The martello towers seem to have thoroughly obsessed Cobbett, for he presently bursts forth again, to tell us how they were “erected to keep out the Jacobin French, lest they should come and assist the Jacobin English. The _loyal_ people of this coast were fattened by the building of them. Pitt and his loyal _Cinque Ports_ waged interminable war against Jacobins. These very towers are now used to keep these _loyal_ Cinque Ports themselves in order. These towers are now used to lodge men, whose business is to sally forth, not upon Jacobins, but upon _smugglers_. Thus, after having sucked up millions of the nation’s money, these loyal Cinque Ports are squeezed again: kept in order, kept down, by the very towers which they rejoiced to see rise to keep down the Jacobins.” Seventy-six of these martello towers were erected along the flat places of the Kent and Sussex shores in the first years of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon threatened us with invasion. They cost, according to their size, from £10,000 to £20,000 apiece, and were constructed of such a thickness of brick, with a vaulted brick roof, that they were thoroughly bomb-proof. The thickness of the brick walls varies from six feet on the rear, or landward, side, to nine feet facing the sea. The interior consists of a base, intended to serve as the magazine, with two rooms above, for the garrison. On the roof was mounted a swivel-gun, while on either side of each tower a howitzer was planted, as a flank defence. The martello towers are said to have been introduced from Italy, on whose Mediterranean coast, we are told, they had first been built for the purpose of defending the seaboard against the pirates who once infested those seas. It is even said that their name, “Torri di Martello,” derives from the warning to neighbouring villages sounded on the approach of a pirate ship by striking a bell with a hammer, in Italian _martello_; but another derivation is given from a circular fort on the seashore at Martella, in Corsica, reduced only after severe fighting in the time of Nelson. At any rate, they do not deserve the ridicule that has been showered upon them, from the time of their building until the present day. They had never an opportunity of being put to the test, for Napoleon thought better of his projected invasion; but time has been on the side of these much-abused forts, for Lord Kitchener’s blockhouses on the African veldt, not altogether remotely resembling them, were largely instrumental in bringing the weary and inglorious great Boer War to a close.