A city therefore
should have both these sorts of buildings, which may easily be
contrived if any one will so regulate them as the planters do their
rows of vines; not that the buildings throughout the city should be
detached from each other, only in some parts of it; thus elegance and
safety will be equally consulted. With respect to walls, those who say
that a courageous people ought not to have any, pay too much respect
to obsolete notions; particularly as we may see those who pride
themselves therein continually confuted by facts. It is indeed
disreputable for those who are equal, or nearly so, to the enemy, to
endeavour to take refuge within their walls--but since it very often
happens, that those who make the attack are too powerful for the
bravery and courage of those few who oppose them to resist, if you
would not suffer the calamities of war and the insolence of the enemy,
it must be thought the part of a good soldier to seek for safety under
the shelter and protection of walls more especially since so many
missile weapons and machines have been most ingeniously invented to
besiege cities with. Indeed to neglect surrounding a city with a wall
would be similar to choosing a country which is easy of access to an
enemy, or levelling the eminences of it; or as if an individual should
not have a wall to his house lest it should be thought that the owner
of it was a coward: nor should this be left unconsidered, that those
who have a city surrounded with walls may act both ways, either as if
it had or as if it had not; but where it has not they cannot do this.
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