gallic nobles to have refided in houfes like our own, with a village of cottages, adjoining. When a detachment of Romans was fent fecretly to feize Ambiorix at his manfion-house, they firft" seized many of his men fuddenly in the fields, by their information they pushed on for Ambiorix himself, at a place in which he was reported to be with a few horfemen. By great good-fortune it happened, that they came upon him before he was aware of them and prepared against them; yet by great ill-luck, when the Romans fecured all the implements of warfare, which he had with him," a regular kind of armoury in his houfe!" and took poffeffion of his chariots and horfes," that must have been lodged in the stables and fheds belonging to the house," he himself escaped the death defigned for him; and his escape was effected by this circumftance, that, the edifice being furrounded with a wood, as are almost all the houses of the Gauls; (this people for the fake of avoiding the heats generally feeking the vicinity of woods

+ Cæfar de Bell. Gall. v. 12. "Creberrima-ædi

ficia, fere Gallicis confimilia."

P.

14.

D 3

and

and rivers), his attendants and menials," who lodged in the fante house with him, "took poft at a narrow pass, and for a time fuftained the charge of our cavalry." So ample in dimenfions, fo provided with rooms, fo furnished with outhouses, and fo attended by villages, were the houses of the Gallic nobles! and the British in general, we know, were "very nearly fimilar to thofe of the Gauls" in general.†

After this unfortunate trip at the commencement of his course, Mr. King proceeds to " aboriginal British fortreffes;" of these he specifies many. Only, the first appears in his delineation of it, to be such a fortrefs as no Briton in his senses could have made; a number of concentric circles, croffed from fide to fide by a long kind of projecting loop, and having no paffage into it, no avenue out of it. Nor does his description fpeak of either avenue or paffage. He notices alfo a camp diftinguished by the name of Caer Caradoc, near Longnor in Shropshire," when the real name is Querdock without the prefixed Caer, derived from a long range of hills, that has three paps or hummocks on it, called Lawly-Hill, Little Quordock-Hill, and Great Quordock-Hill. The laft has this camp upon its fummit, "the area," there being not merely (as Mr. King defcribes it,) irregular," but a ftrangely irregular fpace of ground, a mere mafs of hillocks and hollows; being too, not (as Mr. King adds)" of pretty confiderable extent, but only about three acres within the exterior trench, and only two within the interior. Yet it has, what is very extraordinary, though not noticed by Mr. King, a well of water within it. The whole, however, is fo rude in its form and features, that the judgement of every antiquary muft readily concur with us, in attributing it ftill, with Mr. King, to the Britons; but in attributing it to the earliest of them, and in showing Mr. King from it the neceffity of claffing his British fortreffes, the

* De Bell. Gall. vi. 30. "Multos in agris inopinantes deprehendit: eorum indicio ad ipfum Ambiorigem contendit, quo in loco cum paucis equitibus effe dicebatur.-Sicut magno accidit cafu, ut in ipfum incautum atque imparatum incideret,-fic magnæ fuit fortunæ, omni militari inftrumento, quod circum fe habebat, erepto, rhedis equif que comprehenfis, ipfum effugere mortem ; fed hoc eo factum eft, quod ædificio circumdato filvâ (ut funt fere domicilia Gallorum, qui vitandi æftus causâ, plerumque filvarum ac fluminum petunt propinquitates) comites familiarefque ejus angufto in loco, equitum noftrorum vim paulifper fuftinuerunt."

+ King, P. 10, fpeaks of the Britons "fifhing." He forgets they eat no fish (Dio. Ixxvi. 12).

Plate 1. Fig. 1. Pr. 20, 21.

SP. 22.

rudeit,

rudeft, as firft; the fineft, as laft.* Mr. King proceeds to mention the vitrified caftles of Scotland; and ingeniously accounts for the appearance of vitrification upon them, from the wood originally laid in the banks to bind them, and from an accidental fire affecting the earthy iron ore of a vitrecible nature, with which the country about it abounds, and of which the earth of the banks had perhaps been compofed. But when' he includes Maiden Castle, in Dorsetshire, among his British fortreffes, he goes equally against all authority, all probability,

all evidence.

"It is not eafily to be imagined," he cries, that the Romans would have been at the inconceivable labour of erecting mud walls of fo aftonishing a magnitude in such a spot, when they were fo well acquainted with the great preference [preferablenefs] of ftone ramparts,' ufed by them in fo many other places."

This objection is powerlefs from its very violence, as it would equally take from the Romans all the other encamp ments of theirs in the ifland; thefe being equally formed, of what Mr. King moft improperly calls, "mud walls," but what are really banks of earth. These are the ramparts of their encampments, while the "ftone ramparts" are confined entirely to their stations. And Mr. King reafons only from confounding these with those. "It is no lefs unaccountable," he adds, however, "that they fhould, contrary to their usual mode, prefer fuch a barbarous and irregular form." The Romans could have no "usual mode" in actual warfare. They muft make their camps conform to their ground. They did fo here. "Maiden Castle," fays Stukeley, "takes in the whole fummit of a great hill," and fo is configurated by the very figure of the hill. "Neither can any fatisfactory reafon be affigned," as Mr. King perfifts in faying, "why, no Roman bricks, or coins, have been found here, when so many are found at Maumbury, a much inferior work, near Dorchester." Maumbury is the famous amphitheatre, and has "no Roman bricks," any more than Maiden Castle has even only one fo

* Mr. King, P. 25. on the authority of " Rowland" [Rowlands], deduces Dinas a town from "Dinefu; i. e. from mens' affociating and bandying together." He thus takes the derivative for the pri mitive meaning. Dinas, a town in Welth, means, originally, a hill only; as Dina ftill means in Irish, and Dinas in Cornish. It thence came to fignify a fort on a hill, a town, or a city, as in Cambodunum, Camulo-dunum, &c. &c. &c. And from this idea were derived Dinefig belonging to a city, Dinafwr or Dinefydd a citizen.— Of Dinefu we know nothing. Rev. + Pr. 30-34.

