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Our young gentleman, upon inquiry, found that this animosity had sprung from a dispute that happened upon the ramparts, touching the strength of the fortification, which the doctor, according to custom, undervalued, because it was a modern work; saying, that by the help of the military engines used among the ancients, and a few thousands of pioneers, he would engage to take it in less than ten days after he should sit down before it. The North Briton, who was as great a pedant as the physician, having studied fortification, and made himself master of Caesar's Commentaries and Polybius, with the observations of Folard, affirmed, that all the methods of besieging practised by the ancients would be utterly ineffectual against such a plan as that of the citadel of Lisle; and began to compare the vineae, aggeres, arietes, scorpiones, and catapultae of the Romans, with the trenches, mines, batteries, and mortars used in the present art of war. The republican, finding himself attacked upon what he thought his strong side, summoned all his learning to his aid; and, describing the famous siege of Plateae, happened to misquote a passage of Thucydides, in which he was corrected by the other, who, having been educated for the church, was also a connoisseur in the Greek language. The doctor, incensed at being detected in such a blunder in the presence of Pallet, who, he knew, would promulgate his shame, told the officer, with great arrogance, that his objection was frivolous, and that he must not pretend to dispute on these matters with one who had considered them with the utmost accuracy and care. His antagonist, piqued at this supercilious insinuation, replied with great heat, that for aught he knew, the doctor might be a very expert apothecary, but that in the art of war, and knowledge of the Greek tongue, he was no other than an ignorant pretender.

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