and grey, the wrecks of the imperial city, destroyed ages before by
lightning. 

All these remains of a power and a pomp that Rome in vain had
bequeathed to the Briton, were full of pathetic and solemn interest,
when blent with the thought, that on yonder steep, the brave prince of
a race of heroes, whose line transcended, by ages, all the other
royalties of the North, awaited, amidst the ruins of man, and in the
stronghold which nature yet gave, the hour of his doom. 

But these were not the sentiments of the martial and observant Norman,
with the fresh blood of a new race of conquerors. 

"In this land," thought he, "far more even than in that of the Saxon,
there are the ruins of old; and when the present can neither maintain
nor repair the past, its future is subjection or despair." 

Agreeably to the peculiar uses of Saxon military skill, which seems to
have placed all strength in dykes and ditches, as being perhaps the
cheapest and readiest outworks, a new trench had been made round the