The more they are examined, the more are the actual fortresses of Britain stripped of any pretensions to extreme antiquity, and brought within the Norman period. There are two leading objects of fortification—the protective and the aggressive; and, according to the view we have been supporting, it has been the function of the Norman, in the development of European history, to have been the inventor and propagator of the kind of works adapted to the latter object. Fortresses of mere refuge are on the tops of hills, or in other inaccessible places. It does not suit the aggressor to go to the wilds—he must have his elements of strength in the very middle of the people whom he is to rule over. If a rock happens to be found bulging out of a fine alluvial district—as the plutonic upheavings of trap have supplied in Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton—it is well; but, where there are no natural strengths, they must be artificially constructed—and art has in this department far outstripped nature, or has rather found in her own resources better means of defence against her instruments of destruction than nature provides. The Saxons did not raise strongholds of this kind, nor did the northern races, in their native districts; and, indeed, it is rather curious to observe that there is scarcely a feudal castle to be found in the Scandinavian territories, whence issued the race who strewed all Europe with fortresses. Scott speaks of Bamborough as “Ida’s castle, huge and square;” but there can now be little doubt that it is a Norman edifice. If the tall gaunt tower of Conisborough retain its Saxon antiquity, yet it is evident that it must have been a rude and feeble strength, standing alone without the outworks, which were the great achievement of Norman engineering. Some other bare towers of this character are supposed to be of ante-Norman origin, as the round tower of Trematon, in Cornwall, and that of Launceston, on the apex of a conical rock, round the base of which Norman works have been raised. Scott is historically correct, as he almost ever is, when he thus describes the abode of Cedric the Saxon:—“A low irregular building, containing several courtyards or enclosures, extending over a considerable space of ground; and which, though its size argued the inhabitant to be a person of wealth, differed entirely from the tall, turreted, and castellated buildings in which the Norman nobility resided, and which had become the universal style of architecture throughout England.”