ornia t , / .-> ,.- k JWk. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES A TOUR / IN QUEST OF THROUGH SEVERAL PARTS OF WALES, SOMERSETSHIRE, AND WILTSHIRE, & Series of TO A FRIEND IN DUBLIN; . INTERSPERSED WITH A DESCRIPTION Of STOVRHEAD 4ND STONEHENGE-, AND CURIOUS FRAGMENTS FROM A MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION ASCRIBED TO SHAKESPEARE. BY A BARRISTER. LONDON : PUBLISHED BY SHERWOOD, NEELY, AND JONES, PATERNOSTER HOW. 1811. ADVERTISEMENT. THE Editor lamenting that the Copy of this Work was not accompanied with Drawings, as it refers occasionally to so many Jlne subjects for the pencil, and being possessed of several, which, though they have already ministered to the embellishment of a periodical publication, yet as they may serve to illustrate some of the scenes in the following^ pages, presumes to hope that the introduction of them here will neither le reprobated by the author mr unacceptable to the public. S. GOSKILI, Fruiter, Littlt Queen Street, Londo*. V ' DA DEDICATION. TO THE HONOURABLE FQRTESCUE* SIR, BY the abrupt departure of my friend, the writer of the following Letters, from England, in obedience to feelings whose imperiousness no human philosophy has been able to control, and in consequence of the gentleman to whom they were addressed hav- ing decided to publish them, a task has now devolved on me which I fondly flattered myself the author's return into his own country would have relieved me from ; for which reason the pub- lication has hitherto been delayed. But all hopes of that event soon taking place having vanished, IV I hasten to fulfil an engagement I entered into conditionally. In my absent friend's last letter to me on this subject he says, " Do with my scraps what O'Brien and you may think fit; I have sought new countries, to contract, if possible, new thoughts, and should be happy could I discharge from my mind every idea that connects itself with a rooted sorrow that I am labouring to pluck from my memory, and shut out the past; yet there are circumstances during the little excursion you refer to that can never recur but with pleasure, for how can I forget the days we passed at Holnicote? therefore if any thing is done with the journal of my rambles, testify for me the respect and grati- tude I shall ever entertain for that charming place and its amiable possessors." After such a declaration I think I cannot do less than inscribe this volume to you, as in doing so I know I am gratifying the proudest wish of the author, and at the same time affording myself an opportunity of expressing sentiments similar to his of Holni- cote and its inhabitants, having the honour to be, SIR, Your much obliged, Humble servant, H. JONES. Bath, Nov. 20, 180p. BETTERS, To CHARLES O'BRIEN, Esq. London, October 1, 1907. JV1Y DEAR CHARLES, I AM much delighted witli your series of letters to me during your six weeks tour, last sum- mer, to the Lake of Killarney, which I have rend over and over again, and which, the oftener I read, the higher I value ; and yet it is not so much on account of the elegant local descriptions they abound with that I prize them, however en- riched by your pen and pencil, employed on a landscape so enchanting in itself, and losing no- thing by your representation. Your sketches, it must be confessed, speak a master's hand; yet, notwithstanding, in my esti- mate, they form but a secondary consideration. What I most admire is the dramatic form you have contrived to give your letters, by making every coach and every inn furnish you with change of scenes and suitable characters, and an opportunity of introducing your own interesting and ingenious observations on men and manners. B The hifctory of tlie human mind for one da}-, thus morally developed, outweighs the result of a year's modern tour, whose principal merit perhaps consists in ringing trite changes on hill and dale, wood and water, mountain and valley subjects, after all, of confined compass, and liable to a tiresome repetition of the same images and ex- pressions, even with the aid of the most Gilpin- ized phraseology, or the pencil of a Sandby. Encouraged by your pressing recommendation to me, of the same method you have adopted in your excursions, and flattered by your partiality to think I shall succeed, in my intended tour I mean to attempt it, though I arn certain I shall follow you " hand passlbus tff/uis." Indeed, I congratulate myself that part of my journey will lead me not hurry ingly through North Wales, a country of which you or I know little more than we could gather in, I may say, our Jlight (and chiefly by night) through it, when two years ago I accompanied you to Ireland, after die death of our valuable relation, Lady M , who had brought you up, being your first visit to your native kind since your migration when an infant. I recollect, that, little as we saw of it, we saw enough of its sublime scenerv to beget in us tf im earnest desire to visit it again, when we should have leisure to examine it in detail. But I was no less tantalized bv the flight through North Wales. ^ CJ O than by the glance I had of your country, during my short stay of three weeks there, in which time such a variety of objects were presented to me. and in such rapid succession, that I had not time to form a clear and distinct idea of any tiling I saw; so that I recollect every thing as in a state of chaos. I have been setting out this fortnight; but some untoward circumstance perpetually turns up, to occasion a change or dcLiy in my plans. I must now wait for some papers from Ireland, by which HIV future movements must be governed, but I *> cj expect them every post. In one of your entertaining letters from Killar-. ney, I am sorry to hear you quote Ossian's Poems as an authority for the costume of the age they refer to, as if they were real. Can you for a mo- ment seriously think them so? If you do, I Hat- ter myself I shall be able to shake your belief, and overcome your prejudice, by an account which I am indebted to Jones for, furnishing arguments to establish the imposture that, in my humble opi- nion, are unanswerable. Jones had it from a relation, a great amateur of paintmgy and a friend of Mortimer, an inge- nious young artist, and the most fashionable de- signer of his day. This gentleman happened to be on a visit to Mr. Mortimer, when Mr. Mac- pherson called to consult him about a set of designs for his Ossian, which he was now about to serve up whole, having already treated the public with a taste of it, and for that purpose had brought his manuscript with him. He described it as a bulky quarto volume, with " a small rivulet of text running through a large meadow of mar- gin. 1 ' Mr. Mortimer having introduced his ama- teur friend, from whose classical taste he promised to himself much assistance in settling the suhjects of the designs, the counterfeit son of Fingal, the bard of woody Morven, seated himself between Mr. Mortimer and his friend, and spread out his manuscript. They went cursorily through the whole volume; and Jones's relation informed him, that almost in every page there were frequent re- ferences from the narrow text to the spacious margin, where a new passage was suggested totally different from that in the body of the work, not unly in the expression, but also in the substance and thought; as much as to say, " Utrum horum mavi^accipe" a latitude that no translation would admit of, if there existed an original ; and then, as a proof of genius, by way of literary imposture, it is but a poor thing the mask is too thin read one page, and you read the whole a disgusting reverberation of the same turgid and unnatural ideas! specious bombast! The air you sent mc r en titled Dermofs IVelcomti is an exquisite relic of your ancient music, though Jones, who is my oracle in all things relating to Wales, will have it to be of Cambrian origin, borrowed, if not stolen, from the musical treasures, which Grufydd ap Cynan carried with him to Ire- land, where he long remained a fugitive; fop Jones says, he has. in a manuscript collection of Welsh music in his possession, an air so much akin to it, iii" name and subject, that he makes no doubt but tuey are of one family. His air is called Gresaw Cynan, Cynan's Welcome ; whereas yours, altered by the Irish, bears a title rather more ap- propriate, and justly complimentary to Dermot, their monarch, at whose court the distressed prince of North Wales found refuge ; the only difference is in the name, the one applying to the person giving, the other to the person receiving the wel- come. I know your country contends for having been the instructor of Wales as to music ; but Jones as strenuously insists, that all the harmony you boast of may be dated from Grufydd ap Cynan's sojourn amongst you. I recollect to have heard the late Mr. Barthelemon, from whom I once took lessons pn the violin, say, that music among 'the Welsh was reduced to -a science before it w r as scarcely- known or cultivated' in any other part of Europe, and that .some of the most beautiful .passages in Corelli's works were evidently garbled from Welsh music, which perhaps he might have picked up in Britainy. He likewise told me, that he was then employed in translating some curious Welsh music, from the most ancient notation to the modern gamut, being the only man perhaps in the king- dom, or in Europe, equal to the task. I believe this is the first time you have heard of my attempting to become a musician; and you may be induced to ask, knowing I do not play, why I shrunk from it. I found I had mistaken my talents and my instrument, for the violin 'ad- mits of no mediocrity; you should play well, or not at all ; and to excel required more time than I .6* could afford, and more genius and perseverance than I was master of. loPaan ! I have, since you heard from me, com- menced 1113* debut at Westminster, by making a motion in the court of King's Bench last Trinity Term; but, alas! I find too late, that I have as much mistaken my profession as I did my instrument when I conceited that I should have proved a vipljn-p layer. You gave me credit for being a clashing impudent fellow wfyen at College and the Temple ; and in our little circle, not the most silent and saturnine, I was as loquacious, voluble, and argumentative, as the best of you; and yet to think of this paltry motion, unhinged me for a week. I literally lost my sight and hearing for a few minutes, and how my tongue did its office I know nqt- Do ypu think I shall ever get the better of it, and that my nerves will recqver their tone ? I fear not ; for, by way of further proba- tion, I went the Home Circuit, and held a brief a$ opening counsel; but in this essay was not more successful than in the former; for if I did see and hear at all, I saw double, and heard wrongly and indistinctly. The Chief Baron seemed to me like Ben Lornond capped with snow; and little K s by my side outmeasured, to my confuted vision, the giants at Guildhall; and to my ears their weak treble was like distant thunder. What enviable assurance has little Nosy, a^s we used to ea.ll him, of Gray's Inn, whom you and I remem- ber three years, ago an attorney's runner, coming with cases ancj instructions to the pleader's office 7 we -were at, and who, with no learning, law, or language, blunders on through thick and thin, hap- pily insensible to his defects, is never thrown off his centre, and in this nice discriminating age, by mere dint of impudence, may arrive at the honour of being clad in scarlet and ermine ! I was told, that once on the circuit, when he was misaccenting words, making false concords, and widely misnaming such technical terms in the law as are derived from French or the dead languages, a brother barrister near him, feeling for the dig- nity of the profession, kindly, in a whisper, set him to rights; but, with contempt for his prompter, and in defiance of accent, quantity, and grammar, he continued to exult in reiterating the same blun- ders, reminding me of the man who, when, at a fashionable table he was not accustomed to, he was eating the wrong end of the asparagus, and was advertised of his error by his neighbour, angrily, with an oath, replied, Why can't I eat which end I please? J wish you to consider this letter as a contract, wherein I engage to give you, in an epistolary form, an account of my intended journey, on the model of yours, as well as I can assimilate my style and manner to it; my dramatis persona?, I am aware, will not match yours, for, like a well- established manager, you carried your itinerant company with you, whereas I must, in general, trust to casualty for actors ; so that many a scene must consequently be barren, of incident and cha- ii 4 ractcr, and in which I must perform Tom Fool solus. Adieu, and believe me ever Yours, most sincerely, &c. Oxford, October 12, ISO;. MT DEAR CHARLES, You see I am thus far on my long-pro- jected excursion, but much altered in its course from what was at first planned, it having been my intention to ha^e gone through Oxford to North Wales, and so, by way of Holy head, to beat up your quarters in the dear country ; but, in conse- quence of a most important circumstance, I must now take a very different route, through a great part of South Wales, to Milford, and thence cross the channel to Somersetshire, and afterwards back to London, where I have engaged to be a fortnight before Christmas. This is my first employment after being set down by the coach from London. The last evening I spent there was extremely plea- sant, and no way inferior to that at Vauxhall, "when you were of the party. We dined, the old set, at our friend's in King's Bench Walks, who entertained us most magnificently, treating us with Champaign, true ceil de penlrLe, and highly flavoured Burgundy, some of his uncle's old di- plomatic stock; the sentiment ami song went round, and we all seemed " Not touch'd, but rapt ; not wakeu'd, but inspir'd." At half past nine, with Lord B , our leader, we set off to a rout given hy an eminent artist, where we found, amongst the most motley com- pany I ever was in, Catalani and Lady H n, the former of whom, to my great satisfaction, who was perhaps the only person there who had not heard her, favoured us with a Spanish air, altered by herself, from Camocns, which she ma- naged most enchantingly ; the latter likewise sung with a strain Of peculiar witchery, and exhibited attitudes so voluptuously fascinating, that a be- holder much less enthusiastic than myself might have fancied himself transported to the Island of Love, so charmingly described in "tfie Lusiad of Camoens, and losing nothing of its beauties in the translation of Mickle*. Perhaps a cynic might have said, never did a more whimsical mixture ever come together; dancers, singers, posture- mistresses, if not masters, fidlers, painters, dentists, Jew brokers, barristers, a Hopeful Dutchman, a Russian bear, a lot of counts, M ons. M n, who was minister of France for twenty-four hours, and a quack doctor : nor were the entertainments less diversified ; an Italian improvisatore displayed his talent to the admiration of all who heard him ; one of the counts excelled in ventriloquism, another * You recollect what Sallust says of Catiline's mistress : " Docta psallere et saltare elegantius quam necesse est probae-," a sentiment that shows what ideas the Romans entertained of fe- male delicacy j a sentiment that would do honour to the most refined age, and by adopting which, our English ladies of the present day would, in my estimate, lose nothing of their attractions. 10 far surpassed the late famed Rossignol in avicular imitation, whilst a noted frequenter of C n House gave us an entertainment of slight-of-hund tricks, and performed en prince ; and a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn treated us with a debate in Par- liament on the Catholic question, taking off the principal speakers in a manner and style, that any person in another room would have supposed every member he personated present, the voice and lan- guage being so admirably imitated. It was near twelve when we withdrew from this scene of whimsical festivity, after which I was pressed by Lord B , to take a domino at his lodgings, and accompany him to a masked ball and supper at an eminent sugar-baker's in the city, where we arrived at the acme of the gala, and found about a hundred masks ; among which we thought we recognised the Hon. Mr. L n, so o o celebrated for his original humour in the annals of masquerading, as a schoolmaster; and his friend and masking rival, Mr. C , as a gipsey fortune- teller. The supper was magnificently served, and the sugar-baker's entertainment altogether might justly be called double-refined. About twenty kept on their masks, among whom were the schoolmaster and fortune-teller, who throughout evidently disguised their voices as well as faces and persons. By the by, I find Lord B has a penchant for a lady whom he sat by at supper, habited as a nun, with nothing seemingly of the character about her but the dress, with a charming person, 11 elegant manners (elegant for the other side of Temple Bar), and reputed to have a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds; a sufficient lure, you will say, to draw a man of fashion from the purlieus of St. Jameses to Queenhithe or St. Mary Axe. What an age we live in ! How every thing is turned topsy-turvy ! Who would have thought of a sugar-baker giving a masqued hall ? seeing a Prince at a painter's rout, among opera-dancers, and charlatans of every sort? or a bookseller issu- ing cards for a conversazione ? Between four and five was I set down at my chambers, and was in the Oxford coach by eight ; so you may imagine I want rest, which I certainly mean to give myself as soon as possible. After taking a peep at Magdalen to-morrow, I shall lie by for one day ; that is, not travel, though I dread the event of my academical rencontre to-morrow night. Adieu, and believe me ever yours, c. Burford, Oct. 15, ISO;, MY DEAR CHARLES, I RESUME my pen. Yesterday evening I tore myself from the groves of Magdalen, having engaged our friend Jones to take a seat in the chaise, and join nie on my excursion, and got no this place. 'Ihe evening at Magda- 12 len's was as festive of the sort as that in Kings Bench Walks : the Nightingale, as we used to call him, gave us his own exquisite little air of u Mag- dalen Grove" in his best style; and Kennedy t\vo or three most incomparable Irish songs, and one I never heard before, which I take to be his own composition, . and a man less modest might have been forward to acknowledge, each stanza ending with the " Ddls of the Dargle for ihe;" while Burton accompanied him on the flute, an instru- ment he is become perfect master of. You know there is no doing at Magdalen's without supper; and though no supper-man, there was no resisting the brawn, or the beverage Jones had the honour of contributing, most excellent Welsh bottled cwrw, the British word for ale. To this suc- ceeded successive bowls of punch*, whose basis * Our Magdalen friends had taken their recipe, one would Suppose, from the V Almanac de Gourmands, which runs thus :-~- " Sur une partie de jus de citron dans lequel on a laisse infuser quelques zestes, mettez trois parties d'excellent rhum de la Ja- maique au neuf parties de bon the bien chaud : la proportion du sucre est indeterminee." I have heard my uncle Robert, your godfather, say, that when'he was a young man of nineteen, just arrived in London to be entered of Lincoln's Inn, he was one of a party, mostly young men, at a house then much frequented, the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, drinking punch, the principal menstruum of which was strong gunpowder-tea ; the other in- gredients being pine-apple ruin, orange marmalade, jellies, and yolks of eggs, with a due temperament of acid and sweet j and in a mixture of company no less singular, which consisted of well-known old libertine bon vivant, who delighted to act as wet nurse to the sucking babes of his day, and who was on this occa- sion the master-mover of the business j a Nisus and Euryalus* 13 was strong green tea, richly inspissated with jel- lies; therefore be not surprised if the night did not pass without a row. We first sported the squinting tutor's oak, all bearing him a grudge, whose mind and manners were as distorted as his vision ; then sallied out punchi pleni into the High Street ; and though we were not periwig- pated, like the wags of Christchurch, when they bearded the proctors, and paralysed them and their authority ; yet the watchmaker, and his neighbour the apothecary, had their morning slumbers disturbed with something worse than the wakening mallet at New College, that so much an- noyed old C w*; the restoring which would have required a more than ordinary dose of opium, such was the distracting hurly-burly of our cat- calls, and every thing that discord could invent. Our hour of retiring was very late, or rather two friends just loose from College, the one balancing between a red coat and a black ; the other all logic, an embryo statesman ; both still living; the former now a grave and learned divine, who, if ha has not yet got in reach of the mitre, richly merits to attain it j the latter an ex-secretary, panting, like a true patriot, to be rein- stated, could he kill off those who stand in his way ; a cele- brated wit of his time, alas! no more, General O'H a; and the noted, or rather notorious D k E 'd, with an ob- scure subaltern or two of his black-legged corps. * Bingham, in his Ecclesiastic Antiquities, informs us of an invention before bells, for convening religious assemblies in mof nasteries. It was, going by turns to every man's cell, and with the knock of a hammer calling the monks to church : the instru- ment was called the wakening mallet. A relic of this ancient custom is preserved at New College, for the porter knocks with a majlet at the bottom of each staircase at seveU o'clock. 