place.

Our young gentleman, upon inquiry, found that this animosity had sprung
from a dispute that happened upon the ramparts, touching the strength of
the fortification, which the doctor, according to custom, undervalued,
because it was a modern work; saying, that by the help of the military
engines used among the ancients, and a few thousands of pioneers, he
would engage to take it in less than ten days after he should sit down
before it. The North Briton, who was as great a pedant as the physician,
having studied fortification, and made himself master of Caesar's
Commentaries and Polybius, with the observations of Folard, affirmed,
that all the methods of besieging practised by the ancients would be
utterly ineffectual against such a plan as that of the citadel of Lisle;
and began to compare the vineae, aggeres, arietes, scorpiones, and
catapultae of the Romans, with the trenches, mines, batteries, and
mortars used in the present art of war. The republican, finding himself
attacked upon what he thought his strong side, summoned all his learning
to his aid; and, describing the famous siege of Plateae, happened to
misquote a passage of Thucydides, in which he was corrected by the
other, who, having been educated for the church, was also a connoisseur
in the Greek language. The doctor, incensed at being detected in such
a blunder in the presence of Pallet, who, he knew, would promulgate his
shame, told the officer, with great arrogance, that his objection was
frivolous, and that he must not pretend to dispute on these matters
with one who had considered them with the utmost accuracy and care. His
antagonist, piqued at this supercilious insinuation, replied with
great heat, that for aught he knew, the doctor might be a very expert
apothecary, but that in the art of war, and knowledge of the Greek
tongue, he was no other than an ignorant pretender.

This asseveration produced an answer full of virulence, including a
national reflection upon the soldier's country; and the contention rose
to mutual abuse, when it was suppressed by the admonitions of the other
two, who begged they would not expose themselves in a strange place,
but behave themselves like fellow-subjects and friends. They accordingly
ceased reviling each other, and the affair was seemingly forgot;
but after they had resumed their places in the coach, the painter
unfortunately asked the meaning of the word tortise, which he had
heard them mention among the R