But the history of a siege is a very different affair. A place is attacked scientifically and cautiously, to prevent discomfiture; it is defended with watchful precaution, to avoid surprises, and loss of husbanded means. Chess is not played with the rash spirit of a Christmas round game. Both parties have leisure to note every event that advances or retards their great object; and if the contest be a protracted one, such calamitous circumstances are sure to arise as will give to it the deepest feeling of human interest. As, in the history of the world, the accounts of its periods of trouble occupy a thousand times more space than its records of peace and prosperity, so sieges, having given birth to more suffering than perhaps any other cause attributable to man alone, we have, in greatest abundance, most appalling descriptions of these frightful struggles, in which human beings seem to have been gathered together into corners to prove all they were capable of performing or enduring. That a great siege is the sublime view of men acting in masses, is proved by two of the most exalted poets of the world having each chosen one as the subject most worthy of his genius. To us humble narrators, Homer’s “Siege of Troy” and Tasso’s “Siege of Jerusalem” are of inestimable value, as, independently of their poetic beauties, pointing out clearly the different modes of carrying on a siege at periods so remote from each other. Notwithstanding all the splendour bestowed by the presence of gods, demigods, and heroes, Homer’s siege is of the most primitive kind. Abortive attacks upon the walls, unsupported by machinery or any attempt at art, not even the palpable one of escalade, together with vain efforts to get into the city, and continual skirmishes and duels with the besieged in their sorties, seem to have comprised all the art of war exercised by the cunning Greeks in this their great early invasion of a foreign territory, or rather of a city, as the expedition to Colchis preceded it by a generation: the sires of Homer’s heroes manned the Argo. All the strength of the defenders consisted of the watchful and constant use of spear and shield in repulsing the attacks of the enemy; and their courage was displayed in daily excursions, in war-chariots and on foot, upon the plains surrounding the beleaguered city. In Tasso we see the art of war as it was practised in his time in Europe, and as it has been practised in Asia for several centuries. To avoid an anachronism, there is no gunpowder; but he employs every other accessory of machinery, towers, and the Greek fire, with missiles of various kinds, unknown to the Homeric age. But we must not allow general remarks to anticipate narration.