2 very early ; and nature was not satisfied with the little rest I was able to procure, and the want of which I now feel, and feel the more, as the only stimulus I had to keep me awake was my anxious expectation of letters from her, " at each remove from whom I dra % a fe>henihg <&aiii ;" in which. 17 C7 j ' alas! I have experienced my usual disappoint- ment : this threw me, fretted and jaded as I was, into a profound reverie, from which Jones, as he knew the cause of it, knows the human heart, and has himself as much as any man heen its plaything, never attempted to rouse me ; hut that I was roused, I owed to the sudden arrival of a carnage, out of which stepped an old lady and her daughter, almost in fits, yet in a most queru- lous tone, often interrupted by the application of the smelling-bottle, endeavouring, in the very passage of the inn into which our room opened, to give an account, to landlord, landlady, and waiters, by this time collected, of the singular appearance of a gigantic figure, stalking over Burford Heath, a circumstance confirmed by the driver and the outriders. It became the topic of such loud conversation, that nothing else was heard all over the house, and I was induced to call in the landlord, in order to inquire of him the cause of this dismal consternation, that electrified the whole company. He told me there was scarce a week passed but some traveller brought an ac- count of having his curiosity excited by some very unaccountable appearance after night on Burford Heath. If there was moonlight, the apparition 15 was described as of a gigantic indistinct form, crossing the heath at some distance, and obscuring the luminary of night as with a cloud ; in the ab- sence of the moon horrid screams were heard, faintly at first, but increasing to a pitch of alarm- ing loudness, followed by a violent noise of distant thunder, or rushing wind, with, as it were, num- berless wings in motion. Many have likened the shadowy form to one clothed in an academical gown, floating far and wide ; a terrific proctor on an enormous scale. And others have confidently asserted, that this portentous transit is accompa- nied with a strong sulphureous smell. The stage- coachmen who travel that road are so familiarized to the spectre, and so constantly expect it, that they consider its non-appearance for some time, or any peculiar variation of it, to be indicative of some sudden change of weather, or ominous of j> revolution in the state, and more to be depended upon than Moore's Almanack : nay, they scruple not to affirm, that for a week before Mr. Pitt's death, the sight and sound of this undefined ob- ject of terror was considerably increased. I have heard you ingenious on such subjects ; pray give me your opinion of the Burford bugbear, Monstrum horrendam, informe, ingens j Nocte volat coeli medio, terrteque per umbram Stridet." I shall soon retire, being half asleep, and shall hope that my fancy tincturing my dreams, will cause a more angelic spectre to haunt my pillow ; 16- for though my Eliza's letters do not arrive, her image is ever before me, and of that the cruel one cannot defraud me. To-morrow we step into th mail, so that you must not expect to hear from me till I am got into the heart of Cambria. Adieu, c. Carmarthen, Oct. 17, ISO?. >1Y DEAR C , HERE we are, all but shattered to pieces, after the most tremendous jolting I ever expe- rienced; though we were rather fortunate in our company, one of whom, a young gentleman going to visit some relations in Wales, I found was an Oxford man, had been of Christchurch, and was matriculated about the time we were leaving Magdalen. Being just entered of Lincoln's Inn> he was seriously setting about the study of the law, and was going to take his farewell of country sports and the muses, before he got entangled with Littleton's Tenures and the intricacies of special pleading. We had much classical conver- sation, in which he shone, being not superficially read, particularly in Greek lore, so that he talked of Person and Parr with a degree of contempt. He started the subject of that very obscure writer Lycophron, which he handled with great inge- nuity as well as novelty : in short, he was a kind of literary phenomenon, for I never found more erudition in so young a man, especially as he did not appear to be a mere bookworm, having all the fashionable gaiety incident to his time of life, and the manners of one who had evidently mixed much with the higher ranks. The other, though a quiz in appearance, and though for some time rather re- served, yet, before we parted, blazed out, and we found him a pleasant sensible man, highly entertain- ing, and a great mimic, taking off, to admiration, all the. modern actors; and as he had, when a young man, known Garrick, he gave us a specimen of his manner, and of others his contemporaries. He said his own figure was not unlike that of the great Roscius, whose portrait, in his negligent morning dress, I remember to have seen at my uncle's in Dublin, which had been given him by Goldsmith, with a loose great coat carelessly wrap- ped round him, a little black scratch wig, and every other part of his dress corresponding, as he usually went to rehearsals. Our fellow-traveller so much resembled it, that he might have been taken for the original. By questions every now and then, put not without design, and cross-examination, I found that he had been at the bar ; but was now laid up in clover on a fortune of two or three thousand pounds a. year, and studied to pass through life with as little notice as possible; but, as I fancied I discovered, rather from a principle of avarice than a dislike to the world, for I observed he never could be brought to give more to a coachman than sixpence, and never travelled, by his own account, with c 18 more bag-gage than his old purple bar-bag could carry, and would never eat or drink on the road at his own expense, if he could help it. As to the country we passed through in the first part of our journey, whilst day continued, there was nothing in the WoJds of Gloucester- shire to excite the eye to look out; and we had the mortification to pass through the most beauti- ful part of Wales in the night-time, Monmouth- shire and the vale of Usk particularly, a scene I have had painted to me in such colours as made me exceedingly lament the absence of daylight, for that of the moon we had, by the help of which I saw sufficient to tantalize me. However, the day dawned on us at our entrance into another most charming vale, that of Towy, running through the centre of Carmarthenshire. If the vale of Usk has superior charms to this, it must be the finest spot upon earth. The town of Llandoveiy, at which we stopped, lies at the com- mencement of this lovely scene ; its situation is low and damp, as placed at the confluence of two or three mountain-streams, of a very turbulent character, and that leave after floods dreadful marks of their ravage. The largest of these rivers, the Towy, rises among the mountains dividing this county from Cardiganshire and Brecknock- shire; and I am told, near its source, in a mineral country, the property of Lord Cawdor,itexhibitsase- ries of fine falls, accompanied by the richest scenery of rock and wood that can be imagined. There is here a good inn, called the Castle, from being conti- 19 guous to the knoll on which the small ruins of tiie fortress, so often mentioned in the Welsh Chro- nicles, appear. This castle formerly belonged to a son of the great Rhys, prince of South Wales Rhys the Hoarse, Raucisonus, or, as he is called in the Welsh language, Rhys Gryg. Here we breakfasted, and had an accession to our party, in a gentleman who seemed to have come there pur- posely to meet our young classical passenger, and give him a seat in his gig which was wait- ing. He was a man of very fascinating manners, seemed to have been much abroad, and talked of Paris as we would of London; had often been at Madame Recamier's levee, had lived in habits of intimacy with Talleyrand and all the great cha- racters of France, and spoke of Buonaparte, not at second-hand from others, or from books, but from a personal knowledge of him, and entertained us with soine singular anecdotes, which he had such a happy knack of compressing, without ren- dering them vapid, that he gave us a greater number and more spiritedly, in the space of the hour we sat together, than most narrators would have done in a day. Of Dr. Parr I knew no?- thing before but in gross, but he gave us this mass of learning most minutely in detail, with such a happy imitation of his tone and manner, that Jones, who once had been in his company, told me, that nothing could exceed it as a piece of mimicry, for he seemed to bring this hero of bom- bast alive before you. He showed us his hand- writing in a letter he had just received, but appa- 20 rently to me so unintelligible, that I could as soon, decypher the Ogham character ; and I am certain, that if it contained the rankest treason in every line, and were dropped in a public market-place, it would be a hundred chances to one, that an in- terpreter could be found sagacious enough, I may say, to translate as much as would constitute an overt act. It must be confessed, that his manner was tinctured with egotism ; but how could this be well avoided, as he himself was one of the prin- cipal actors in all the scenes he described? Our next stage was Landilo, and our road thither passes by Abermarlais, a beautiful seat of Capt. Foley, a gentleman of Pembrokeshire, who by purchase became possessed of this place, and has lately built an elegant mansion on it. As an officer this gentleman, at an early time of life, signalized himself on many occasions, and needs no other eulogium than the character given him by our great naval hero, the late Lord Nelson, both at the battle of the Nile and at Copenhagen. Of his being a man of worth, there cannot be better evi- dence than the enthusiastic respect with which he is spoken of in all the country. Abermarlais was formerly one of the castles or castellated houses belonging to Sir Rhys ap Tho- mas, and aftenvurds was possessed, as I am in- ibrincd, by an ancestor of the present Thomas Johncs, Esq. to whom the world is indebted for a new translation of Froi.ssart, from manuscripts which Lord Berners, the former and only trans- lator of that curious chronicle before him, had never seen, and therefore great part of it was to- 121 tally new. In this gentleman's late loss, by the unfortunate fire that consumed his superb mansion of Ilafod, and most valuable library, every friend of literature must sympathize. Within these twenty years the old house at Aber- marlais existed, but in an uninhabited state ; and the landlady of the inn at Landilo told me, that it was so large as to admit of having a hundred beds made in it, having been, during the time of its various possessors (for it often shifted masters), a house devoted to hospitality on the most exten- sive scale. It had till lately a large paled park full of old timber of vast size, but those were the only stag-horned growth this enclosure could boast of for above a century. The venerable foresters, that yielded to the axe, and contributed to carry our thunder to the most distant seas, are succeeded by very flourishing young plantations of the pre- sent owner, who most probably planted them, con amore, with a prophetic wish, that they, like their predecessors, might furnish a similar vehicle to extend the British empire of the ocean. The Captain's house has been placed at some distance from the site of the former, on a favoured spot, seemingly much better adapted to command the enchanting scenery around it. Landilo, as a town, is deserving of very little notice ; the inn bad ; streets, if streets they may be called, which streets are none, dirty* narrow, and irregular; but its situation is charming, on the declivity of a hill overhanging the Towy, and looking down on an expanse of va,lley richly 3 -watered and wooded, and bounded by an am- phitheatre of hills and mountains endlessly diver- sified in shape and character. Having crossed the river 'below the town, we gain a charming view of the loveliest spot my eyes ever beheld, which occu- pies an elevated tongue of land, projecting from the town of Landilo, into the vale of Towy, with a varvinq- undulation of surface of the finest ver- * ~ durc, and covered with magnificent woods, par- ticularly those which clothe the precipitous sides of the landscape skirting the river, and out of which rise the venerable ruins of the ancient castle, the once palatial residence of the princes of South Wales. Here, long after the native princes became tri- butary to England, and nothing but the shadow of royalty was left, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, ancestor of the present Lord Dynevor, who contributed as largely as any of his adherents to bring Henry the Seventh to the throne, lived in a state little less than regal, his services to his King being rewarded by grants and privileges serving to swell his property and his authority to so enormous a size, as made him the-dread and envy of his time, and to bring his grandson to the block, in the time of that ca- o pricious tyrant Henry the Eighth. A little beyond, in a line that presents nothing but the most beautiful scenes, Grongar Hill breaks on the sight, a spot ever dear to the Muses, having been celebrated in a much-admired poem of Dyer, a younger son of the house of Aberglasney, seen from the road, on the north side of the river, at its foot, but which has lately passed into an- 23 other family. Thus property alters, and this Par- nassus almost forgotten, like " Helmslev, once proud Buckingham's delight, Slides to some scrivener, or a city knight." We pass the gate that leads to Golden Grove, once the residence of the great royalist, the Earl of Carbery, whose ancestors, by grant or purchase, on the attainder of Sir Rhys ap Thomas's grand- son, became possessed of all the confiscated estates in this county ; a property of immense extent, in- fluence, and privileges, involving castles, royalties, and independent jurisdictions, and which now belongs to Lord Cawdor, a very popular noble-* man, who has likewise a most magnificent mansion in Pembrokeshire, and who, during the recess of Parliament, divides his time between the t\vo counties, alternately cheering them with his pre- sence, and supporting in each a princely esta- blishment. The house of Golden Grove, though not seen from the road, from the nature of the ground must lie low, yet I should suppose must be a lovely place to look from, as the old palace of the princes of South Wales towering above majestic woods coeval with its regal splen- dour, and Parnassian Grongar, are full in its front. The great road divides the park, which is large, from the pleasure-grounds. A little further on observe, to the right, and separated by the Towy washing its base, the scanty remains of the castle of Dryslwyn crown- ing ail insulated knoll ; which must, from its situa- tion, have been a very strong post. This castle, in the time of Edward the Second, proved the grave of many of the English nobility, the walls, by attempting to undermine them, having fallen, and buried the besiegers. Stop a few minutes at the beautiful little village of Lanartheny (one of the mail-coachman's regular gin stages), consist- ing of an inn, a few neat houses prettily scattered, and a picturesque church standing in a large ce- metery, well enclosed and nicely kept, nearly all grassed over, and where the infrequency of graves- may, I presume, be considered as a proof of the healthiness of the situation. A well-formed hand- some road, taking an upland direction to the left from the centre of the village, I was told, leads to Middleton Hall, a large pile in an elevated situa- tion, the seat of Sir William Pax ton, who having made a princely and honourably acquired fortune in India, happily for this country, had the taste to be enamoured of it, where he chiefly resides, and takes a lead in acts of public spirit and bene- volence ; yet, though he has merited every thing of this country, and is perpetually consulting their interest to his cost, so little to be depended on is the popidaris aura, and particularly that of this county (as I learn), that, after being chosen mem- ber for Carmarthenshire, without opposition, a little more than a year ago, nothing on his part alleged to provoke such conduct, at the last elec- tion, a sudden mine was sprung upon him, by setting up an adi'ena in that country like himself, and generally spoken of as most unpopular. But 25 perhaps all this, without any reference to the merits or demerits of the candidates, was produced by the mere collision of two factions which divide the county, for here every thing is settled by blue and red. My fellow-traveller, who, from what I could collect to justify such a conjecture, either had been in Parliament himself, or vehemently aspired after the situation, was very communicative on the subject of the late election, gave me his political creed, and filled his trumpet with his own pretensions, by his own showing, not incon- siderable. Our road, all the way from Landilo to Car- marthen, lay on the south side of the Towy. whose meanders, or rather torrent irregularities, we could every now and then trace, by the ravage it made in forming new channels, and was intersected by numerous rills and rivers, issuing from lonely vales, through which they hastened to empty their crystal urns into the Towy ; but the largest were the Dulas, a very common name for a river in Wales, expressing two colours, blue and black, that is, a deep or dark azure ; the Cothy and the G willy, the Cothy the largest. Within three miles of the town of Carmarthen, across the river, I was shown Merlin's Hill, so famed in song ; then almost under its shade catch a view of Abergwilly, the episcopal residence of the bishops of St. David's, and the only one of their many palaces left, in a low but lovely situa- tion, amidst finely \vooclecl meadows sloping down to the Towy. It lately, I am told, had an entire new facade, by the late bishop, Lord G. Murray, to whom the whole place is indebted for its present appearance, the house before his time being' a most awkward undignified building, and the road, now turned, going close to the back of it. You recol- lect the account we had the other day at Lord L 's, of his plan to aggrandize the see, to which he sacrificed every present advantage, for- bearing to renew leases, or accept lines for renew- als, and not being able to persuade himself, that " a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" Almost opposite to Abergwilly, on the south side of the river, the road passing near it, my fellow-traveller pointed out to me the former re- sidence of the ingenious Sir Richard Steele, where probably he might have penned many of those en- tertaining papers that delight us in the Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian, and told me that, in the town of Carmarthen, that great genius died a driveller. Alas, what a fine fabric in ruins ! A few turns of the wheel brought us to Carmar- then, and the Bush inn promised a comfortable reception, in which we found ourselves not dis-. appointed, after staying there near two days. I write whilst dinner is getting ready, and did not care if it was supper, as nearer the hour of rest, which my poor bones, after the shaking they have had, are in great need of: so do not expect to hear from me again till I have thoroughly 27 mined this large town, and have had the benefit of the Bush beds. Yours, &c. Carmarthen, October ig, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, I AM told I have an Lour to wait for the> coach, and that I will employ to carry on my journal from my last. The evening of the day we arrived proved rainy, and kept us within, so we enjoyed our bottle and fire ; and, after a cup of tea, some retrospective conversation about our last stage, with opinions of our fellow-travellers, and many comments on the whole, retired at an early hour, Jones having sweetened the latter part of it with some beautiful airs on the flute. We rose refreshed, and, breakfasting early, we sallied out to see the town, situated on a gentle elevation above the Towy, which, though eight miles from the estuary, here feels the tide suffi- ciently to bring up large vessels to the quay. Carmarthen is a large and populous place, and, being centrally situated, and a great thoroughfare, carries on an extensive trade. The ruins of its castle, which once appears to have occupied a large space, arc not at all striking, and so from its peculiar situation, I am inclined to think the wails were never very lofty. The county jail, a large modern building, occupies part of its site. 28 This town, though larger than Brecknock, much differs from that and most of the principal towns, as I am told, in Wales, in having but one church. This was the ancient Maridunum of the Romans, the walls of which, exhibiting portions of Roman masonry, were partly extant in the time of our earliest and curious tourist Giraldus, an acquaint- ance with whose life, learning, and Itineraiy, we owe to a late splendid and entertaining work of Sir Richard Hoare. The name of this gentleman connects itself with another late publication, claiming him for the au- thor, namely, " The Journal of a Tour through Ireland in 1806," the amusing companion of my present excursion; a book, if you have not yet read it, I would strongly recommend to your perusal, as a model of a journal of that sort, in which there is more compressed than I ever saw in so small a compass, and more neatly. The general remarks that close the volume cannot fail to prepossess you in favour of the head and heart of the