It. Cur. 163. edit. zd.

litary "coin," though "fo many" are mentioned by Mr. King.* The objection, indeed, even if founded on fact, is abfolutely frivolous in its nature; as Maiden Castle was merely a camp for a few months, or a few weeks, or a few days; and Maumbury was a place of games to the whole town of Dorchefter for ages. And, after all, an evidence fully adequate to that of the coin, even a broad Roman fword, was found at Maiden Castle, in 1688.+ Yet Mr. King ftill perfifts in his error, and we muft, in kindnefs, attend to deliver him. "How unlike was the whole of the conftruction here," he exclaims at laft, "to that at Richborough? which latter must have been one of their first establishments on this ifland; and which gives us decidedly their general plan." Mr. King thus confounds again the ftation and the encampment, though fo totally different in themselves. Richborough Caftle was a ftation, or (as Mr. King chooses to call it, deceiving himfelf by the ambiguity of the word) an "eftablishment;" though Mr. King has no other reafon for calling it "one of their firft establishments in this ifland," than that, as the port of paffage into Britain, it is mentioned first in the Roman Itineraries. Nor, even if it was one of the first, if it was actually the very firft, would it "give us decidedly their general plan;" as it would even then give us only their plan for a station, and as there are, in fact, many ftations within this ifland upon a plan very different

from that.

cr

After a fpecification, furely too ample, of these " aboriginal British fortreffes;" Mr. King goes on to notice "certain fubterraneous rude pits and caverns,' as equal monuments of "British forecaft and cunning.' Thefe, however, even if British, ought, in judiciousness, to have preceded the fortresses, as much less plainly British, and much lefs monuments of architecture. But those which he notes at Royfton, in Hertfordshire, at Crayford, or Faversham, in Kent, and at Tilbury, in Effex, are all made in the native chalk, and are plainly, therefore, nothing more than chalk-pits. They are all "at the mouth, and thence downwards, like the tunnel or paffage of a well, but, at the bottom, they are large."§ They cannot be, what Mr. King fuppofes them, the fubterranean repofitories for corn which Diodorus fays the Britons had; because the Britons of Effex, and the Britons of Hertfordshire, had no corn in the days of Diodorus. They were merely, indeed, the pits,

* Mr. Gough, 1-50. fays this was found "near it ;" but, his author, Stukely, 175, fays this was found" in the very place." + Stukeley, 163. Pr. 39, 40. § PP. 47, 48. Cæfar de Bell. Gall. v. 14. "Cantium-regio eft maritima omnis, interiores plerique frumenta non ferunt.”

from

from which London has, in all ages of its buildings, been fupplied with chalk for lime. That chalk compofed the lime of our ancestors, as it even compofes (we believe) the lime of London at prefent; is plain from the derivation of our name of chalk from the Calx of the Romans, those first introducers of lime into our buildings; from the calcaria of the Romans, Tadcaster, in Yorkshire, fo denominated by them from the lime there dug up becoming the cealca-ceafter of the Saxons; and from the Saxon ceale for chalk, or cealc-fran for a chalkftone. Having thus turned Mr. King's repofitories for corn into mere pits of lime, we must leave him to scoop out his "conical deep pits" on hills and heaths, as ftrange hidingplaces for the Britons, while they are all open to the sky above. They are all, apparently, what he acknowledges fome of them may poffibly be, "mere fand pits," mere chalk-pits, mere earth-pits. And the others, which Mr. King mentions, are merely the caverns of nature, improved at times by art, but wholly unworthy of his notice, especially after he has noticed the hill-fortreffes, which are fo much more illuftrious proofs of British architecture. From thofe, however, Mr. King winds round again to these, even to such as are denominated raths in Ireland; "the word itself, rath, fignifying properly a furety; and the rath being uniformly allowed to have been the antient abode, or caftle of the old frifh chief."+ The etymon is not true in itself, and the application of it is contradictory to what he had faid before. Rath, in Irifh, is a furety, as it is alfo profperity, fern, or wages; but then these meanings are all equally wide of every mark of propriety here. Rath likewife fignifies a village, a mount, a fortrefs, or a garrison; as rath is the Irish appellation of Charleville, in the county of Cork, as Rioghrath imports the Prince's fortrefs, and Reth-cuirc is the Irish denomination of Cafhel, from Cuirc the fon of a king of Munfter,. Hence it is, that "the rath is uniformly allowed to have been the antient caftle of the old Irish chief;" directly contrary to Mr. King's account of the British houfes before, and exactly correfpondent with Cæfar's, concerning the Gallic. They are entrenchments," notes Mr. King, "thrown up on the very tops of the hills, fometimes with two or three, but more frequently with a fingle ditch." Mr. King, like the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the year, thus circles round into himself, and holds his tail in his teeth. But, as rath imports a mount equally with a fortrefs, "there are alfo ftill remaining," we find from Mr. King, "in feveral parts of Ireland, fmall mounts, on plains, and near rivers, furrounded with two or

66

* P. 53.

+ P. 78.

I P. 77.

three