customs of the times; as the balista, an engine much like the cross bow, in use for throwing stones and darts. The great power of these machines is noticed by Josephus, in his account of the Jewish Wars, where he states, that during the siege of Jerusalem, stones of such magnitude were thrown from the ballista, that they beat down the angles of the towers and the battlements from the walls; and that a man who stood near him had his head taken off by a stone at the distance of three hundred and seventy-five paces.

Many other engines, besides the balista, were used for similar purposes, as the catapulta, the onager, scorpion, trobuchet, matafunda, the mategriffon, the bucolle, war-wolf, engine-a-verge, the espingal, &c. &c. These engines were used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries for discharging all kinds of missiles; as fire, millstones, sometimes of three or four hundred weight, &c. In the line of the outer wall was placed the gate, the approach to which was generally by a draw-bridge across the moat; on each side of the gate stood a tower, embattled at the top, and furnished with loop holes to defend the entrance; the gates were made of solid oak timber, strongly nailed, and plated with iron; inside the gate, in grooves, was placed the ponderous portcullis, made of iron, or oak bars, and furnished along its lower edge with iron spikes, for the destruction of those on whom it might be dropped. This engine always hung suspended, and was only lowered on extraordinary occasions; as on the forcing of the great gate by an enemy; or when a part of them had entered the outer ballium (or the space between the outer and inner wall), the portcullis was suddenly dropped upon the entering foe, and not only destroyed those on whom it fell, but cut off the retreat of the party that had entered; who, if not immediately slain by the garrison, were made prisoners, and hurried to the vaults of the dungeon,

tower, or keep. At a moderate distance from the outer wall stood another, more lofty, and strengthened by massive towers, and often a second ditch, enclosing a large plot of ground, where the garrison could be reviewed or exercised. This place was called the inner ballium; and it was here that the huge principal tower, called the keep, or dongeon, was placed, in the foundations of which were kept the prisoners; whilst the upper rooms served for the residence of the baron or governor of the fortress: this tower was frequently built upon a mound of enormous height, and fitted up in a manner to render it capable of enduring a siege, even after the loss of the whole of the outer and inner works. Sometimes the entrance to the keep was placed at a considerable distance from the ground, as at the Castle of Coningsborough, in Yorkshire, and others, to which there could have been no access but by a ladder, that might when necessary, be drawn up, and thus cut off the approach. The walls of these dongeons, or keeps, were made of such vast strength, that previous to the invention of gunpowder, many of them must have been perfectly impregnable, whilst the garrison were sufficiently supplied with provisions and water. It was in this tower that the baron usually gave banquets to his friends, dependants, and vassals; pronounced judgment on his prisoners, from which there was no appeal; and not unfrequently perpetrated the foulest murders within its walls.

After the Norman mode of building, a new style of military architecture took place, in the reign of Edward I. and the castles built by him possess much grandeur and magnificence; Caerphilly Conway, Caernarvon, Harlech, and Beaumaris, bear ample testimony to the improved style of architecture adopted by that prince, and during his reign many of the older castles received additions, according to the improved taste of the age. After these came a style of greater sumptuousness, the first and finest

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specimen of which was the truly royal Castle at Windsor, erected by Edward III. and soon after copied on a minor scale by his nobles.

We now arrive at the fashion of building which partook much of the castle in its appearance, without any of its uses, as is instanced in the castellated mansions previous to the time of Henry VIII. in whose reign, and also in Elizabeth's, the houses of the nobility began to assume a gaiety and cheerfulness of aspect that singularly contrasted with the dark and uncomfortable habitations of their ancestors; so much so, that Sir Walter Raleigh observed to a friend, that the houses of their times had so many windows, that people scarcely knew where to go for the benefit of a little shade.

