comprehensive data, lasting in their nature, and directly connected with the foundations of the state itself, not on transient views on war, fashionable for a day; not on imaginary strategic niceties, nor on requirements completely singular in character an error which might be attended with irreparable consequences if allowed to influence the construction of fortresses intended to last five hundred, perhaps a thousand, years. Silberberg, in Silesia, built by Frederick the Great on one of the ridges of the Sudetics, has, from the complete alteration in circumstances which has since taken place, lost almost entirely its importance and object, whilst Breslau, if it had been made a strong place of arms, and continued to be so, would have always maintained its value against the French, as well as against the Russians, Poles, and Austrians.
Our reader will not overlook the fact that these considerations are not raised on the supposed case of a state providing itself with a set of new fortifications; they would be useless if such was their object, as such a case seldom, if ever, happens; but they may all arise at the designing of each single fortification.