worthy Baronet. Before my route is finished, I may have occasion to call your attention to parts of the Journal as they strike me. There are two banks in this town, with a capital to support them beyond the dread of failure ; and as to attorneys, I am told they swarm, and are all men of fortune, how acquired perhaps their clients may tell you. I was shown the gateway that led to the Priory, but nothing more remains of this once extensive and well-endowed religious house. At the Qthcv 29 end of the town they say there was a small esta- blishment of friars preachers, but no traces of it could be pointed out; however, in attempting to discover the site of it, I observed some curious earth-works, of various forms, and yet not like those so frequently occurring, evidently raised for military operations. I should be much inclined to think them Roman, and longed to have had time or permission to search into them. On our return from the morning's ramble, I was tempted to enter an auction-room, where, amongst other articles, books were selling, in the Catalogue, said to have belonged to a person lately dead, who had left, as I was informed, very little more to pay for his lodgings, which he had occupied for three months only. He was a stranger, had some- thing eccentric and mysterious about him, passed off for an Irishman, but was suspected to have been one from North "Wales. I bought two or three printed books, and one manuscript quarto volume, neatly written, importing to be verses and letters that passed between Shakespeare and Anna Hatheway whom he married, as well as letters to and from him and others, with a curious journal of Shakespeare, an account of many of his plays, and memoirs of his life by himself, &c. By the account at the beginning, it appears to have been copied from an old manuscript in the hand-writing of Mrs. Shakespeare, which was so damaged when discovered at a house of a gentleman in Wales, whose ancestor had married one of the Hatheways, that to rescue it from oblivion a process was made 30 use of, by which the original was sacrificed to .the transcript. Bound up with it is another manuy script tract, written in an antiquated but fair hand, though on paper much discoloured and damaged, a collection of old Prophecies, translated from the ancient British language, supposed all to relate to Wales, with a note prefixed, importing that they were translated, during a vo}-age to Guiana, by a Welshman on board Sir Walter Raleigh's ship, and written with a pen made out of the quill of an eagle, from a finely illuminated vellum book, said to have come from the abbey of Strata Florida, and in the possession of a relation to the last abbot, then on board the same ship. This small tract appears to have been interleaved by the last, or some very late possessor, as a vehicle for notes variorum on several of the prophecies, which ap- pear to be unravelled with considerable ingenuity, and a strong spice of satire ; with an account how and when the notes, evidently very modern, were obtained. The style of the original has something very turgid and oracular in it. I bought it for half a crown, and persuading myself that it may be what it professes, I am very proud of the ac- quisition. Some of the poetry is very striking, though full of odd conceits, yet much in the man- ner of our great dramatist. His Journal, record- ing, like most djaries, the most trifling events, carries you back to the days of Queen Bess, and you are brought acquainted with things that his- tory never informs you of. I know by this de- scription I make your mouth water. Perhaps I 31 may treat you with a specimen of this curious farrago before I invite you to feast upon it. But I find the mail is come in, and will soon proceed ; I must, therefore, hurry to pay my bill, and hold myself in readiness, after a day's enlarge- ment, to cage myself once more. Farewell ; and expect to hear again, in a post or two, from, Dear Charles, Yours, &c. Milford, October 20, 1807. DEAR CHARLES, AFTER a little more jolting, yet on the whole not a very unpleasant journey, I got safe, thank Heaven, to my place of destination. The day was fine, and admitted of the windows being- down, and our taking a peep at the country. About nine miles from Carmarthen we came to St. Clear's, the longest village, for I can hardly call it a town, I ever was through, and probably in ancient times might have been a place of some consequence. They say there was here a house for nuns of the order of St. Clare, but no trace of any monastic or castellated building meets the eye, though the Welsh Chronicles make frequent mention of the castle of St. Clear's being destroyed; yet what is pointed out for it is nothing more than an ancient tumulus that might have been sur- mounted with a wooden tower capable of con- taining a few men to guard that pass. At the end of this long straggling place cross the river Tare, navigable thus far. Hence to Tavern Spite, an inn in a bleak situation on the edge of an extensive ill-cultivated tract, yet from which you command a most charming view, to the right, of a rich vale, backed by the range of the Pembrokeshire mountains, presenting a most beau- tifully varied outline; and on the left a view of the sea, and'Tenby, marked by its lofty spire, at a distance. The name of this inn, one of our com- panions in the coach, seemingly a good Welshman, and not ill-informed antiquary, said, was a cor- ruption of Tavern Yspitty, Taberna Hospitii, be- ing built on a spot where formerly stood an ancient Hospitimn, a pious institution frequent in this country, and founded for the accommodation of the poor pilgrims travelling to the shrine' of St. David, which was much resorted to. I had almost forgot to give you some account of our fellow-travellers from Carmarthen. One was a mystic, a follower of Joanna Southcote, or ra- ther one who pretended to be equally gifted with her, professing, that, on comparing their schemes, they were found to agree in almost every particular. He was a man with a countenance that prepos- sessed you in his favour ; and yet, under such a flattering surface, this fanatic might conceal much mischief. The other turned out to be one of the most eminent Methodists in the principality, and well known all over England, having been, and I believe still being, one of the officiating chaplains to Lady Huntingdon's chapel in Spa Pields, who 33 had a residence both in Glamorganshire and this county, enjoying them alternately. His whole appearance was such, as inclined me to think that he did not lack the good things of this world, or forbore to make use of them, from a mistaken no- tion that they obstructed his passage to the next : he was, in short, a communicative sensible man, with cheerfulness and good-humour, very little known to his fraternity, and, in my humble opi- nion, a criterion of his motives being good and his life in the right. He displayed considerable anti- quarian knowledge, and was a very entertaining comment on the various objects that met our eye, when they could be made any way subservient to traditional lore or real history. The Welsh lan- guage had a share of discussion ; and on this sub- ject he candidly acknowledged, that in Jones he had met with more than his match. He gave me a very different account of the French descent on this coast, from any I had before met with : for he lived near the place, and took pains to be informed of the truth. He said, there were circumstances connected with that event, so mysteriously provi- dential, that, he was sorry to say, had not been with due gratitude 'brought to account : it was not to the warriors (for they were at first few), that were to " stop them at the gates," or to the dread of what might, and what certainly would have been, in a very short time assembled, that we must ascribe the victory. The foe was paralyzed; Hea- ven had issued the fiat Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further : thus circumstanced, D 34 " Man but a rush against th* invader's breast, And he retires." He said he regretted the very impolitic steps that were taken at such a time, and calculated to reflect on a country which had displayed, on the occasion, the most exemplary firmness and loyalty, by no- ticing the mad proceedings of two or three low fanatics, on the evidence only of invading enemies. The surrender of the enemy, it seems, was com- memorated by a few seasonable and animated lines of a friend of his (for they had men fitted " tarn Marti quam MtaaPj', which, he believed, never got much abroad, unless by his means ; but he was so struck with them, that, thinking the compliment contained in the sentiments th,ey expressed, by contrasting the sanguinary character of the foe with the generous spirit of the victor, would be not without its use in keeping alive that patriotic flame then just kin- dled, which he was happy to say had continued to blaze with undiminished splendour, and would, he hoped, prove unquenchable, he got a few hundred printed to circulate about the country. Then taking out his pocket-book, hepresented me with the little poem, trusting I should be pleased with the subject and the manner of treating it. I think this little fugitive piece has nerve, and merits notice, so I enclose a copy. What will not Gallia's frantic sons design, Unaw'd by laws, or human or divine ? A desp'rate crew, yet livid from the chain , Impos'd by crime in fell Robespierre's reign } With all the lovely charities suppress'd, And each base passion tyrant of the breast \ 35 Monsters in whom Heav'n's image is defac'd, Let loose on man to make the world a waste : Tempests in vain the ocean's face deform, They madly war with Him who rules the storm j To them no terror bring the shades of night, Their deeds are darkness, and abhor the light. Albion may boast her more than magic zone Of deep cerulean which begirds her throne ; The sacred round they impiously transgress, Till Freedom trembles in her last recess. Cambria in vain her rocky bulwark boasts, JBy Nature rear'd around her fav'rite coasts ; From whose besieg'd, yet still unyielding sides, Neptune shrinks back with disappointed tides ; Whilst awful gloom her every mountain sheds, And nods stupendous ruin o'er their heads ; Still with proportion'd insolence they rise, A brood of Titans that would scale the skies. Her caves in vain unconscious of the day, Yawn horror, and Tartarean gloom display ; Of no effect their boldness to repel, Though the dark adit open'd into hell ; Yet they who every trial had withstood, And brav'd all danger, take what shape it would -, Whom neither rocks, nor seas, nor famine gaunt, With all its train of horrid ills, could daunt ; Who vainly thought more formidable foes Could not exist their progress to oppose ; Yet to their cost on ancient British ground More formidable still such foes they found, A land inheriting, where oft of yore The Saxon and the Dane had bled before j The genuine sons of Freedom, doom'd to be The hcav'n-appointed guardians of her tree; From spoilers' hands to keep its golden fruit, And punish such as would her shrine pollute : The fierce republicans no sooner tread The sacred soil, than of Medusa's head D 2 36 They own the spell, and, fit for slaves alone, A horror feel that numbs them into stone : Thus Britons triumph, save the work of death : They come they see they conquer at a breath, In forest wilds the lion's distant roar, Heard by the subject brutes so oft before, A bold contempt inspires : but rashly when They dare to beard the monarch in his den, Soon as the terrors of his eye they meet, They fall for mercy crouching at his feet ; The yielding prey, already dead with fear, The generous victor spares, and scorns to tear. At Tavern Spite we changed horses, and alighted for a few minutes. They crowded round the preacher as if he was an angel dropped from hea- ven ; every body knew him, and children m ht of this enchanting > o c> scenery of Milford Haven, but to me perfectly unprofitable, as it has added not a single iota to the information I am in quest of, neither of the churches possessing any thing like an ancient mo- nument. From parish- registers I could not expect to derive any assistance, as there are very few in this country that carry you back above fifty years, and from those who ought to see to the keeping and preservation of them, the clergy, you will be sure to find less ; for though many of them appear to be good scholars, they are without exception the most ignorant men of the antiquities and his- tory of their country I ever met with, their know- ledge being more limited than that of their parish- registers. However, I have still the material search yet to make in the churches of Haverfordwest, and that of Stanton on this side the water, and on the other side, in Somersetshire, in those of Mine- head, Sellworthy, Luckomb, and Porlock, it being known to my grandmother that one of the Hwl~ fvrdds had settled there about three hundred years 51 ago, by whose descendants, who intermarried with the Rogerses and the Arundels, there had been a claim of 'kindred allowed as late as the period of the Revolution ; I shall therefore, after my search of to-morrow, either from this port or Tenby, pro- cure a passage across the Channel to Minehead, to prosecute my inquiries in that neighbourhood. Having still an hour before dinner to dis- o pose of, I strolled to the billiard-room, where I was only a spectator, and fell into chat with a gentleman who was, like myself, an uninterested looker-on, a person of taste and in- formation. We left the room together, and our road leading through the same street, he asked me if I had any objection to examine some curiosities brought from the South Seas, and the continent of the other hemisphere, which he was going to see at the house of a Quaker, one of the new settlers here, concerned in carrying on the South Sen. whale fishery. I accepted of the polite offer with thankfulness, and wish you had been partaker of the treat. The collection consisted of a variety of articles, arranged with great taste, amongst which I could not help being much struck with an armilla, very similar to that in your museum of ivory, dug up in a tumulus on the Currah of Kil- dare, the Stonehenge plain of Ireland, with the difference only, that this was a ring sawed off from a conch. There was likewise a flint arrow- head, found in a turbary on the island of Nan- tucket, precisely the same in size and shape witli those you possess. Among the curiosities was E 2 an infinite variety of singular warlike weapon*, most of them inlaid with bone from the bo- dies of their enemies, musical instruments, and ornaments of different shapes for the nose and ears, of an opaque sort of emerald. Nature seems to have dictated to the inhabitants of every country under similar circumstances, nearly the same ap- petites and wants, and the same modes of sup- plying them, as far as there is a coincidence of situation, climate, and produce. The assortment of living birds. displayed colours and plumage be- yond any thing I ever saw, or could have con- ceived to exist in nature ; but after all, the rarest part- of the collection was the Quaker's beautiful family ; and I should have pitied the man who was so much of an antiquary or a virtuoso as not to have thought so. Having given orders to harden the heart of my bed, I trust I shall be able to sleep without any other opiate than the effect of a total absence of rest last night. My friend Jones having left me to see a relation on the other side of the Haven, Whence he does not retum -till to-morro\v r , I have no inducement to protract my vigils, but shall give you some farther account of myself to-mor- row. In the mean time believe me to be, &c. Milford, October 22, ISO?. MY DEAR CUARLfS, WHILE supper is getting ready I sit down te recount this clay's operations* Soon .after breakfast a custom-house cutter wafted my friend Jones across the water, for whom, as well as for invself, I had secured a horse for the dav. mean- V l ino; to visit Ilaverfordwest and its churches first, O and then return by way of Stanton to our quarters. The morning was fair, and the ride, through a rich country, pleasant. We arrived at Haverfordwest about twelve o'clock, and alighted at the Mari- ners, an inn no way inferior to the Castle, as to house, accommodations, or attendance. Having taken care of our horses, and bespoke an early, dinner, we paid a visit to St. Mary's, St. Martin's, and St. Thomas's churches, from a minute survey of which I derived very little information to an- swer my purpose. In St. Mary's I was shown an old altar tomb, said to have been that of Robert de Hwlfordd, the first of the family w*?io died in this country, un in scribed as to the history of the period of his death, though round the rim it bears an inscription about two hundred years old, to commemorate an Ilaverfordwest alderman of that day, who thought it, I suppose, an honour to mix; his dust with that of the first occupant; and at St. Martin's the venerable Sibyl who attended showed me an effigy of one (as she called it, in her Cam- bro-Flcmish dialect) of the " Awld Tankards of the castle;" meaning, I suppose, one of the Fitz Tan- creds, who, as I find in Sir Richard Hoare's notes onGiraldus, was governor of the castle of Ilaver- fordwest, under the Earl of Clare, and lord of the place, and was said to have married a daughter of the said Robert ; though as to the effigy, judging < 3 from the figure being that of a priest, I much sus- pect the tradition. But I was directed to a shopkeeper living at the bottom of the street opening on the south side of St. Mary's church, whose knowledge in genealogy I was led to believe was so extensive, as to en- courage me to call upon him, on a pretence of want- ing some article from his shop ; but I found his whole knowledge was confined to his own pedi- gree, and the coat of the ancient and honourable house he traced to; which, by the by, he bore with a baton sinistre. I however did not think the half hour I passed with him ill employed, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing a very original character, with a sort of priggish formality about him, and a face that never relaxes into a smile ; as mad about his pedigree as ever Don Quixote was about chivalry, and never sells a pennyworth of tape without giving you a string of genealogy into the bargain. Besides, he was deeply tinctured with methodisrn, which mixing with his genealo- gical mania, produced a strange confusion. He was a rigid moralist, and inveighed severely against the vices of that town, among which a passion for playing cards (the devil's books, as he called them) was the most prominent ; a vice so endemic that it infected all ranks, but the clergy were peculiarly addicted to it, who turned over their cards oftener than their sermons. It is riot only in an evening, said he, that they play, but they kill their mornings with it ; and a rainy Sunday is re- served for great matches : nay, this ruling passion is uppermost in the house of God, a house they 55 visit more from fashion than choice ; far it was but lately that a lady of the whist club, when suddenly roused from her nap by an apostrophe of the parson, more than ordinarily vociferous, bawled out, " Spades are trumps" During this curious interview a fashionable young- man, seem- ingly in the habit of quizzing this eccentric shop- keeper, entered, and succeeded in bringing much more of his oddities to the surface than I had seen, addressing him with the familiar appellations of Massif and 3///.v; and with respect to me and what I was in search of, it was indeed " Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mzw." Dinner hastily finished, and a few glasses of wine as hastily taken off, we mounted our horses and returned the same way, till we diverged to go to Stanton. We passed by Johnston, the seat of Lord Ken- sington, situated too close to the road, and exhi- biting nothing to give it a title to the magnificent or the picturesque. His Lordship does not reside there, it being rented out on lease since the death of bis father, much to the disadvantage of the country and the mortification of the young peer, who, I am told, though he is attached to Pembroke- shire, and very deservedly popular, has his resi- dence in the adjoining county of Carmarthen. I peeped into the church, but saw nothing worthy of notice, and could hear nothing respecting the object of my search. I .stopped at Stanton, and meant to have intro* 5$ duced myself to the clergyman of the place had lie been at home, who had been mentioned to me as a good-humoured, sensible young man, though probably but little of an antiquary, having his time more usefully taken up in the tuition of a few young gentlemen who board with him, a cha- racter he discharges with much credit to himself, and much advantage to his pupils. Yet at that time, as I heard since my return, he lay under a very heavy censure concerning the improper cor- rection of one of the boys, and was threatened \vith a prosecution. You perhaps may recollect what the late Dr. Johnson says on that subject when he is furnishing Bos well with arguments in support of his client, a schoolmaster, in the same predicament 'with the parson of Stan ton. I think I see him rolling his giant form (as it has been described to me) from side to side, and dictating, ore rotundo, when the following sentiments were littered : " The government of a schoolmaster is somewhat of the nature of a military government, it must be arbitrary. You must show that a schoolmaster has a prescriptive right to beat, and that an action of assault cannot be brought against him unless barbarity can be shown. Puf- fendorf, I think, maintains the right of a school- master to beat his scholars. No severity is cruel which obstinacy makes necessary ; for the greatest cruelty would be to desist, and leave the scholar