In conclusion, I must remark, that it is not always easy to determine the era in which a castle may have been built, although some few general points may be noticed that will be of great utility in assisting us to form our conjectures, as the line, or double line of bricks, which occur in the walls of Roman edifices, at stated intervals, running in parallel lines through their whole length; the manner of filling up the space between the two stone facings of the wall will also assist, but not so satisfactorily as their arches, which were always semicircular, and formed without a key-stone: in the Saxon buildings we also find the arch invariably of the same figure, but highly ornamented with their favourite zig-zag embellishments, and the soffit, or under side, of the arch, for the most part, enriched with something of the same kind; whilst the Norman arches are always plain on the soffit. The early Norman arch, like the Roman and Saxon, was semicircular, nor was it till the beginning of the reign of Henry III. that the pointed arch was introduced into English military architecture. The Roman Castles are constructed with an inner and outer court, called baileys, and may be known by the magnitude of the

keep, which was mostly very lofty. The circular keeps are sometimes called Juliets, from an opinion that such towers were built by Julius Cæsar. There is another arch, of later times, which we find in castles and castellated mansions, called the Tudor arch, from the date of its introduction, during the reign of Henry VII.; it is of a low and expansive construction, pointed at the centre, and frequently appears as if actually depressed as it approximates to the summit: this arch has often an elegant effect, and belongs exclusively to buildings of the above or subsequent dates. It may not be uninteresting to add a short sketch of some of the ancient machinery used for the attack and defence of fortified places. The earliest account we have of such engines is in the second book of Chronicles, c. xxvi. v. 14, 15, where it is stated, that “ Uzziah prepared for them, throughout all the host, shields, and spears, and helmets, and habergeons, and bows and arrows, and slings to cast stones; and he made, in Jerusalem, engines invented by cunning men, to be on the towers, and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal; and his name spread far abroad, for he was marvellously helped till he was strong." One of the simplest machines of the ancients for throwing stones, fire, &c. was the scorpion, or onager, (wild ass), an instrument of the simplest construction, being only a long lever, with a very powerful weight hung at the shorter arm, which, when let fall, raised the longer end with such velocity, that whatever had been placed upon it was discharged with great force. The projectile power of the lever was also increased by striking against a transverse beam, with a horse-hair cushion fixed beneath it, so that the lever was suddenly arrested in its ascent before it had lost its force, by which means the loading was discharged with a greater jet. The scorpion is mentioned by Livy, in his Inventory of Warlike Stores found by Scipio, at Carthagena. In the list he names one hundred and twenty catapultas of the larger size; two hundred and eighty-one of the smaller; twenty-three of the

greater ballista; and of the smaller, fifty-two; with an innumerable quantity of scorpions of different sizes, &c. Of the ballista, one is mentioned by Tacitus, of such uncommon size, used at Cremona, by the Vitellians, during a siege, that when it had been rendered useless by some of the besiegers, who had advanced boldly and cut the ropes and springs that gave it power, the besieged, in a fit of desperation, rolled down the machine upon the heads of the assailants; but not having sufficiently freed it from its tackling, it drew after it not only part of the wall and parapet, but the whole of a neighbouring tower, crushing to death a great number of the besieging Romans. Perhaps the earliest instance of the use of these machines, to be found in prophane history, is, when Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, besieged Motya, in Sicily, three hundred and seventy years before the birth of our Saviour. Having succeeded in battering down part of the wall with the rams, he caused large wooden towers* to be moved forwards upon wheels, from which he assailed the besieged with continual volleys of stones, &c. thrown from his catapultas, till the surrender of the town. It is supposed that the Romans were the first to introduce into England the use of these machines, and they were, probably, for the first time employed at the battle of • The towers here alluded to were made of wood, and placed upon wheels, and were always of sufficient height to be on a level, or above the walls, of the place besieged: these towers were, consequently, of various sizes, the larger being sometimes ninety feet high, consisting of about twenty stories, each story being something less than the one beneath it, so that the whole tower decreased in magnitude upwards; on the top was placed a bridge, to be lowered down upon the parapet, when a place was to be taken by storm; and the whole fabric was covered with skins of animals to protect it against fire: in the lower part of the tower a battering ram was usually placed. The last construction of this kind, in England, was used by the Parlimentary forces, at the siege of Corfe Castle. It appears, by Camden, that Edward III. used one of these machines, then called a sow, at the siege of Dunbar Castle.