[16] Such are the Abbé's principal arguments; but he goes on to say, that the height of the ramparts proves almost to demonstration their having been erected since the use of fire-arms, a mode of reasoning that would, I fear, be equally conclusive against the antiquity of a very celebrated earth-work, the Devil's-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;--that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;--that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger for the reception of wooden towers, as if time would not wear away vestiges of this nature;--that the disposition is not in regular order like that of a Roman encampment, a matter equally liable to be defaced;--and, finally, that the out-works to the west are fully decisive of a more modern æra, as if intrenchments were not, like buildings, frequently the objects of subsequent alterations;--In his inferences he is followed, and, apparently without any question as to their authenticity, by Ducarel, whom I suspect from his description never to have visited the place. The Abbé Fontenu, in a paper in the same volume, gives it as his opinion that, from the term _Civitas Limarum_, it might safely be believed there was a _city_ in this place; and he tries to persuade himself that he can trace the foundations of houses. [17] _Noel, Essais sur le Départment de la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 88. [18] The same is also notoriously the case in our own country: popular tradition, by a metonymy very easily to be accounted for, from a desire of adding importance to its objects, attributes whatever is Roman to Julius Cæsar, as the most illustrious of the Roman generals in England; just as we daily hear smatterers in art referring to Raphael any painting, however ordinary, that pretends to issue from the schools of Rome or Florence, every Bolognese one to Guido or Annibal Carracci, every Kermes to Ostade or Teniers, &c. [19] _Noel, Essais sur la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 98. [20] Sully, who was himself in this battle, and bore a conspicuous part in it, dwells upon its details completely _con amore_, and evidently regards the issue of this day as decisive of the fate of the monarch, who is reported to have said of himself shortly before the battle, that "he was a king without a kingdom, a husband without a wife, and a warrior without money."--I. p. 204.