But, whatever the code of tactics on which they were fashioned, we cannot but admire, in the midst of our conjectures their peculiar symmetry, their number and their duration. Parallel with the foundations of Rome these walls went up, far back in the calendar of time, and time-defying, they seem destined to pass down, as far from the present into a misty and pregnant future, as the actual history of a populous and mighty race. Like the lost decades of Livy, some passages are wanting to their completeness, but in what stands we may read the power, the strength, the decay, and the downfall of our own American ancients. They were men of war and those ramparts first built against a human enemy were now occupied to keep at bay a new and untried foe.

Part First, pages 6-7