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s formed by the Romans, to convey their military force, the prodigious number of camps, moats, and broken castles, left us by the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, our common ancestors, indicate _a martial temper_. The names of those heroic sovereigns, Edward the Third, and Henry the Fifth, who brought their people to the fields of conquest, descend to posterity with the highest applause, though they brought their kingdom to the brink of ruin; while those quiet princes, Henry the Seventh, and James the First, who cultivated the arts of peace, are but little esteemed, though under their sceptre, England experienced the greatest improvement.--The man who dare face an enemy, is the most likely to gain a friend. A nation versed in arms, stands the fairest chance to protect its property, and secure its peace: war itself may be hurtful, the knowledge of it useful. In Mitchly-park, three miles west of Birmingham, in the parish of Edgbaston, is _The Camp_; which might be ascribed to the Romans, lying within two or three stones cast of their Ikenield-street, where it divides the counties of Warwick and Worcester, but is too extensive for that people, being about thirty acres: I know none of their camps more than four, some much less; it must, therefore, have been the work of those pilfering vermin the Danes, better acquainted with other peoples property than their own; who first swarmed on the shores, then over-ran the interior parts of the kingdom, and, in two hundred years, devoured the whole. No part of this fortification is wholly obliterated, though, in many places, it is nearly levelled by modern cultivation, that dreadful enemy to the antiquary. Pieces of armour are frequently ploughed up, particularly parts of the sword and the battle-axe, instruments much used by those destructive sons of the raven. The platform is quadrangular, every side nearly four hundred yards; the center is about six acres, surrounded by three ditches, each about eight yards over, at unequal distances; though upon a descent, it is amply furnished with water. An undertaking of such immense labour, could not have been designed for temporary use. The propriety of the spot, and the rage of the day for fortification, seem to have induced the Middlemores, lords of the place for many centuries, and celebrated for riches, but in the beginning of this work, for poverty, to erect a park, and a lodge; nothing of either exist, but the names. MORTIMER
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