too careless for instruction and too hardened for reproof. Locke, in his Treatise on Education, mentioned a mother with applause who whipped 2 an infant eight times before she had subdued it. The master who punishes, not only consults the future happiness of him who is the immediate sub- ject of correction, but he propagates obedience through the whole school. Correction must be proportioned to occasions. No instrument of -cor- rection is more proper than another, but as it. is better adapted to produce present pain without lasting mischief. Lord Mansfield once said in the House of Lords Severity is not the way to govern either boys or men. Nay (said Johnson), it is the way to govern them; I know not whether it be the way to mend them." Boswdl. " It is a very delicate matter to interfere between a master and his scholars, nor do I see how you can fix the degree of severity that a master may use." Johnson. " Why, Sir, till you can fix the degree of obstinacy and negligence of the scholars, you cannot fix the severity of the master." In the church I was shown the spot that tradi- tion ascribes to Sir Adam Stanton, the first Nor- man or Flemish lord of the place, and perhaps founder of the church. There was likewise a plain stone, said to cover one of the Holfords, who married into the Stanton family. Besides, I was informed, that, about seventy years ago, there was a pauper of that name on the parish, and, notwith- standing his' poverty, piqued himself on his line- age, " nisi cum re vilior alga.'' It was "how night, and in our way to Milford our attention was much excited by a singular light, of a palish colour, that followed a church path, 58 on an opposite hill leading to Hubberston church, and kept on ia a sort of hopping progress, till we lost sight of it by the intervention of the hedges near the church. My friend Jones, who is not totally divested of the strange superstition of his country, held it to be a. fetch-candle, one of those lights known by the name of camvyll corph, said to precede every funeral a year and a day before it happens. We just reached our inn, in time to escape a severe wetting from a sudden fall of rain, that con- tinued the whole night; and after supper our conversation turned on preternatural appearances of every kind, in the course of which we did not fail to bring the Burford ghost into discussion. Jones entertained me much, by a curious nar- rative of facts relating to fetch-candles, and the appearance of the whole funeral as it really hap- pens, the persons attending it having been fre- quently named half a year before it took place, and some of those at the time in foreign parts, and not likely to be of the number. These lights are different in different places. At a town in Carmarthenshire, Laugharne, the figure of the per- son that will die, is seen in white, walking in the dead of night to the church, carrying a candle. It is only such, it seems, as happen to be born in the night-time, who unhappily are gifted to see those appearances. In some part of Ireland I am told, that for gome nights before a person dies in a house, the grunting of a pig is heard, and the brute itself is 69 sometimes seen like a transparent painting, with an illuminated scroll in its mouth bearing the name of the devoted person. Do you know of any such thing? This is a quizzing age : every day begets Chatter- tons and Irelands. Tales of mystic superstition may be clothed in the most preposterous garb and in the wildest style of romance, and perhaps are entitled alike to the same degree of credit, whether fabricated for the moment, or traditionally handed down to us for ages. If we resume this subject, I shall pester you with the result. In the mean time I am, completely fagged, Yours, &c. DEAR CHARLES, Milford, Oct. 23, THIS being the last day of my intended stay in this place, we breakfasted early, to have our time before us, as it was proposed to see every thing in its vicinity that had not been visited be- fore : so, ordering a late dinner, I steered my course eastward. A little to the south of the church there is a small battery, as there is likewise an- other on a commanding height above the old town of Making; but how far they are judiciously or injudiciously placed I am not engineer enough to determine. Beyond the church are the ruins of an old chapel, with a vaulted roof, called St. Catharine's, a name now transferred to the new church. The mother church is Stanton, as I mentioned before. 60 Vaulted roof's occur frequently in such parts of this county as the Normans and Fleming's had possession of, and towers and spires universally, the churches in the Welsh division of the shire being rarely, if ever, dignified with cither. From this chapel, taking a lane to the left, we descend into the other pill, called Castle Pill, running into the land in two small branches. The tide being out, we crossed it by a long wooden foot-bridge, covered when the tide is full, and walked to see Castle Hall, a pretty villa of Mr. Rotch, a Quaker merchant, who came from Ame- rica, bringing with him many of the same sect to settle here, and carry on the South Sea whale fishery. Mr. Rotch, I am told, though a Quaker, has very little but the name belonging to him, observing nothing of rigorous formality either in his dress or manner. His establishment is that of a man of large fortune, and his family are brought up in all the fashionable modern accomplishments. The house is not large, hut commodiously elegant, and the grounds and gardens arc laying out with great taste. The hothouses comparatively are not extensive, for a county in which hothouses, I un- derstand, abound, and some on an enormous scale, as those of Lord Cawdor and Lord Milford ; but I think- they appear on a new and most admirable construction. Gardeners in general are Scotch- men, but Mr. Rotch's is an Irishman, and seem- ingly master of his husincss, joining to a practical knowledge of his profession a profound knowledge of botany, The demesne, though small, consists 61 of some of the choicest land in Pembrokeshire, on the confines of which, overhanging the Haven, and commanding a beautiful reach of it, is a sum- mer-house most judiciously placed. This charming spot once belonged to the famous Governor Hoi well, one of the few survivors of the unhappy victims at Calcutta. After the Governor left it, it continued long untenanted, but, about seven years ago, was purchased by a wine-mer- chant of Haverfordwest, whom some demon whis- pered, " Visto, have a taste," and contributed to his speedier ruin. ^ On his failure it was sold to the present proprietor, who has dis- covered infinitely more taste than either the nabob or the wine-merchant. On the side of the Pill, opposite to which Castle Hall stands, are the faint vestiges of some earth- works, with a little masonry, called Castle Pill. They say the King's forces had a post here in the time of the civil wars. Following the other branch of this inlet, and crossing the isthmus of the peninsular spot the new town of Milford occupies, I descended into a narrow valley at the extremity of the Hakhig estuary ; and just above, where the highest influx of the tide is felt, stand the small remains of Pill priory, founded and endowed by one Adam ck Rape, or de la Roche ; yet, small as they are, if well managed, and grouped to the best advantage, they would make a pretty picture : but, uufortu- natcly, neither my companion nor myself have any knowledge of drawing;, a circumstance I the more regret, as I have never happened to see a view of this retired spot. It is my custom, when I visit, any ruins, mi- nutely to investigate the casings of windows and doors, should any exist ; and particularly any little figures, frequently found to carry on their breasts a shield, with sometimes an heraldic hear- ing on it, that may prove a valuable clue to the history of the place; but here nothing of that sort could be discovered. I then inquired of the pea- sants, whose cottages and little gardens occupied the venerable precinct of what was once the priory church, if any thing had been ever dug up amongst the ruins, who told me, that a few years asro se- veral flat tombstones, and some with letters on them, which the parson of the parish, a main good scholar (to use their own expression), could not decypher, had been turned up in a spot of ground pointed out to me, now a garden, and that one of them was then to be seen in the back yard of a Quaker's house at Milford. I was likewise in- formed, that a neighbour of theirs had, a few days before, found a piece of thick sheet lead, in clear- ing a draw-well, nailed on a piece of wood, that crumbled away as soon as taken up, with some odd-shaped letters or figures on it. On my ex- pressing a wish to see it, I was conducted to the house where it was, and there I was shown a plate of lead, about a foot wide and fifteen inches long, covered over with raised Greek characters, small. 63 but very plain. There being no doubt as to the metal, I ventured to ask the possessor if he would part with it, which he very readily assented to, saying it was of little use to him, and the value of the lead was no object. However, I gave him half-a-crown, walked off with my purchase, and left him perfectly satisfied. I anticipate much gratification from the employ that my leaden inscription is likely to give us; yet, on account of some other attentions that have a prior claim, we are obliged to defer the examination of it till to-morrow. Joy ! joy ! joy ! I have just received the fondly- expected letter I ought to have had at Burford. The waiting for it has seemingly cost me an age. Oh! Charles, hast thou ever been in love with any person above the rank of a bedmaker ? for, if thou hast not, how wilt thou laugh at my com- putation of time ! but the period may arrive when thy moments shall be measured by the same scale. Since the receipt of this blessed letter I am a new man, I tread on air, and have no lead about me but my antiquarian tablet. And now to sleep to sleep ! no, no, to wake, to think of my Eliza ; to think she lives, and lives not unmindful of her faithful wanderer. Friendship, adieu ! yet believe ine to be, as much as an enthusiastic lover can be, Yours, &c. Pembroke, MY DEAR CHARLES, So great was my transport last night, that, after the receipt of my Eliza's letter, I could think of nothing but her; and 1 forgot to mention a very material circumstance, that will account for our staying a day or two longer than we intended. Just as we were preparing to sit down to sup- per, the landlord entered, and begged to know if we should have any objection to a gentleman join- ing us, as all the other sitting-rooms were' occupied t>y large parties. We replied, nothing could be more agreeable, as we wished for company and variety. The gentleman was accordingly intro- duced, who was an officer in the nav}-. A. few minutes brought us perfectly acquainted, and the conversation soon .took a nautical turn. On hear- ing my name, he asked me if I had a relation in the navy. On informing him I had an uncle, I found that they had formerly been shipmates in the Mediterranean. Being likewise told that I was bound for Minehead, having occasion to make some. genealogical inquiries in that neighbourhood, but was not so fortunate as to be known to a crea- ture in that country, he very handsomely offered me a recommendatory letter to a friend of his, a brother officer retired from the service, whom he had not seen for some years, a gentleman of fa- mily, rank, and fortune. Having travelled a great way, he sat with us not so long as we could have wished, but said he should be happy to be permitted to breakfast with 65 us; a proposal to which we most cheerfully as- sented; and hoped he could induce us to accom- pany him up to Pemhroke, whither he was going, in a fine tour-oared barge, early next morning, and from which place, finding we had not seen it, he recommended it to us to ride to see Tenby, and, if we had time, to visit Stackpool Court, the mag- nificent seat of Lord Cawdor, about live miles from the town of Pembroke. The Captain, our new acquaintance, was punc- tual to his hour; and, after breakfast, we took boat lor Pembroke, which we reached' in a short time, having a smart breeze and tide in our favour. The morning was line, and the river peopled with a variety of all sorts of vessels and boats dancing cross-minuets. There I firs I saw dredging for oysters. - The town of Pembroke stands on a branch of the haven that you enter through a narrow gtit called Pennar Mouth. Here the channel expands so widely, that it is said there is room for a wet- dock for all the navy of England. The shores abound with limestone ; and few vessels enter this channel but such as arc employed in that trade, and those that belong to Pembroke. The channel is very intricate, and, except at high water, re- quires a pilot. On each side, the land, thickly- sown -with rich farm-houses and gentlemen's seats, seems and is very uncommonly fertile, being a red soapy loam over limestone, which is cultivated with a spirit and in a style that would do credit to any part- of the kingdom. 66 But how shall I be able to describe what I felt At approaching the castle of Pembroke, which I had the good fortune to see to the greatest ad- vantage, in coming up to it by water, spring-tide; though seen every way, it must be an object un- commonly striking : but approached by water, it seized the attention with double force, presenting itself on the almost insulated promontory it occu- pies, so as to be seen nearly surrounded with water, and independent of any thing material, that, from other points of view, is seen to unite with it, and cause an unpleasing confusion; whereas we saw it forming one stupendous whole, growing, as it were, out of the rock it is built on. The keep or citadel is an immense round tower, so high that it peers superemincnt over all the other build- ings, and is finely clad with ivy, but not so as entirely to conceal its parts. There is a curious cavern under the castle, with an entrance on the north side, communicating by a narrow stone staircase with the buildings above. Antiquaries and historians are divided in their opinions, as to whether it is natural or artificial, and as to its use. Henry the Seventh was said to have been born here ; and it is certain, that from this country he set out to win the crown, a circumstance he never forgot, being always partial ever after to Pem- brokeshire. This town was walled and flanked with nu- merous bastions, was at full tides almost sur- rounded by water, with an exception of the narrow oY Isthmus at the east entrance, and must have been a place of vast strength prior to the use of artil- lery. Even in the civil wars it was known to have held out a lon^ siesre, and was thought of so much o o * o consequence as to require the active presence of Cromwell himself before it, and then the surrender was owing to the course of the water that supplies the garrison having been betrayed and cut off. During our short stay here we had an opportu- nity of seeing a very fine body of yeomen cavalry, who were this morning inspected by the inspect- ing officer of the district, Colonel Stewart. They appeared to be men whose countenances would not be likely to be appalled at facing the Corsican ty- rant's blood-hounds, should he be mad enough to turn them loose on British ground. A sight of this kind, in the breasts of all who feel as they ought to do for their country, must be- get a new source of enjoyment to every one around them, in whatever relation they may stand to their country. The prospect may darken, but the con-' scions security derived from the consideration of such gallant and voluntary defenders, is sufficient to shed a sunshine on it, were it ten times darker. Our companion, the Captain, finding that we were not to sail yet for two days, had so much good humour and fascination about him, that he found little difficulty in persuading us to accom- pany him to Tenby, the famous sea-bathing place of this country, and one of the most delightful in the kingdom. We therefore hired horses, and had one of the most charming rides I ever re- 68 member to have taken in my life, of about ten miles, over the Ridgeway, the road leading over the summit of a high ridge, commanding, on one hand, the sea, and on the other a rich vale, with the mountains at a distance beyond it. We passed too far from the famed castle of Carew to form any idea of the grandeur of its ruins, and our time would not admit of such a digression as would bring us nearer; but we deviated a little out of the road to visit the birth-place of the cele- brated Giraldus, Manorbecr castle, which we from without examined, but could not be admitted within its walls, as it has been for some years a depot of smuggled goods, being most commodi- ously situated for any illicit traffic, just above a small creek. Giraklus's description is very exact, and I am not surprised at his partiality to a place, which not only had a claim on it, from having been the place of his nativity, but as in itself involving the prin- cipal ingredients of a charming landscape. The situation of Tenby has been so often the subject of panegyric, that I shall not insult you so far as to suppose you have not read a much better description than any I can pretend to give of it. I think it is impossible to combine more pleasing qualifications for a bathing-place, if we consider the pure air it must be ventilated with, and the clearest sea and finest sand I ever saw sur- rounding the peninsula, crowned by the town. The church, without and within, is a most re- spectable building, and seems to have been largqi than it is. ft It was formerly a place of great trade, and one bf the principal towns of the Flemish settlers ; and once boasted of most productive fishing-banks, and hence it had the name of Dynbich y Pyscod, that is, the Fishing Denbigh, to distinguish it from the inland Denbigh, in North Wales. Though it now maintains a superiority in fishery over every other place on this coast, yet the marks pointing out the old banks are lost, or the banks aPe shifted. Sir William Paxton, whose seat I mentioned^ Carmarthenshire, though no Welshman, has done for that county, and for this place, more than all the gentlemen who boast to be natives of the country. He is now building very magnificent baths near the pier, for warm sea-bathing, and has remedied the greatest inconvenience, and perhaps the only material one, the town laboured under, a lack of good water, by forming an aqueduct, at great expense, that shall effectually supply the de- fect; and is projecting many other things, to render this place more attractive, by his endeavours to remove every objection it may be liable to. Here I saw the largest oysters I ever met with, too large to be eaten raw, but which are admi- rable in sauce, escalloped, or pickled. Mountains of shells, the aggregate of many a century, occur in several parts of the town, forming a nuisance that would amply pay for removing, to be used for a manure. The season appeared to be on the decline, as I did not observe much company. In our way down to the baths, and to examine thd r 3 70 curious site of the castle, we were joined by a gentleman, who had just stepped out of a hand- some carriage, with an escutcheon, as Jones, who numbers among his various acquirements a deep knowledge of heraldry, afterwards told me, bearing the arms of a noble family of this county, viz. argent a lion rampant sable, chained or, but with, as he suspects, a modern augmentation of tu'o bees in chief, whether borne for their hum, their sting, or their honey, or for all three, the bearer best knew. As his road and ours seemed to take the same di- rection, with a peculiar ease and frankness, and without ceremony, apology, or seeking a pretence for accosting us, he broke out into an extravagant panegyric on the beauties of the place, evidently a set performance, and too artificial, considered with regard to the regularity of its composition or the volubility .of its delivery, to be supposed to be an effusion of the moment. His eulogium closed, with outspread arms, and his beaver up, which \vas as broad as a Quaker's, he cried, looking to the ocean, " Don't you think, gentlemen, this prospect is enchanting?" Promising some entertainment from our new and forward acquaintance, there was not the least coyness on our part, and we echoed his raptures, the Captain swearing, " Ay, if we had the Brest fleet in sight, and praying Jemmy within cannon-shot of them !" At this moment seeing a gentleman in a Bath chair, seemingly a martyr to the gout, pushed along, our loquacious companion entered into a long disquisition of that disorder, and wished to know to what its greater frequency . 71 now than in ancient times was to be ascribed ; for, said he, " Classic authors, who give us the costume of the age they lived in with the minutest detail, rarely find occasion to mention it. We must surely attribute it to our diet, some particular condiment that our forefathers were strangers to.