history, or indeed of any study, requiring much labour, is always apt to evaporate in the moment of enjoyment. It is nearly impossible to transmit the result of our own labours into the minds of others, who have not qualified themselves for their reception by the necessary degree of previous research. Or, if they are understood, they can only furnish the reader with an author's opinions, of which he knows not the foundation, and that can never become active sources of knowledge, like those which he might obtain by his own exertions. After all, how small is the class of readers, who study history, with the expectation of acquiring virtue or experience! To those who are destitute of the habits and discipline of literature, history is little better than a splendid pantomime, where some of the spectators are delighted with the dexterity and boldness of the hero, others with the magnificence of the scenes, and the astonishing changes of the machinery; from such an entertainment, the majority carry away, perhaps, as many moral impressions, as they would receive from the study of Thucydides or Davila. ON THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN ART OF FORTIFICATION. Ir is generally agreed, among military writers, that the method of fortifying places with bastions was introduced into Italy, about the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the author of this great change in the art of war has never been accurately traced. I have been induced, by Folard's reflections on this subject, to make some enquiry into it, the result of which will perhaps surprize the reader. The first bastions which were seen in Europe, were constructed by the Turks, for the defence of Otranto, in Apulia, * Hist. de Polybe, tom. iii. p. 2. & Seq. |