No More Learning

Indeed, the whole castle here was a
"folly,"--England's folly,--and, in more senses than one, a castle in
the air. The inhabitants and the government are gradually waking up to
a sense of this truth; for I heard something said about their
abandoning the wall around the Upper Town, and confining the
fortifications to the citadel of forty acres. Of course they will
finally reduce their intrenchments to the circumference of their own
brave hearts.

The most modern fortifications have an air of antiquity about them;
they have the aspect of ruins in better or worse repair from the day
they are built, because they are not really the work of this age. The
very place where the soldier resides has a peculiar tendency to become
old and dilapidated, as the word _barrack_ implies. I couple all
fortifications in my mind with the dismantled Spanish forts to be
found in so many parts of the world; and if in any place they are not
actually dismantled, it is because that there the intellect of the
inhabitants is dismantled. The commanding officer of an old fort near
Valdivia in South America, when a traveler remarked to him that, with
one discharge, his gun-carriages would certainly fall to pieces,
gravely replied, "No, I am sure, sir, they would stand two. " Perhaps
the guns of Quebec would stand three. Such structures carry us back to
the Middle Ages, the siege of Jerusalem, and St. Jean d'Acre, and the
days of the Bucaniers. In the armory of the citadel they showed me a
clumsy implement, long since useless, which they called a Lombard gun.
I thought that their whole citadel was such a Lombard gun, fit object
for the museums of the curious. Such works do not consist with the
development of the intellect. Huge stone structures of all kinds, both
in their erection and by their influence when erected, rather oppress
than liberate the mind. They are tombs for the souls of men, as
frequently for their bodies also.
The sentinel with his musket beside
a man with his umbrella is spectral. There is not sufficient reason
for his existence. Does my friend there, with a bullet resting on half
an ounce of powder, think that he needs that argument in conversing
with me? The fort was the first institution that was founded here, and
it is amusing to read in Champlain how assiduously they worked at it
almost from the first day of the settlement. The founders of the
colony thought this an excellent site for a wall,--and no doubt it was
a better site, in some respects, for a wall than for a city,--but it
chanced that a city got behind it. It chanced, too, that a Lower Town
got before it, and clung like an oyster to the outside of the crags,
as you may see at low tide. It is as if you were to come to a country
village surrounded by palisades in the old Indian fashion,--interesting
only as a relic of antiquity and barbarism. A fortified town is like a
man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of
broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his
business. Or is this an indispensable machinery for the good
government of the country? The inhabitants of California succeed
pretty well, and are doing better and better every day, without any
such institution. What use has this fortress served, to look at it
even from the soldiers' point of view? At first the French took care
of it; yet Wolfe sailed by it with impunity, and took the town of
Quebec without experiencing any hindrance at last from its
fortifications. They were only the bone for which the parties fought.
Then the English began to take care of it. So of any fort in the
world,--that in Boston Harbor, for instance. We shall at length hear
that an enemy sailed by it in the night, for it cannot sail itself,
and both it and its inhabitants are always benighted.