* "There can be no doubt of it," said Jones ; " what a variety of diseases we may place to the account of tea alone, and diseases which, perhaps, a Chinese physician would know better how to treat than our Vaughan and Baillie. I am of opinion," continued Jones, "that the seeds of all disorders incident to man are sown alike through the human species, and that it is to some peculiarity in climate, food, raiment, ex-* ercise, or influence of mind over body, that we are indebted for calling them out. And it is the same in the vegetable as the animal world : the ^ rudiments of thousands of plants, yet unknown to us, may be dormant in the earth, and only re- quire the suitable culture, aliment, or manure, to rouse them into perfect vegetation. A gentleman, a friend of mine, who does every thing in capitals, his motto being * Quod vult, valde vult,' covered an immense field with such a thickness of lime, that it might be said to be plastered over, so that for two or three years, till this stucco was washed into, and became incorporated with, the soil, all- growth was choked; but afterwards the vege- tation was most surprisingly rank and luxuriant, and here and there a new species of plants, that set our botanists at defiance, made their appearance." f ' If lime," said the Captain, " could produce sucUa y 4 change, what kind of an Arctic crop, think you, must that gentleman have had, who, I was told, manured his fields with whale's blubher, as if he meant to have furnished pasture for rein-deer? 1 The stranger then flew over an infinity of topics, light- ing, like his own bee, but a moment on each, to sup- ply which he traversed the whole kingdom, "from old Belcrium to the northern main;" talked much of Opie, British press, Pratt, Peter Pindar, longevity, Shetland, statistical accounts, Board of Agriculture, omlets, mountebanks, wooden cuts, loves of the plants, Dr. Thornton, Bologna sausages, wastelands, second sight, Scotch marmalade, and Sir John Sin- clair. He gave us the portrait of what he conceived to be a patriotic senator, and I thought wished us to believe that he had sat for the picture. He talked of city offices, city honours, and city feasts, as if he had had a surfeit of them, for the latter of which he professed he was totally unfit, being too much a Pythagorean to be carnivorous, for he said he had for many years lived on vegetables and pastry, and he was so fortunate as to be able to boast, " That his wife, little Kitty, was famous for crust." In our way back to our inn, after examining the baths, the pier, and the castle, the Captain hap- pening to make use of a proverb very appropriate to the subject, adding, that it was the translation of a Welsh one, our strange acquaintance observed, that the Welsh proverbs were said to be very nu- merous and very expressive, and he wondered they were not published and translated. " Why," said 73 Jones, " they are partly published in the original, in a work called the Myvyrian Archaiology, a work we owe to the spirit of a plain Welsh tradesman, a fur-merchant in Thames Street, who, at his own expense, has undertaken to preserve the valuable) treasures of Welsh literature, that were scattered over the kingdom, and on the point of perishing in manuscript, by bringing them together, and giving them to the public in a more durable form; and, if he lives, I believe it is his intention to have the whole, of what he has thus collected put into an English dress. As to myself, I venerate proverbs ; I am as fond of them as ever Sancho Panza was : they are, as a friend of mine, in a poem of his, calls them, ' Rich drops, dtstill'd from the wisdom of ages." In short, they are in ethics what essential oil is in chemistry." " The furrier, your countryman," said the stranger, " deserves a statue of gold: and if it O * O * Were to be raised by subscription, I should be proud to contribute largely towards it. I love learning, whatever language be the vehicle, and its patrons of whatever country they may be. I have been always conversant with letters." By this time we were arrived at our inn, and we were met by the landlord, to say that our dinner was waiting. The man of letters bowed and withdrew, leaving us in admiration of so singular a character, whom, on inquiry of the landlord, we found to be literally a man of letters, a London bookseller. Who do you think accosted me, just as I was stepping into the inn we dined at, but our little 74 friend Captain B , Don Whiskerandos? whom I had not seen, since the ridiculous adventure we had with him at Vauxhall last year, when he was near getting into a scrape with the old libertine in the pink riband. He is as vain, and perhaps as poor, as ever. He took me aside " My dear boy,"said he, " I am in chase as usual A fine girl ! a fine fortune! and no small encouragement !" (showing me a mi- niature he drew from his bosom, which he had perhaps picked up for a crown at a pawnbroker's) ; " a beautiful brunette, as you see twenty thousand pounds at her ow r n disposal, and as much more at the death of her mamma, with whom, by the by, I am a monstrous favourite, so much so, that I think the old lady would be resigned to leave this world with pleasure, to let me into the other twenty thousand pounds, rather than I should live wretched without it. Well, Jack, adieu ! you shall hear of me if I succeed ; if not, these rocks will afford me a lover's leap ; I shall be forgotten, and food for crabs. When you write to Ireland, tell O'Brien what a lucky dog I am.". What vanity ! yet here is a creature seemingly the happiest of mankind ! boasting of adventures he neither had talents nor spirit to engage in, and moving about the world, with apparently no means to answer such expense, in rather a splendid style; and yet he keeps above water, though he has no visible life-boat. After dinner our new companion, the Captain, entered deeply into the subject of farming, saying he had done with ploughing the ocean, which he 75 found, with all the culture he gave it, 'returned him but a scurvy crop; hut that, since he had begun to plough the land, he had profited more in one year than he ever did on the ocean all his life. He then talked heathen Greek to me, going largely into the praise of the Swedish turnip, French furze, and tares. " The green fat of turtle," said he, " is not more grateful to the palate of a city alderman, than a crop of the same colour is to land, especially if it is washed well down with its due proportion of moisture," There being fine moonlight, we returned that night to Pembroke, to be ready early in the morn- ing to go down by water to Milford, the boat waiting there for that purpose. Our Cicerone, who was a little elevated by the ale he drank (for he tasted no other liquor), enter- tained us all the way to Pembroke with naval ex- ploits and naval frolics, in which he himself made no inconsiderable figure. He represented Lord Nelson as one who, at a very early time of life, had, by making too free with his constitution, so debilitated himself, as nearly at times not to be able to walk the length of the ship as to bodily strength, yet, by strength of mind in the moment of peril or action, was equal to any service, and triumphed over the clog of body which at other times seemed to encumber him. With a feast of Pennarmouth oysters, and ex- cellent Welsh ale, we regaled ourselves after our ride. Supper ended, the noble Captain, who was one of the most determined smokers I ever knew, rs wrapped us in the fumes of tobacco for an hour, continuing, between whift' and whiff and pipe and pipe, to entertain us with more anecdotes of his nautical life; and at parting, after his last pipe, communicated the following remarkable circum- stance that befell a sailor on board a man of war in the Mediterranean : The sailor, in an action, re- ceived a contusion on his head by a splinter, and was instantly deprived of every sensation, remain- ing in that state of torpor, after undergoing va- rious experiments at different hospitals abroad, for one whole year taking no sustenance, till, on his return to England, being sent to St. Thomas's Hospital, he was trepanned, an operation not per- formed before, but which restored him in an in- stant to his speech and every other sense, for he loudly called out in his own language, Welsh, Mam, Mam, that is, Mother, Mother. When asked if he could recollect any thing, from the time he had the accident to the moment, I may say, of his revival, he replied, that he had no idea of what passed ; for any knowledge he had of the interval, it might be a moment or an age. Blinded almost with smoke, and truly fatigued, I must wish you a good night, and follow my companions, who have left me some time. Adieu, and believe me, Yours, &c. , Milford, October 25, ISO/. MY DEAR CHARLES, As to-morrow is destined for our voyage, we have not wandered far from our inn ; which, after a pleasant sail for the greater part of the way from Pembroke, \ve arrived at by half past nine, having wind and tide in our favour. After breakfast, our naval friend took his leave of us, swearing that he would have been happy to have had us in tow longer, if he had not been obliged to obey signals elsewhere; so, after writing his letter of recommendation to his friend in So- mersetshire, he slipped his cable, and was soon un- der way, I forgot to tell you, that during my genealogical search at Haveribrdwest I met at the inn where we dined, a gentleman, who had himself that morn- ing been to visit the churches of the town, to se if they contained any curious monuments, epitaphs, or relics of antiquity, with a view to illustrate some work relating to that county, he professed to be engaged in. The frankness of hi> manner induced me to explain to him the motive of my visit to that town, and he very handsomely proffered his services, modestly saying, that as he had some very full manuscript pedigree books, chiefly of Pembrokeshire families, he would make a point of looking over them, to see if they con- tained any thing to iny purpose; and added, that he would cither transmit the result of his r- 78 V *carches by letter, or would wait on me at Milford, being' a place he was about paying a visit to, on his own account, if he could make it convenient,' before we should have left it. I mentioned the time of our intended stay there; and this morning- about twelve o'clock, while Jones and I were busily employed in pack- ing up, and arranging every thing for our sea jaunt, our antiquarian acquaintance was announ- ced. He professed himself happy in having it in his power to inform me, that his genealogical in- quiries had been more successful than he had ex- pected. He then produced a pedigree, very neatly drawn out and blazoned by a young man, his son, who accompanied him, proving almost every alli- ance I wanted to substantiate. Besides, in the course of his investigation, he found that he had someof the /7w7/07vfc/ blood in his veins, and showed me a law case, with an opinion on it in Charles the Second's time, including much genealogy relating to a small property which came to his father, m consequence of the above alliance to a Hwlfordd. Remote as this link might be to us or to our com- mon ancestor of that name, yet we mutually seemed to feel it, and it produced visibly a reciprocal in- terest, not to be described. As we learned that my new relation and his son did not intend quitting Milford that night, w& so- licited the favour of their company to pass the day with us. As they had some object in view, and the young gentleman had drawings to make, who favoured us, before we parted, with a 79 few elegant specimens of his pencil, they left ua. for an hour or two, giving us an opportunity of finishing our arrangements, and them time to ac- complish the business they were upon, and enabling both them and us, perfectly at leisure, to enjoy each other's company for the rest of the evening. Our guests having returned, we dined on very fin fish and Welsh mutton, rendered more relishing by means of that most excellent of all pickles, samphire, here iqthehighestperfection; and an accompaniment of all others most in unison with Welsh mutton, call- ed laver, or vulgarly black butter, the produce of a fine marine plant or alga, found -in abundance oh the coast of this county. Epicures are divided about the real name given to this sauce; some in- sisting on its being laver, from lover to wash ; as the plant undergoes repeated ablutions, to rid it of the sand it involves in its fine folds ; others lava, as representing the eruption of a volcano in colour and heat, it being always seyved up smoking hot, from a dish over a lamp, and resembling in hue, the volcanic fluid ; or, to bring it home to the con- ception of such as may have never seen the over- flowings of Vesuvius, exactly resembling the ex- crement of young calves ; a dark olive, verging on black. I never had seen it till I came into this country, and found myself, from its hue and consistence, so prejudiced against its appearance, that it was with difficulty I was prevailed on to taste it ; but my taste soon reproached me for my squeamishness ; and I have never since exposed myself to a repetition of such reproaches, 80 when I have had an opportunity of falling in with tliis hcst of all mutton sauces *. On the other skle, you have Jones's account of its medicinal pro- perties. After dinner, and a temperate circulation of the glass, interlarded with much interesting conversa- tion respecting the Welsh language, managed "in- geniously on the part of my friend Jones, and our new .guest, who spoke of it with an .enthusiasm, * Laver is made of a fine marine plant called U/va Lactuca, or Lactuca Marina, consisting of a thin green pellucid membrane or leaf, from two inches to a foot or more in length, and from one to live inches in breadth, undulated or laciniated on the mar- gin like a Cos lettuce leaf, growing sometimes single, but gene- rally in clusters, reclining over each other; but the Ulva Umf-ili- cali> is preferred, which is a wide membraneous leaf, of a dark dull purple colour, of circular shape, variously sinuated on the margin, smooth and shining, and affixed to the rock or stone by a central root. Being gathered, it is washed clean from sand and slime, and left to drain between two tiles ; then it is shred small, kneaded like dough, and made up into balls, which is called Bara Liavan, laver bread. Llavan is a strand in the Welsh lan- guage. As a medicine, it is a fine aperient and antiscorbutic. The inhabitants of the Hebrides eat it with pepper 'and vinegar, when stewed, adding leeks and onions ; they ascribe to it an anodyne power, and bind the leaves about their temples, to ease violent head-achs, and procure sleep. Jn the account given of it in Ed- \vard Lwyd's Additions to Gibson's Camden (which Gough in his edition erroneously ascribes to the Bishcp), is the following extract from a letter sont him by the Rev. Nicholas Roberts : " Some eat it raw, and others fried with oatmeal and butter. It is accounted sovereign against all distempers of the liver and spleen; and a celebrated physician of that day, Dr. Owen, assured me, that he found relief from it in the acutest fits of the stone." 81 Arising from his seemingly thorough knowledge of his subject, and a conviction of the superior ex- cellence of the language he was desirous of vin- dicating from the indiscriminate censure with which it was the fashion to brand it, as harsh, gut- turalj and incapable of grammatical rules, \vhereas IIQ would engage to prove to the reasonable and dispassionate, that the charge of harsh and guttu- ral depended more on the tongue of the speaker, or the ear of the hearer, than on any constitutional vice in the language itself; which, if not judged of from the patois of the peasant, in the mouth of a gentleman and a scholar, is grand and harmo- nious ; copious, without being verbose ; and if it had been for these 1500 years, like the other Euro- pean languages, improving instead of decaying, and being, as it were, expatriated, would have by this time lent nerve to the drama, and supplied a fit vehicle for the enchanting notes of a Catalani. This subject exhausted, I introduced my relic of antiquity for discussion, which I had almost for- gotten, and believe should have left behind me, if the accession of a professed antiquary to our so- ciety had not brought it to my recollection. I told you in a former letter, that the inscrip- tion was in a Greek character, and tolerably le- gible ; but though we all understood that language, and Joneb was deeply read in it, we could not make out a word that we could trace to any Greek root; a circumstance that puzzled us, nay vexed us exceedingly. At last our guest, with a sagacity he ha^l discovered on several occasions, in the G 82 course of the evening, suggested that the words, though written in a Greek character, might be Latin, thereby rendering the inscription more mys- terious ; we then fell to trying it by this test, and wrote the words in Roman letters, and made out the following monkish lines : Prope locum ubi, valle Procul profanorum calle, Terriplum primus vir fundavit, Et rupis Virgin! dicavit, Duorum gladiorum portu, Nobilis hxredis hortu Legati Angli, Dani Pilla Edificetur magna villa ; Quo colere Mercurium questft, Quovis vento, quovis aestu. Congregabunt mercatores Sicut apes circa flores : Cum tremebundi novo mundo Lucem trahent ex profundo j Et sacre positum honore. Fill magui Eleanorae Malum summum oricntig, Domo Dei quando seutis, Tune vas Egypti ministrabit. Et infantes cruci dabit. But though Latin words were made out, and those not perfect nonsense, yet turn them in what fray we would, we could not give them consistency or explanation. Another suggestion was then ha- zarded by our stranger friend ; " It is evidently," exclaimed he, with rapture, " an enigmatical pro- phecy (for all prophecies are more or less so); and now for an Edipus. " First, let us translate it literally : ' Near the ' Place where, in a valley far from the path of the 83 ' profane, the first man built a temple, and dedi- ' cated it to the Tlrgin of the rock, in the haven * of the two swords' . Why, does not that point out the founder of the old priory, in the ruins of which this relic was found? for perhaps, gentlemen, you, being strangerSj fnay not know that the monastic building in question was founded by Adam de Rupe or de la Roche, dedi- cated to St. Mary of the Rock ; and by the haven of the two swords, must clearly be meant Milford, in Welsh called Aberdaugleddau, the harbour, or port, formed of two words, rivers so called, Cled- dau being Welsh for a sword. Thus far I think we have got on intelligibly; but I fear the sequel will not afford us so easy a clue \ but let us pro- ceed ' At the instance of the noble heir of an ' English ambassador, a great town shall be built in i the Pill of the Dane.' It appears to me, that this is prophetic of the new town of Milford, being the creation of the Right Hon. Charles Greville, the hceresfactits of the late Sir William Hamilton, am- bassador to Naples, which may be said to be built in the Danes Pill, or estuary, namely Hubba's. So far we sail before the wind, and I presume we may get a few knots on, without much difficulty, as the lines, ' Quo colere Mercurium questd, ' Quovis vent6, quovis aestu, * Congregabunt mercatores ' Sicut apes circa flores," * ffi hither merchants will flock to carry on trade 1 f or g am -> tike bees about the flowers, with every 1 wind and tide ;' evidently imply the consequence G 2 84 of such a creation, for ' where the carrion i.