details are only
a tithe portion of what we might have abridged. The warlike habits of
our ancestors are always attractive topics for inquirers into the
history of mankind, and their study is not

Dull and crabbed as some fools suppose,

but a treasury or depository of useful knowledge, by enabling the
inquirer to draw many valuable inferences from the comparative states of
men in the several ages he seeks to illustrate. The enthusiasm of such
pursuits is, likewise, an everlasting source of delight; for who can
visit such shrines as Netley, St. Albans, or Melrose, without feeling
that he is on holy ground; and although we are equally active in our
notice of the architectural triumphs of our own times, we must not
entirely leave the proud labours of by-gone ages to be clasped in the
ponderous folio, or to moulder and lie neglected on the upper shelves of
our libraries.

We have to acknowledge the loan of the original of the engraving, from a
lineal descendant of D'OILEY[4], the founder or repairer of the Castle
at Oxford--a name not altogether unknown to our readers.

[1] The sum of 144_l_. 5_s_. was expended in the rebuilding.

[2] By an odd mode of expression in the MS., it should seem as
if this tower itself, or at least some building adjoining it,
was formerly made use of as a _royal residence_, for the words
are, _from hence went a fair embattled wall, guarded for the
most part with the mill-stream underneath, till it came in the
high tower, going under St. George's College, and the king's
house employed formerly as a campanile belonging to that
church_.

[3] Grose fell into an error on this point, in his 3rd volume of
Antiquitica, for in his copy of Aga's plan, he placed a large
keep tower just at the foot of an artificial mount--an anomaly
in fortification. The same punster who described _fortification_
as _two twenty fications_, would call this a _Grose_ blunder.

[4] When Robert D'Oiley, in the reign of Henry V. built the
abbey at Osney, for monks and regulars, and gave them the
revenues, &c. of the church of St. George, in the Castle, it is
said in the Osney chronicle, that there "Robert Pulen began to
read at Oxford the Holy Scriptures, which had fallen into
neglect in England. And after both the church of England and
that of France had profited greatly by his doctrine, he was
called away by Pope Lucius II., who