extending nearly across
the encampment, the traces of an ancient fosse not less than one hundred
and fifty feet wide, and, though in most places shallow, terminating
towards the sea in a deep ravine. Internally the camp appears to have
been also divided into three parts, in one of which it has been
supposed, from a heap of stones which till lately remained, that there
was originally a place of greater strength; while in another,
distinguished by some irregular elevations, it is conjectured that there
was a wall, the defence probably to the keep.

[Illustration: Plan of Caesar's Camp, near Dieppe]

But I must tell you that these conjectures are none of my own, nor could
I have had any opportunity of making them; the stones and the hillocks
having disappeared before the operations of the plough. Such as they
are, I have borrowed them from a dissertation by the Abbe de
Fontenu[15], a copy of whose engraving of the place I insert. Indebted
as I am to him for his hints, I can, however, by no means subscribe to
his reasoning, by which he labors with great erudition to prove that,
neither the popular tradition which ascribes this camp to Caesar, nor
its name, evidently Roman, nor some coins and medals of the same nation
that have been found here, are at all evidences of its Latin origin; but
that, as we have no proof that Caesar was ever in the vicinity of
Dieppe, as the whole is in such excellent preservation, (a point I beg
leave to deny,) and as the vallum is full thrice the height of that of
other Roman encampments in France[16], we are bound to infer it is a
work of far more modern times, and probably was erected by Talbot, the
Caesar of the English[17], while besieging Dieppe in the middle of the
XVth century.

This opinion of the learned Abbe I quote, principally for the purpose of
shewing how far a man of sense and acquirements maybe led astray from
truth and probability in support of a favorite theory. Nothing but the
love of theory could surely have induced him to suppose that this strong
hold was erected for a purpose to which it could in no wise be
applicable, as the intervening ground prevents all possibility of seeing
any part of Dieppe from the camp, or to ascribe it to times when
earth-works were no longer used. In Normandy and Picardy are other
camps, more evidently of Roman construction, which are likewise ascribed
to Caesar[18]; with much the same reason perhaps as every thing
wonderful in Scotland is re