% * there the crows will he also.' ' Now came a puzzler ; we read and read again,, we pondered, we paused, we ruminated ; our ges- tation was long and painful; at last Jones pro- posed another hottle, to facilitate the birth ; a mo- tion we readily assented to. The bottle w r as or- dered and brought, which we drank in awful si- lence. In order however to induce a discussion, I ventured to break it, by observing, that the four next lines, " When the Shakers from the new world shall draw light from the deep," served to mark the time of the event referred to in the last couplet, and that the first line might shadow out the Quakers, who had come from the new world, another hemisphere, to settle there; but how they could be said to draw light from the deep, I could not understand. " Why now/" said our guest, " as you have pointed our attention to the Quakers, this may be readily solved. They carry on the South Sea whale fishery, the produce of which is sperma cceti ; out of this substance randies are made, and is not this drawing light from the deep?" " But there follows another designation of the time," said our guest's son, who, modestly attentive to every thing that passed, had never, till now, presumed to take a part in the conversation, or hazard a guess, "and which I flatter myself, my visit to the church before dinner, has enabled me to explain : ' Et sacre positum honore ' Fill magni Eleanor^, 85 ' Malum summum orientis ' Domo Dei quando sentis, * Tune vas Egypti ministrabit, ' Et infantes cruet dabit.' Literally translated : ' When you see tht jiighest 4 mast of the Orient in the house of God, piously 1 placed there in honour of the great son of Eleanor; ' then an Egyptian vase shall minister, and give in- \fants to the cross' Is not the highest point of the I'Orient's mast seen in the new church ? and has it not been placed there, in honour of the great son of Eleanor, that is, NeCs son? and may not the Egyptian vase, now ministering as a font, be said to give infants to the cross by baptism?" There was no opposing this ingenious solution of the iinale of the prophecy. The young Edipus having begged to make a fac simile of the leaden plate and its inscription, which he did with wonderful expedition and correctness, one for himself and the other for me, together with an impromptu translation * in verse ; I packed it * Near the place, in valley, where The first of men, of whom we hear, A holy pile was said to raise, Devoted to the Virgin's praise j Far from path of the profane, In Two-sword port, in Pill of Dane, A town of great extent shall rise, In after-times, as shall advise An English legate's noble heir, Whither merchants shall repair, Round the flowers as thick as bees, With every wave, with every- breezy r 1 o *> 86 up with this and my t\vo former letters, to send by the next packet that sails, directed for you to the care of our common friend at Waterford ; and I must request you would have the goodness to show it to General Vallancey, the generalissimo of antiquaries, who perhaps may explain the two or three curious characters inclosed in a true-lover's knot, on the back of the plate, which appears to be talismanic. My companions have left me some time, and a disposition to take the same road as they have done, predominates over every wish to scribble longer. So adieu, till I find myself on the other side of the channel. To CHARLES O'BRIEN, Esq. At Sea, October 20, 180;. MY DEAR SIR, WHILST our friend, your correspondent, from violent sea-sickness, is totally unable to carry The state of commerce to maintain, And worship Maia's son for gain. When those, who are dispos'd to shake, Shall the new-found world forsake j And shall, wonderful ! to sight, Draw from ocean's depth the light j When the Orient's topmast you In the house of God shall view ; A pious act, in honour done Of Eleanora's mighty son; Then the Egyptian vase of note Shall infants to the cross devote. on his journal, I am requested to supply his place, which I fear I shall do but awkwardly, yet I trust my subject will atone for the vehicle, and it would have been unpardonable for any man in my situa- tion to overlook the sublime scenery that presented itself to my view on all sides, without endeavour- ing some description of it, however inadequate my pen may be to the task. You must know then, that we had scarce got without the haven of Mil- ford, Avhen the favourable breeze that we set off with died away, and we were for several hours perfectly becalmed, close to the rocky coast to the west of Milford. At this season of the year there never was . finer day; and such was the smoothness of the ele- ment we were on, that it admitted of the small boat belonging to the vessel being rowed close under the land in every direction ; an opportunity I was happy to avail myself of, as it enabled me to form a pretty correct estimate of the height, the form, and the stratification of this grand line of coast ; and I know not which to admire most, the stupendous height of the cliffs, their caves and endlessly varied sinuosities, or the singular dispo- sition of their strata. Here and there, disjointed from the land, are seen several insular rocks, of various shapes and sizes, here called Stacks, eo-: vered so thickly with different sea-fowl, that you could hardly put a pin between, and yet perpe- tually in an up and down motion, like jacks in a harpsichord. Individually their various notes are most horridly discordant, yet in concert produce * 88 sort of melody very peculiar, and not unpleas- ing. I had often heard and read of these rocks, but the account seemed to be so vague, and so unequal to what they affected to describe, that I should suspect them to be secondhand, or such as might have been collected from a general, and, most likely, cursory view of them from above, which, though it may be sufficient to excite astonishment, yet must leave the most essential part of their cha- racter unknown, and only to be discovered by seeing them, as I have fortunately done, in de- tail, and from the water. What a convulsion must nature have undergone to have occasioned this wonderfully fantastical ap- pearance, particularly in the strata of these cliffs, taking every shape that a line can assume ! Unruffled as the face of the ocean was here this day, I learn from the sailors, and it is evident from the visible effects of its ravage, that the sea beat- ing on this coast, when agitated by a storm from the west or north-west, is tremendous. I here for the first time saw a perfect hermitage, in the little chapel of St. Govau's, which we got ashore to visit, clambering over large fragments, tumbled down, in the lapse of time, from the sum- mit of the rocks, forming a sort of rude beach. The little oratory is niched in a fissure of the cliffs, very high up, only large enough to receive it; after passing the rough beach, with steps of cau- tion, the ascent to it is by many winding irregular steps, which, they say, have the mystic property f confounding all attempts to count them. In the course of this difficult ascent, two or three stones, at stated intervals, are shown you, of pre- cisely the same quality as all the other stones around them, being limestone, but differing from their neighbours, by possessing a bell sound, thus accounted for : Tradition says, the chapel was once visited by pirates, who sacrilegiously plun- dered it of its only moveable treasure, its bell, which, in their way down to the vessel, to the few stones it happened to touch, or be rested on, it communicated the miraculous power of utter- ing, when struck, a bell sound ever after. They likewise show you, in the cavity of a stone skirt- ing the ascent about midway, a little water, be- lieved by the superstitious to be unfailing, but shrewdly suspected, by such as judge of things through an unprejudiced medium, to be adven- titious. Many cures are supposed to be performed, by bathing the limbs here ; and the place is fre- quented much in summer by the poorer sort of people from the interior, who leaving their votive crutches behind, to line the walls of the chapel, return restored to their limbs, which perhaps may be ascribed, with more justice, to change of air and the sea-breeze, than to any virtues inherent in this equivocal moisture, found in the stone basin and in the floor of the chapel : and I am of opinion that this may hold good with respect to all water- ing-places, as I iirmly believe that half the cures attributed to them may be oftener placed to the account of a difference in air, diet, exercise, va- <*> eancy of mind, and regulations productive of greater temperance, than to any salutary proper- ties in the waters themselves. The sailors told me, that, a few years hack, such was the veneration the St. Govan's fluid was held in, it was a common thing for people of the better sort, inhabiting the English parts of this county, to bring their infants there to uncjergo unction (for bathing it cannot he called), on a supposition, to use their own phrase, that the water made them more cw/e, that is, whetted their intellect, making them more acute and subtle; but if the}- at all partook of the appearance of the fluid, I am sure it must make them muddy and dull. In the rock, to which the east of the ora- tory is affixed, is a cell, most probably the ori- ginal receptacle of the rigid anchorite, barely ca pable of admitting a small body to screw itself in, but supposed to have the power of containing the largest as well as the least, dilating or contracting, to suit its inhabitant; and that if, on entering it, you form a wish you do not repent of till you have turned 'round in it, you will be gratified. No wonder then that its sides, during this much- practised exercise of constancy, should bear a high polish. Its situation in the cliff is too far down to give you any view of the country at its back, for from it you see nothing but the sea in front, the craggy and precipitous rocks that embrace it on each side, and the canopy of heaven. Here was room for meditation even to madness ! Resuming the boat, as I withdrew I took another view of this curious coast, which at every look discovered new and surprising features, and I much lamented that I was no draughtsman, as there are points here that would furnish the most magnificent sketches. I have heard much of your Giant's Causeway, and of Fingal's Cave, and the rocks at Staffa, in Scotland. As independent objects, they may and are allowed to be very majestic; but I can hardly form an idea of any tiling more magnificent and romantic than this whole range of rocks for several miles. Our poor friend had not been on board an hour before he was obliged to quit the deck and take to his bed, where he continued in one convulsive agony that had no pause, and rendered him in- capable of any sustenance or comfort ; and, what makes me feel the more for him, I have not ex- perienced a single qualm, with my spirits higher, and my appetite keener than ever. I heartily wish we were got to our place of des- tination, as I dread the bursting of a blood-vessel, his fits being so violent, and succeeding each other in such rapid succession; but, owing to the wind shifting, we shall be obliged to lie-to all night, and cannot possibly, from the appearance of things now, get to the end of our voyage be- fore morning. I write thus far by daylight, and on deck ; but having nothing to induce me longer to remain there, I hasten to get belo\v, and I per- haps may recur to my pen before morning, to give "you some account of my lucubrations, for I have no tendency to sleep. Three o'Clock in the Morning. I had no sooner got under hatches than I was joined by the Captain, in whom I found a man who had seen a great deal of the world, filled a. variety of situations, and, for a man of his rank and quality, not ill-bred or ill-informed. I took pains to induce him to be communicative, by showing no reserve or distance on my part. I had just put my flute together, which perceiving, ho observed " I find, Sir, you are musical ; I am a little so too," added he, " and I scrape the violin sometimes." Knowing how charmed with music our friend always is, I thought, if any thing would divert his mind, that music would be most likely to do it; so, pressing the Captain to produce his violin, which he managed above mediocrity, play- ingbyearandnotes, we had several pretty duets; but perceiving, that, instead of mitigating our friend's misery, it served rather to increase it, we abruptly put an end to our concert, and fell into conversa- tion. I soon discovered that my companion had a divided nationality, being equally related to Wales and Ireland, his father being a Welshman, and his mother an Irish woman, so that it was doubtful to which of the two countries his bias most im- clined. His cabin was lined with Irish oak, which he said was an antidote to bugs, and probably to other vermin. I recollect a line in a poem, called tlie Grotto, by Green, that glances at this pro- perty in wood the growth of Ireland : 2 " As spiders Irish wainscot flee." Is what we hear of Irish air and Irish earth, as well as Irish oak, true to the extent it is told usj that no venomous, or even very noxious, animals can live there ; that you have no> moles ; and that the soil and compost, brought over to other coun- tries by way of ballast, and thrown over land much infested by moles, has been known for years to rid the ground so manured of that destructive little miner, till its effect was fairly worn out ? One would suppose that such a notion could never have obtained so generally and so early with- put good evidence to justify it, for I recollect making an extract the other day from a very an- cient writer, one Brunei to Latini, who was at the court of Henry the Third, from his brother-in- law, the Earl of Provence, and during his stay wrote short notes of England, Scotland, and Ire- land, in the wretched French of that day. Speak- ing of Ireland, he says, " Et sachiez que la plus grant partie de toutes les ylles, et especiament en Irlande, na nul serpent et porce dient li pau-isant que la ou Ton portait des pierres ou de la terre d'lrlande nul *er pent ne poroit de merer." So that what is now commonly reported, and by many firmly believed, was current in those days. The wind begun now to indicate an approaching storm, when the Captain, as if roused from a trance, suddenly exclaimed "I dpn't like this: I .04 wish we were well over the Channel, for I unfortunately left my child's caul at home." In ** * looking over the curious manuscript miscellany, our friend referred to as having* purchased at an auc- tion in Carmarthen, I was puzzled to understand something that is put in the mouth of Sir Walter Raleigh relative to a child's caul. I therefore asked the Captain what it was : who told me, hi* apothecary informed him that it was an integ teg tegument, ay, that was the wore}, that some children, but very rarely, were born with round their heads, and that a person carrying one of such coverings about him would never be drowned, His, by its pedigree annexed, might have formerly belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh, for he could trace it to his great-grandfather, through his father and grandfather, who had all been mariners. He said, about twenty-five or thirty years ago, they were advertised for daily, and great prices, even as high as fifty pounds, given for them: bnt that since an ingenious fellow in Wapping had found means to counterfeit them so exactly, and they had been of course found defective in the virtue they are rc j puted to possess, there is not the same demand for them. There can be no reliance, therefore, adder? lie, but on an old one, wlx>se pedigree is as well authenticated as mine. What a wonderful nation ours is for factitious and other counterfeits, not outdone by any unless it be the Chinese, from the Birmingham coiner to the imitator of the pellicle called a child's caul / I was told that Sir Joseph Banks, in, one of his. desultory morning rambles through a narrow alley in the regions of Field Lane, heard a violent knocking in a cellar, into which stooping to look, and seeing it almost filled up and darkened with something of monstrous bulk, he was induced to ask the man who was at work, what he was about ; who replied, he was repairing an elephant, which was totally artificial, and had been exhi- bited for years as the real produce of Africa. My Captain, pleased with my affability, and perceiving me no way disposed to retire, after giving some orders about securing the hatches, reefing, and other preparations to meet the grow- ing storm, charged his pipe anew. I, in my turn, producing my cold tongue, pickled oysters, and bottled porter, part of our sea stock, pressed him to partake; and thus new life was given to our conversation, which we indulged in with less re- straint, as our friend's groans did not reach my ear so often, whereby I judged that he was fallen into a doze. Having finished our repast, and the Captain having fired his tube, he gave me, between whiff and whiff, the principal adventures of his life. He said he was at the memorable battle of Abou- kir, and served on board the Goliath, Captain Foley, to whose judgment and intrepidity, under Heaven, that signal victory might justly be ascribed; he never should forget the gallant commander, with that determined bravery and coolness so peculiar to him, issuing his orders to lay him so close to the enemy, that we might singe their beards if 96 they had any. M'hat he performed so nobly thought hy most in the fleet to he impracticable, and must have been so to any one that was not a whisker-singer like himself; but he reasoned deeper, and succeeded. It seems, he had likewise been one of Captain Fellowes's crew, sa miraculously preserved, when, in consequence of falling foul of an island of ice, their ship was abandoned, and they had taken to their long-boat. I had read the pamphlet that was published, giving a very interesting account of that most providential deliverance; but how was it heightened by his more detailed narrative, and from the mouth of one of the sufferers ! The Cap- tain's wife, a very delicate, and till then a sickly, lady, was of the number, of whose conduct, under such trying circumstances, he spoke in terms of enthusiastic admiration ; and, said he, it was vi- sibly blessed, for afterwards her health improved, and she became the happy mother of children. He told me, they had two Frenchmen on board, which gave him an instructive opportunity of comparing the behaviour of men without religion, and that of Christians in similar situations. The want of faith and dread of death presented, to be sure, in its most horrid shape, made the Frenchmen outrageous and frantic, insomuch tliat one abso- lutely jumped overboard, and the other was obliged to be lashed to the bottom of the boat ; whereas not a murmur escaped the lips of our British sailors, whose characteristic light-heartedness was then lost in seasonable reflection ; but how could 97 they behave otherwise, with such an example of patience, fortitude, and resignation, in a woman. But from the first I was persuaded we should riot he lost, for I had my caul about me. I was for two years a waterman on the Thames, and by shooting London Bridge was once upset and nearly- drowned. I was taken up for. dead, and every method recommended by the Humane Society tried in vain; but a Malay sailor happening to be pre- sent, ran to the lire of the public-house, where I was laid out, and catching hold of a boiling tea- kettle, poured it gradually on my stomach, con- tinuing to do so, to the utter astonishment of all the beholders, till symptoms of life appeared." The Captain was many times afterwards instrumental in the recovery of persons apparently dro\vned. With him I saw, for the first time, the medal given by the Humane Society to such as have been aiding in the restoration of a fellow-creature's life ; and I think the design, without exception, the most ele- gant, classical, and impressive, I ever saw. On one side universal Charity is personified by a naked boy,' holding a torch in his hand nearly extin- guished, which, with his hand delicately screening- it at the same time, he is endeavouring to blow in with this legend " Latcat scin!iUulaforsan"\hnrL which three words more appropriate could not be picked out in the whole compass of the Latin lan- guage, two dubitutives, and one a diminutive of a diminutive. The reverse bears a civic garland, with this legend " Pro c'rce servato." I had heard the medal spoken of before, but not too H 98 highly, and the merit of the design given to a young physician of the name of Watkinson, who has been dead many years. I think there is more real genius often discovered in the happy adaptation of a motto, or in hitting off such a design as I have alluded to, than in the compo- sition of volumes. I was told, that about twenty years ago, before some alteration took place in the row of houses on the terrace facing the great en- trance into Westminster Hall, there was a sun- dial introduced into the front wall of the house, exactly opposite to this seat of justice, with this motto " Discite justitiam moniti" and that the monitory timepiece was attributed to Selden. Here how much is compressed into a small compass, by which lawyers might regulate their consciences as well as watches. Nor am I less struck with the neatness of what is said to have been proposed by the late Dr. Goldsmith as a suitable motto for one of the houses in that notorious passage, King's Place, when Burke and he happened to take that road to the club in St. James's Street: " Peccatur et extra." The Captain having exhausted his budget and his pipe, retired to rest with the storm, which was now suddenly hushed into a steady breeze, as fa- vourable for our course as it could blow ; a change operating on the Captain's nerves most visibly, as he had not his wonderful preservative about him. I was therefore opportunely left, as I could wish, alone to write : but I find the Captain has 99 turned out, and I am invited to join him on deck, to hail the roseate morn, and the sight of the So- mersetshire coast, which we are approximating very fast; a summons that our convulsed friend lieard with transport, and is hurrying to obey, being much refreshed by a turbulent sort of sleep lie scarce knows he has enjoyed for the last two or three hours : so, as I have preparations to make for getting on shore, I must bid you adieu for the present. H.J. Minehead, October 27, 1807. MY DEAU CHARLES, WITH a head that partakes of the fluc- tuation of that element I have just quitted, I sit down to let you know that I am (thanli God!) safely landed in the county of Somerset, at Mine- head, a miserable-looking place, as far as I have yet seen ; but had I touched in a nation even of cannibals, I believe I should have felt happy, after what I had suffered at sea, having been out a nicjht 7 O O and a day, in all which time I had not ten minutes respite from convulsion, the respite of a man on the rack, whose torture is suspended only to en- able him to suffer more. Andrews, in his Anec- dotes, says, " That great man, Seneca, in one of his Epistles, after pathetically exclaiming, * Quid * non potest mihi persuadcri, cui persuasum est ut ' navigarem,' confesses, that, during a short passage, H 2 100 shorter than that between Dover and Calais, he actually flung himself headlong into the wares, merely from an inability to support the harassing sensation of sea-sickness ;" a thing, I fear, I should have been tempted to have clour, had I not been safely cabined. So overjoyed was I to find my foot on shore, that I could have kissed it with tlte eagerness of Ulysses in the Odyssey : JE (t^ttoj atf." Nor am I yet free from the effects of my sickness, for every five minutes I have a qualm that almost- oversets me, and makes me lay down my pen. My life hitherto, I must gratefully own, has passed without much bodily pain, if you except two slight visits from the gout in one toe only, a disorder in our family that never fails to remind us H of the sad inheritance even before we are of age ; yet even in the -paroxysm of the fit, such a fit as -I have experienced, it was possible to derive some alloy from suffering the mind to be occupied by the recollection of the most delightful moments of life. But sea-sickness shuts a door against a pos- sibility of comfort. In vain xiid I endeavour to fancy my Eliza, like a cherub, " new lighted on,. some heaven-kissing hill," and with her angelic presence dispersing the fiends that seemed em- ployed to agonize me. The mind, thoroughly sub- dued by the body, had no will of its own, and reflected no other image than that of helpless un- pitied misery, thrown upon it by its tyrant com- panion of flesh. In vain did die. kind officipusness 101 of the sailors set fine beef before me, and pour the foaming* porter into the goblet, which at any other time would have made my mouth water; but " Furiarum maxima