Modern Military Architecture

of which he deserved the name and the title of Father of Modern Fortification. The ornament and the glory of the second of these parts, as the most brilliant and elevated of our Architecture, was reserved for the great FREDERIC, that Illustrious forcer of cities, impregnable to all others but him: And to you, MY LORD, [fell] that of reuniting these two sufficiencies together, in you alone: as fashioned in the inventions or experiences of MAURICE; and nurtured under the government and command of a FATHER, who never had his equal in the part of this knowledge that he particularly exercised.

It is a heritage that cannot be snatched from you. It is of the substance, and of the sense, and of the very blood of your admirable predecessors. Over the other goods that you possess, the inconstancy of events has some power; this one alone exceeds the limits of its Empire. And it will never be, and it can no longer be, that MAURICE was not in his time, the first and most excellent of all the Builders and founders of cities; and that FREDERIC was not singular and inimitable, in the art of taking and preserving them.

Therefore, by right of blood, as well as by title of succession, you have acquired both the protection and the possession of my Modern Fortification: since the Subject is entirely yours: and the work that I have composed from it, from the instant of its first edition, had been vowed to H.H. your most glorious predecessor and FATHER; and had even been consigned to him in part, during his lifetime. Could it hope for less favor and