he solid
interests of mankind. But in old times it was good for something: it
painted well, sang divinely, furnished Iliads. But invisible butchery,
under a pall of smoke a furlong thick, who is any the better for that?
Poet with his note-book may repeat, "Suave etiam belli certamina magna
tueri;" but the sentiment is hollow and savours of cuckoo. You can't
tueri anything but a horrid row. He didn't say, "Suave etiam ingentem
caliginem tueri per campos instructam."

They managed better in the Middle Ages.

This siege was a small affair; but, such as it was, a writer or minstrel
could see it, and turn an honest penny by singing it; so far then the
sport was reasonable, and served an end.

It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of the
besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two hundred
and fifty yards, containing two curtains and two towers, one of which
was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof that was built
to overlap, resting on a stone machicolade, and by this means a row of
dangerous crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the
nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a modern
frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were overlapped with
penthouses somewhat shattered by the mangonels, trebuchets, and other
slinging engines of the besiegers. On the besiegers' edge of the moat
was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was
broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry,
and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full
operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the
balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of
fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the
hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling
up with materials. Only, on looking closer into the hive of industry,
you might observe that arrows were constantly flying to and fro, that
the cranes did not tenderly deposit their masses of stone, but flung
them with an indifference to property, though on scientific principles,
and that among the tubs full of arrows, and the tar-barrels and the
beams, the fagots, and other utensils, here and there a workman or a
soldier lay flatter than is usual in limited naps, and something more
or less feathered stuck in them, and blood, and other essentials, oozed
out.

At