juxta" " Accubat et denies prohibet contingere mensas." In vain did the Captain, with a voice that would not have disgraced a theatre, chant out that noble song, " Blow high, blow low," and Jones touch his flute not iriharmoniously ; hut neither singing men nor singing women could now have power to charm me. I got into the first alehouse that occurred near the pier at which 1 was landed, and, bad as the room is I am now sitting in, so as it does not fluctuate, I fancy myself in a palace. Hence, when I have cleaned myself from the pollution of a. sea voyage, I shall, with Jones, happy dog! who was not. sick at all, but eating like a cormo- rant, proceed in style, in a post-chaise I have sent for, to the inn of the town, which lies at some distance from the port, to the house of the gentle- man to whom our loquacious Captain, on the other side of the water, gave me a letter of recom- mendation. The house is about five miles off; and the gentleman is no other than the Hon. Mr. 1'ortescue, brother of Lord Fortescue, who, bred to the sea, has for some years quitted it, and here in a most delightful retirement enjoys the " otium cum dignitate." I must now for the toilet, as, whilst I was writing, Jones has finished his opera.tjons, and H 3 left the only glass disengaged for me, which I must hasten to employ, as the chaise sent for will soon be at the door ; so, in hopes that my head and stomach will be more at ease when I write . next, I take my leave for the present; but my heart being ever the same, believe me to be un- alterably, Yours, &c. Holnicote, October 28, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, AFTER an evening passed in all the elegant 'and unceremonious luxury of high-bred society, consisting of a pleasing mixture of music, literary conversation, and innocent trifling of minds, not ashamed to unbend when there is no sacrifice made to folly or to vice ; I rose with the lark, as "buoyant as if I was mounted on his wings. You must know, then, that my credentials from our navy acquaintance were most cordially received by his quondam shipmate. " What! and is Bardy still living ?" he exclaimed ; " I thought the suffusion of his gnomon, that got him the name of Bdrdy, would have extended to his whole body ere now ; but I am glad to hear that he is in existence, and seemingly happy, by his manner of writing: no man deserves happiness more; he was no man's enemy but his own. and was as good a creature as ever cracked a biscuit, and had the heart of a lion ; and yet men who had hot half his courage or his worth 'gave him the o-o-by." C7 / O O */ 103 We then told him the manner in which our ac- quaintance had commenced, and our desultory ex- cursions in his company, and of his planning. " Ay, that is so like him." V\~e likewise re- marked the singular circumstance of his not hav- ing a single tooth in his head, and of his giim^ being so indurated that their loss is not missed : " I am not so much surprised at that," said our iiost, " for my friend Bardy took no small pains to get rid of them." The ceremony (if that can be called ceremony that involved nothing formal or repelling) of in- troduction over, we had just time to prepare for dinner, the greater part of the work of our toilet feaving been performed before we stepped into the chaise. Dinner was announced and served up in a very elegant manner ; the company were, besides Mr. Mrs. and Miss Fortescue, a gentleman ahd lady and their daughter, relations of the family ; the gentleman all mildness, good humour, and bene- volence; and his lady with a mind in perfect unison with his, and an angelic face, the fit show- glass of the precious gem the casket contained. Their.daughter was a young lady, who, without possessing a very extraordinary share of beauty, had such a countenance and manner as rather ex- cited respect than love at rirst sight; but on a longer acquaintance insensibly took full pos- session df 'the heart; which is ever the -case when the boau'ty is more beholden to the ,-mind than the lace. It seenks she was ou -the point 'of H 4 104 being married to a young gentleman then abroad, and detained in some part.oi' the northern states. This unwelcome news but lately arrived me- thought gave an air of pensiveness to her, adding much to her charms. She played and sung with great taste, and seemed to give wonderful effect to any air that involved sentiments in the least resembling those she might be presumed to in- dulge under the peculiar circumstances of her si- tuation. If it is pain to be absent from those we love though we know that they are at large and happy, what then must be her feelings who in the near approach of the hymeneal hour learns, that the object of her affections, hastening home on the wings of rapture, has his flight checked by order of an unnatural tyrant, lost to all the finer emotions of the soul, and on whose wanton and merciless fiat his liberty, if not his life, may depend ! In the group there was a young man of fashion, who was hurrying to town with the fall of the leaf, who had mixed much with the beau raoncle, -without imbibing its follies, for he had learning without ostentation or pedantry, and good manners free from monkey tricks, in which hio-h breedinsr, \J C? O " by their being so generally practised, one would think consists. And last, though not least, in the estimation of such as could relish benevolence without parade, and piety without cant or austerity, we had likewise a clergyman of our party, the rector of the parish, a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian a rare union, but the benefit of which, 5 to his meekness, his modesty, and retired habits, is not as widely diffused as it could be wished. Of my host and his lady I have not said much; but if dignity without pride, the greatest affability and good temper, a desire to oblige, and a considerable knowledge of the world, be ingre- dients to form a pleasing character," Mr. Fortescue lias the highest claim on admiration, and his lady was formed to make such a man happy. Their house is perfectly the cottage without, having a thatched roof; woodbines, jasmines, and roses, clothe the walls, producing the most pleas- ing effect; but within we meet with every fa- shionable.accommodation that high life can require, or that taste can suggest; nor is there a good col- lection of books wanting. The drawing-room is elegantly furnished by the most charming speci- mens, of Mrs. Fortescue's pencil. In her life there is no waste of time, which happily unites the do- mestic with the more fashionable accomplishments. Such is her arrangement, that every department in her family feels it, and she superintends herself the instruction of the young ladies, her daughters, who have all the retiring delicacy that becomes their years, and might be expected from an edu- cation under the eye of such a mother. She is likewise the physician of the poor of the neigh- bourhood ; nor, whilst health is restored to the disordered body, is the physician of the soul un- employed, for the worthy rector of Sel worthy is~ unwearied in the discharge of his pastoral duties, 106 fever solicitou^ to discover if his Wretched pa* rishioners should want spiritual comfort. Of such a household I have now the inexpres- sible happiness of making one ; and every thing is done that politeness and genuine hospitality can dictate to induce me to forget that 1 am a stranger. Jones, who I told you sings well, and touches the flute with no ordinary skill, has gained great ap- plause by singing some of the Welsh airs to Welsh words, which, through his organs, have the soft- ness of Italian ; and has every evening the honour of accompanying the young lady I just now men- tioned on the piano. He has been equally suc- cessful in two or three English songs of his own composition, adapted to favourite airs, which, hi the course of my correspondence, when I feel a dearth of matter, I may treat you with. To-morrow I sally out to explore this curious and very beautiful coast, and in search of more genealogical knowledge, if I can be so fortunate as to pick it up any "where. At the same time Jones is in hopes of adding to his botanical know- ledge, and is preparing -his apparatus accordingly. ; He is very deeply conversant with botany, and used to correspond with fFithertftg; and such is the progress he has made in what he calls th tjryptogamial tribe, that he means to publish a little treatise on fungi and mosses, that I 'am told has wonderful merit, is highly -spoken of 'by amateur botanists, and is likely to throw a new light on this 'mysterious department of the science. My thread is fairly spun out, and I must lie by 107 till to-morrow, when I hope I shall furnish myself with an ample supply of fresh unwrought mate- rials, that will serve me for some time to work with. I am, ever yours, &c. Holnicote, October ig, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, EARLY after breakfast, horses having been provided for us, we rode out, attended by the worthy clergyman I have already introduced to you, and visited the church of which he is rector, called Sel worthy, first stopping- at the glebe-house, about a hundred yards from the church, where we took refreshments. It is an ancient building, but fitted up in a neat modern style, with no small degree of taste. The church stands considerably above the level of the vale, and commanding a fine view of it on the south, with a high hill sheltering it from the' north. It consists of a nave, chancel, and side- aisles, separated by two rows of elegant, light, cluster pillars; Gothic arches, not very pointed; the roof covered and ceiled with wood, divided into Square compartments, each angle of the square ornamented with a sculptured quatrefoil, or shield, bearing some grotesque figures. There is a neat gallery for the singers; and the family of Holnicote have their pew elegantly formed out of a lumber- room over the church porch, with a projected opening into the church like a balcony. There is a date round one of the pillars, but no older than 108 the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the monumental way there is nothing old enough to interest the antiquary; a few mural marbles, of rather a late date, commemorate the Stainsbys and the Blackfords, former possessors of Holnicote. On the chancel floor there is a brass tablet, curi- ously and quaintly inscribed to one Fleet, a former rector; and another near it, on the last incumbent, Sublimely unintelligible; both which, as I know you are a collector of odd epitaphs, and as fond of them as ever old Werner was, Jones in shorthand has treasured lip for you, as. well as several other memoranda, that he thinks will prove an acces- sion to your porte-feuille. The church is dignified with an embattled tower, faced with a clock-dial, and furnished with a good ring of bells. In this churchyard, as in every other that I have visited in this neighbourhood, there is a handsome cross. I likewise observed a raised tomb, with an escut- cheon of arms on one end of it, to one Sidtrjin Quere, if Sideriin, the law reporter, or any of the same family ? There is a tradition, that the present barn of the parsonage had, during the re-^ building or thorough reparation of the church, been used as a substitute. There is, on the north .ide, the stone frame of a Gothic window still remaining, and the whole fabric appears so very :mricnt, that I should rather be inclined to think liiat the barn had been the original church, as it lies due east and west. I cannot avoid remarking the growth of the; ivy here, infinitely more luxuriant than I ever saw 109 it any where else, and so covered with bees suck- ing' its bloom, that it appeared as if a swarm had just alighted on it. We ascend the hill called, from its direction, North Hill, being the boundary of the vale on that side, through a finely sheltered cwm or dingle, well calculated for wood, but entirely destitute of any growth above the rank of fern. When got to the summit of this range we gain a charming view of the Severn sea, the Welsh mountains, and* the coast of Monmouthshire nn& Glamorganshire, on one side; and on the "other the beautiful vale in which Holnicote stands, end- ing at Porlock, and bounded-on the south side by the highest ground in the west of England, called Dunkery. The hill we now rode on extends from Minehead to Horshead Point, a name I am bold to give it, and to contend that it is the name it bore originally, though now corrupted ; for it is a rock very similar in form and colour to the skeleton of a horse's head. The ride is exquisitely pleasant, over very fine turf: here and there are circular elevations, which they call beacons ; though, from their being so frequent and so near to each other, it makes strongly against the supposition that, they were ever designed for that purpose. Near the extremity of the point follow a wind- ing path through a czcm still deeper and narrower than that we ascended through, and pass Lynch, where formerly stood a chapel of ease to Sel- worthy, now exhibiting a ruined shell of very line masonry, with a >U:e window of uo mean lip tracery; the east \yimlo\v being lost by its union with another more modern building. Near every farm-house hereabouts are venerable and pictu- resque walnut-trees, and most of the gate-posts are formed of living trees (a singularity of th-- ..ost pleasing effect) : myrtles of the most luxuriant growth clothe the walls of every house you pass. Hence over a flat opening to Porlock Bay, con- sisting of most fertile land in small inclosures with richly wooded hedge-rows, to the village of Porlock, whose church I had occasion to visit : it has a plain square tower, surmounted by a trun- cated spire covered with small shingles in pat- terns. Within the church, under a rich canopy raised beneath one of the arches that divide the nave from the aisle, is a high tomb, bearing two recum- bent figures, a male and female, in white marble : the knight is in complete armour, with a curious cap over his helmet, and a richly sculptured wreath, adorned with grapes and vine-leaves, indicative, I presume, of some office he might have held under the crown, or of the tenure of his lands ; for if it was meant to characterize a professed bacchanal, it would be such an outrage to all decency as could hardly be charged on any period of the Christian e,ra, to give a vicious pre-eminence in so solemn a place the lasting record of " Parian stone." The lady's head-dress is equally singular, something in form of a mitre. But I was sorry to see the whole monument, figures and all, scratched and mutilated in every direction ; a dis- grace that peculiarly attaches to our nation, every Ill other in Europe but our own paying a proper respect to sepulchral, as well as all other relics of antiquity. I am told that the Trajan column at Rome, though standing in an open market-place, uuinclosed by rails, or any protection, has not a single scratch on it. The above monument has o no inscription or armorial record on any part of it to lead us to an acquaintance with the illustrious dead, save a crest, which seemed to be a lion's head erased, on a wreath affixed to the helmet on which the knight's head rests. Collinson, so little dependance is there to be placed on the writers of county histories, who too often see and hear through the organs of others, says, the male effigy is that of a knight templar ; wliereas the crusader, which he does not notice, lies under a canopy in the south Avail, almost con- cealed by one of the pews. I could obtain no ac- count of the figures within the communion rails, or of a very o}cl tomb with sides rudely ornamented, and an escutcheon of arms much blunted and dis- guised by yellow ochre, which, as well as white- wash, the antiquary or the pedigree-hunter, like myself, have frequent occasion to execrate. On the south wail of the chancel was a pomp- ous mural inonument, bedizened with painting, gilding, and sculpture, to .the memory of Natha- niel Arundel, a former rector, who died A. D. 1703; yet, unfortunately for me, productive of .nothing I was in search of but the name of Arundel, being very barren in genealogy, and too .modern to leave me a hope of its being likely to 4 112 involve any account of the connexion I was de- sirous of substantiating. I am inclined to think, from a suggestion of Jones, who always makes happy hits, that the real name was L Hirondelle, and that the family coat, hearing six birds very like swallows, was an allusion to it. Here I observed what never occurred to me before, that the generality of the modern monu- jnents were tablets of wood, neatly ornamented, painted, and gilded. The spout that conducts the water from the leaden gutter separating the aisle from the nave oh the south side of the church, is the stone figure of the head of a fish of enormous size, with his mouth open ; a pun, as I was informed, on the plumber's name, which was Whale. In the churchyard is the largest yew- tree I ever recollect to have seen. The situation of Porlock is beautiful and roman- tic, being nearly surrounded, particularly on the south side, by lofty hills, intersected by deep and well-wooded glens, through each of which tumbles some mountain torrent. Below the town there is a small pier for vessels fetching coals and lime from Wales. There was here an extensive chase, and a palace, or rather hunting-seat, of one of the Saxon kings. In 918 the Danes invaded this coast, and were routed. In 1059 Harold burnt the town. A small camp of an oval form, in a wood a mile and a half south-west of the church, is supposed to have been thrown up on this occasion, the en- trance being on the land side: warlike instru- incuts have been dug up here. The inhabitants preserve the memory of those occurrences to this day, and show the marks of the fire on some of the stones. Algar, son of Leofrick Earl of Mer- cia, owned much land here, whose name is pre- served in Allersford, which should be called Al- garsford. There is a meer of some extent above the beach at Porlock, which perhaps might have given name to the place, the old British name being probably Porthllwch, the port of the lake. This meer is a great decoy for wild fowl. Beyond the pier, at the entrance of a richly wooded glen, is a summer residence of Lord King, called Ashley Cottage, niched in the side of a hill overhanging the sea, whose oaks feather down to the water's edge. The walks here wind with great taste, and are enriched with the most luxuriant growth of various sorts of evergreens and deciduous shrubs ; and beyond the extent of the pleasure-grounds that embrace the house, a most romantic road is carried for a mile or more through the woods to the sequestered little vale of Culbone, in which stands the parish-church and rectory of that name. A more perfect seclusion cannot be well ima- gined ; the surrounding hills being so high and so woody as to exclude the rays of the sun for the greater part of the day, scarcely felt but when they are vertical, and never seen during the three winter months. I have often rernarked, that many names of places \n England are half Saxon and half British ; and Jones, who is a most inge i 1*4 nious etymologist, will have Culbone to be such compound, the name being Cil bourn, the narrow brook, as the vale is- watered by a brook of this character. In our return across a considerable mountain- stream, called the Humor', or perhaps more pro- perly by its true original British name, the Hwr- ntcr, or the snorer, from its peculiar sonorousness. The whole of this lovely vale is richly wooded, and the nearer boundaries are charmingly diver- sified. Nothing seems wanting to make it vie with the finest parts of the kingdom but a spirit of planting judiciously, directed to give a more varied outline to the summits of the remoter high hills that environ it, and thereby break the mo- notonous dumpy form they now bear. Holnicote belonged to William de Holne, temp. Edw. I. who held it of the King in ca- pite, by a very odd tenure; by the service of hanging on a forked piece of wood the red deer that died of the murrain in Exmoor Forest The oflice of forester is now held of the Crown by Sir Thomas Ackland, Bart, to whom Holnicote, with a large property round it, and very consi- derable church patronage, belongs ; though the young Baronet lives at his noble seat near Exeter, his mother, the present Mrs. Fortescue, chiefly residing at Holnicote, where, at a little distance from the old mansion, which was destroyed by rire, she has erected its successor in the cottage sryle, to furnish an opportunity for the display of her fine taste. 115 After the luxury of the table was over, this evening, like the former, was devoted to music and the most interesting conversation ; and a sprig of laurel was voted to Jones for the fol- lowing little song. What art thou, Love, whose power, unseen, All living creatures own j Whose shafts, like those of Death, are keen, And throw distinction down ? When first I went with my fond swain A-maying to the grove, I felt a something seize my brain ; Oh ! say, could this be love ? The little birds on every spray Display'd their painted wings, Whilst each fond couple seem'd to say A thousand rapt'rous things j All nature answer'd to the key ; He press'd, in vain I strove; I follow'd till I lost my way : Oh ! say, could this be love'? So delightfully is every moment of our time employed here, that there is no escaping from the fascination of a society so bewitching till the temperate hour of withdrawing to repose dissolves the spell, I therefore do not grudgingly borrow from rest to pay my arrear of correspondence. Yours, &c. Holnicote, October 3O, 1807. MY DEAR CIIAflLES, NOT having rigidly limited ourselves to time, so we get to town by Christmas, and having received the most pressing and polite invitation to extend our stay here; our worthy host will not suffer a morning to pass without giving us some new treat by introducing us to new scenery. The bill of fare for this day has beeu the pictu- resque and romantic valley of Homer, the heights of Dunkery, the monarch of their mountains, the churches of Stoke Pero and Luckham. The val- ley through which the Homer winds is bounded by very high hills, clothed with most magnificent woods ; it is "in some parts narrow ; in others ex- panding into large reaches of flat ground, covered with majestic oak, ash, and forest trees of every de- scription, interspersed with the euonymus, holly, white-thorn, and mountain-ash. The ride for the most part is near the margin of the river, which, in all its course (and we followed it for above a mile through this rich scenery), is one of the finest mountain streams I ever saw, broken per- petually by masses of rock obstructing its channel, and forming it into a series of cascades. Every tree was a lesson for the pencil. After crossing the Homer we begin to ascend the first hill through the wood ; and though high, when we gained its summit it bore no proportion to the height of Dunkery mountain, towering [ 117 majestically above it. From our first landing* place we saw a small rectorial church in a most lonely situation, called Stoke Pero, in the patron- age of Sir Thomas Ackland; from the apparent scantiness of the population of that district, I conceive the congregation to be very small, the whole parish consisting only of two or three farms, and an uninhabited tract of heath, border- ing on Exmoor Forest. Exmoor is an immense tract of waste, inhabited only by a small breed of horses and wild deer ; SirThomas Ackland is ranger of it under the Crown. In this neighbourhood are kept the only stag- hounds in the kingdom except those of His Ma- jesty. Hence we keep ascending gradually, through heath, in many places tending to bog; and here I saw' for the first time any of the black game. When we had gained the lower part of Dunkery ridge, for it keeps rising towards the east, we found ourselves in the midst of three tumuli of stones, half of each of which seems to have been carried away to make hedges on some farms to tlxi south-east of the ridge ; but so happily are they plundered, that their probable sepulchral contents may not have been disturbed. They at present mark the boundary of Sir Thomas Ack- land's and Sir Philip Hale's manors. Hence along the ridge eastward, which soon expands into a considerable flat, covered with numerous stacks of turf, pared off the surface of the soil 13 118 for fuel, being thickly interwoven with roots of heath. We now reached the highest point of the moun- tain called Dtmkery Beacon, on which stand four or five most stupendous cairns, in all appearance of vast antiquity, and never materially disturbed. They are by the inhabitants here considered to have been beacons ; but why so many in one spot, and of an equal height ? That one of them, long subsequent to their original formation, at different periods might have been put to that use, is highly probable ; but to think that they were at first designed for that purpose, were as absurd as it is in general found to be erroneous. As far as one of those primitive telegraph beacons goes, I am willing to allow our ancestors a perfect know- ledge of turning it to account ; but to suppose they were capable of ringing endless changes on them by an increase or diminution of their num- ber, would, I think, be to give them credit for a greater skill in the science of signals than they justly can be entitled to. From this eminence the prospect by sea and land is of great extent, and finely contrasted ; on one side highly cultivated vallies and the ocean ; on the other, an immeasurable tract of heath, pan of Exmoor Forest, and on whose distant ridges witli the horizon, we observe several large tumuli, and on which Mr. Collinson, the only, or, at any rate, the latest historian of this county, with as much pathos as knowledge of his subject, (appearing to be very deficient in both), makes 119 the following remark : " Here on this desolated spot stand a number of simple sepulchres (pretty alliteration) of departed souls (rather bodies), whether of warriors, priests, or kings, it matters not (true barrow-hunting antiquaries would not, I believe, be of the same opinion), whose memo- ries have perished with their mouldering urns'* (but their urns have not perished, but are found entire ; so much Mr. Collinson knows of the mat- ter). He then concludes with a sentiment not unworthy a Young or a Hervey : " A morsel of earth now damps in silence the eclat of noisy warriors, and the green turf serves as a sufficient shroud for kings!" Very sublime, very moving, this ! The day now beginning to lower, and mizzling clouds involving us, we did not extend our ride to another hill still more eastwaro!, whose summit was marked by a group of cairns, but turned short down the side of Dunkery to Sweet-tree valley, terminating in the Vale of Horner. This cwm is prettily sprinkled with wood, and watered by a romantic mountain-stream. By the Horner and this river a considerable knoll is encircled and almost insulated, on which if a castellated man- sion was built, and a park inclosed, it would make as noble a residence as can be imagined, when the grandeur of the mountain at its back, the romantic course of the river surrounding it, and the magnificence of the woods, with the whole concomitant scenery, are taken into the account. I 4 120 The mist having left us, in our descent towards Ilolnicote, just above Luccomb, we were much struck with its church and village, filling a most curious circular hollow ; and the smoke, it being near the general hour of dinner, had a very pic- turesque effect, wreathing from every house, the* air being remarkably still. We stopped to see the church, which is a handsome Gothic structure, consisting of a nave, chaiicel, and south aisle, se- parated by a row of columns, their capitals orna- mented with flowers and fruits. It has a high embattled tower, clock, and a ring of bells. It ha* a cross in the churchyard, as all the other churches- here have. There are some remains of fine painted glass in the windows, and over the font was sus- pended a linen veil, or covering, in the shape of an extinguisher, a peculiarity I never before ob- served in any other church. The monumental re- cords were but few, which I minutely examined, tut, alas ! the names of Arundel and Rogers were no where to be found, or any other name that was likely to add a link to the chain I wanted to eke out. The church is a rectory, and in the gift of Sir Thomas Ackland, whose cl lurch-patronage i* very extensive. I could not help observing a remarkable pecu- liarity in most of the houses of the lower class in rhis country ; the chimney is always an excres- cence in the front side of the house, and generally round, and not far from the door ; from a suppo- sition, I presume, that by these means the draught of air from the door is avoided, and the chimney- 121 corner is rendered more snug. The same custom I noted in that district of Pembrokeshire called Koos, perhaps originating with the same people, the Flemings, who were likewise settled on the Somersetshire and Devonshire coasts prior to their coming: into Wales. O If a traveller has an ear, it cannot escape his observation that the driver of the plough in these parts is incessantly chaunting out the terms by which he incites the beasts drawing it, in a mono- tonous kind of tone; and this, when many ploughs are out, fills the whole compass with what I think a most melancholy sound. They think that it cheers the cattle, and that they work the better in consequence. After the luxury of the table at Holnicote, our evening furnished the most delightful mental en tertainment ; and as far as music, vocal and instru- mental, could advance it, no way inferior to those which had preceded it since we had been num- bered among the guests. Jones, as usual, offi- ciated as priest of Apollo, and bore off a fresh sprig of laurel to enrich his garland. In my next perhaps 3 may treat you with the little impromptu which has raised him very high in the estimation of those who were witness to the almost imprGvi- satoreness of his composition, and the taste with which he manages his vocal powers, particularly when his own sentiments are the subject of the air. He likewise gave us another specimen of Welsh poetry, set to music by himself, which from his mouth is so soft and melodious, that my ear prefers 12-2 it to Italian, it being quite as mellifluous, with more grandeur ; and, if I may be allowed the ex- pression, more originality of sound, as it is not. like the principal European living languages, the echo of tho.se we call dead. Its words are all its own, perfect and appropriate, ever the same, and needing no change. Jones, though in himself possessed of powers fully equal to the praise or vindication of his native language when he enters the lists .as its champion, yet is al \vays furnished .with auxiliar arguments for his purpose, having often referred me to a panegyric from the pen of an author who was no Welshman, and therefore not to be suspected of prejudice or partiality old Fuller, who, on this, as on all other subjects, though quaintly, expresses himself with great force; and as I have been fortunate enough to meet with the book in the library of this house, it being one that is not likely to have fallen within the course of your reading, I send you the quo- tation, and hope you will be as much pleased with it as 1 was. " First, their language is native; it was one of those that departed from Babel, and herein it re- lates to God-, as the more immediate author there- of; whereas most languages in Europe owe their beginning to human depravings of some original language : thus the Italian, Spanish, and French, are daughters or nieces to the Latin, a regenerated race from the corruption thereof. Secondly, un- mixed: for though it hath some few foreign v/ords, and useth them sometimes, yet she rather 12-3 aceepteth them out of state, than borroweth theiii out of need, as having, besides those, other words of her own to express the same things. Yea, the Romans were so far from making- the Britons to do, that they could not make them to speak as they would have them ; their very language never had a perfect conquest in this island. Thirdly, unaltered : other tongues are daily disguised with foreign words, so that in a century of years they grow strangers to themselves, as now an English- man needs an interpreter to understand Chaucer's English. But the British continues so constant to itself, that the poems and prophecies of old Ta- liessin, who lived above one thousand years since, are at this day intelligible in that tongue. Lastly, durable : which had its beginning at the confu- sion of tongues, and is likely not to have its end- ing till the dissolution of the world. Some, in- deed, inveigh against it as being hard to be pro- nounced, having a conflux of consonants*, and * As to the supposed redundancy and confluence of conso- nants, thereby impeaching the harmony of the language, Jones has furnished me with a note out of a paper by Mr. W. Owen, the author of the Welsh Dictionary, wherein he says, in answer to a question he puts, ft Is the Welsh an harmonious language ? This is a question which strangers have habitually decided in the negative; adding likewise, that it is overloaded with consonants. With a view to ascertain the truth of this objection, I endea- voured to calculate the proportion of vowels and consonants in various languages j the result with regard to the Welsh was, that, \ipon an average, for one hundred consonants it had a like num- ber of vowels. In Greek the proportion is ninety-five vowels to a hundred consonants. In regard to the harmony of the Welsh 124 some of them double sounded ; yea, whereas the mouth is the place wherein the office of speech is generally kept, the British words must be uttered through the throat ; but this rather argueth the antiquity thereof, herein running parallel with the Hebrew (the common tongue of the old world), to which it hath much affinity, in joining of words with affixes, and many other correspondencies. Some also cavil, that it grates and tortures the ears of hearers with the harshness thereof; whereas, indeed, it is only unpleasant to such as are igno- rant of it; and thus every tongue seems stam- mering which is not understood ; yea, Greek itself is barbarism to barbarians. Besides, what is nick- named harshness therein, maketli it indeed more full, stately, and masculine. , But such is the epi- curism of modern times to addulce all words to the ear, that (as in the French) they melt out in the pronouncing many essential letters, taking out nil the bones to make them bend the better in speaking; and such hypocrites in their words speak them not truly in their native strength, as the plain-dealing British do, which pronounce every letter therein, more manly if less melodious. Lastly, some condemn it, unjustly, as a worthless tongue, because leading to no matter of moment ; and who will care to carry about that key which tongue, a stranger to its orthography cannot judge from books ; but if I were to select such phrases as are written in characters familiar to him, it would be difficult to draw expressions equally ernooth from other languages/' 12J ean unlock no treasure?. J3ut tills is false, that tongue affording monuments of antiquity, some being left, though many be lost, and more had been extant but for want of diligence in seeking and carefulness in preserving them *." Should you happen not to have the same relish for my old friend Fuller's conceits as I have, I fear you will not thank me for this long quotation, with which I shall leave you, as the solemn tongue of time has uttered One, and opened another clay- to my existence, though Sleep, Death's counter- feit, challenges as his right the earlier hours of it, while nature seconds the claim, Yours, &c. Holnicote, October 31, 1810. 5IY DEAR CHARLES, I STEAL from sleep an fyour to recount the business of this day, which our worthy en- tertainer, as the weather -was favourable, would not suffer us to lose, especially as he w r as proud of an opportunity of showing the beauties of a country to persons who, J trust, were discovered not to be totally insensible to them. Our course was to Minehead and Duns,ter. The town of Minehead consists of three parts triangularly placed : the upper and principal portion, including the church, occupies the slope of a high hill to * Fuller's Church History, page 65. the cast ; the middle half a mile to the south-cast irom the beach ; and the lower, or quay town, b\r the sea-side, under shelter of rising ground. It was formerly a place of great trade, but now much on the decline, as may be found by a com- parative survey of 1705 and the few last years. The town was incorporated temp. Queen Eliza- beth, and called in the charter Man heve, perhaps Mohun heve, from Sir William de Mohun, who had great possessions here ; or, as Jones suggested in the exuberance of his ludicrous wit, rather Man heave, from its formerly dealinar so much in I malt, the produce of which, strong ale, may be said often to heave a man off his legs ; and the more to confirm the etymology, the little village called now Bossington, not a great way off, was, from the influence of the same commodity, ex- tending thus far, no other than Boozing town. In such playful etymological sallies does my inge- nious companion now and then indulge, to excite the innocent laugh, and prevent monotony. The town thus scattered and divided has a shabby appearance, a considerable part being in ruins since the fire that destroyed it some year* ago.' The church, placed on an eminence, is a handsome building, with a lofty tower : the as- cent to it is by a pitched pavement ; the cemetery is large, and full - of graves ; so that if the popu- lation is great, the mortality keeps pace with it. On one side of the steeple, in a niche just under the clock-dial, is the figure of the saint it was dedicated to, or the king or great man, who founded it, holding a crucifix before him, which they have made to look most hideous, by painting the face and eyes to produce this Gorgon effect. The church consists of a nave and side-aisle, se- parated by a row of pillars, which have left their perpendicular long ago, and are bolstered up within and without. The chancel is divided from the body of the church by a most elegant rood^ loft of curious workmanship, in the north comer of which stands a fine statue of Queen Anne, in white marble, of admirable sculpture, and in high preservation, given by Sir Jacob Banks, member for the town in 17 19, who had represented it for sixteen years. On the same side, under what was once a superb canopy of stone, but with its rich tracery flattened and disfigured by whitewash, the antiquary's bane, is shown the effigy of Brae- ton, the great father of our law; but from his dress, and his having the tonsure and a chalice in his hand, I should rather set him down for a priest than a judge. About the beginning of last century a great herring fishery Avas carried on here ; but that mi- gratory fish had for many years almost deserted the coast, but has revisited it this year, yet not in great abundance. We have been treated with them every day, and yet we are not tired of them. They had likewise a great trade to Ireland. Mr. Collinson talks of a limpet from which is ex- tracted a curious dye ; he should have said a peri- winkle; but this is a common one on the Welsh coast, and I am told by Jones that it is only the white kind has the vein which supplies the fluid giving a colour that rivals the T} rian purple, so much extolled by the ancients, and probably pro- duced from the shell here referred to. Hence to Dunstcr, a corruption of DIM, signifying a ridge of hills stretching length- ways on the coast ; and Torr, a fortified tower. It was given. to Sir William de Mohun, who came over with the Conqueror, and seating himself at Dunster, formed a town, strengthened it with a castle, and founded a priory of Benedictines to the north-west of his residence, where he lies buried. A Lady Mohun, in the fiftieth year of Edward III. sold the estate to a Lady Elizabeth Lutterrell, in which family it has continued ever since The castle is a magnificent building at the south ex- tremity of the principal street of the town, and commands a most charming view. The famous Prynne was here imprisoned. A small but rapid stream from Dunkery passing to the south of the town, turns in its short course six grist-mills, one oil, and two fulling mills. The church is a noble Gothic structure, of the age of Henry VII. : the tower is in the centre of the building ; that part to the east of it was the old priory church, but is now much dilapidated and neglected, though con- taining many magnificent monumental records of the Mohun. and ^utterell families: the w eat part only is used for divine service. The tower is ninety feet high, and is furnished with 2, clock and chimes. Clouds beginning to condense and threaten some sudden fall, induced us to hurry homeward, 129 and abridge our excursion. Return by Bratton or Bracton, a hamlet which gave name to the family, whence sprung Henry de Bracton, the great Eng- lish lawyer, temp. Hen. III. and who, I conceive, for the reasons already assigned, is erroneously said to be represented by the effigy shown for him in, Minehead church. The old manor-house is large, and appears to be of great antiquity. It now be- longs to Lord King. I could have wished to hava had more time to explore the supposed birth-place of the venerable Bracton, and certainly should have taken it, had not a sharp sleet, becoming more fleecy every moment, and threatening to end in a violent fall of snow, accompanied by a high wind, literally driven us home, where we had been scarcely housed before the landscape was involved, and the whole face of the country covered with a white sheet, and gave double zest to our in-doof amusements, for which repeated gratification jeemed to increase our relish. I must now per- form the promise I made you in my last, by giving Jones's song, which, inadvertently, he had writ* ten on a scrap of paper, having on the other side a few beautiful lines, which, but for this accident, might, perhaps, have perished unknown, though I flatter myself you will deem them richly worthy of notice, and thank me for tacking them on as a rider. 130 SONG. O Darcon, to say if I love you or no, Why press me, and k'ndle my cheek? There are those mute tell-tales, you very well know, Of whom you may find what you seek. Alas ! but I fear they have told what 's to tell, And all further concealment were vain j In a language my Damon interprets too well, Which speech cannot better explain. Yes ! yes ! I *m betray'd conscious blushes will rise, And the mask that I wore I resign j For now I with transport behold in your eyes What they have collected from mine ! ON A FLY SEEN IN THE DEPTH OF WINTER TO SETTLE ON A LADY'S CHEEK. When heat from Winter's icy chains Had set at large a captive fly, His wing no sooner he regains, Than he alights near Caelia's eye. That cheek has blushes which excel Whatever Flora can disclose : Child of the Summer ! thou mightst well Mistake it for the damask-rose. Yet stay not there, rash insect, shun That torrid zone ere 'tis too late ; For in that eye there flames a sun, Which to approach is instant fate ! But if on this delicious coast It is thy doom to die by fire, Th' Arabian phoenix cannot boast 'Midst sweets mere fragrant to expire. 131 Holnicote, November l, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, IN consequence of our having expressed a wish to explore the contents of the lofty stone cairns on the height of Dunkery, and the hum- bler sodded tumuli on the opposite ridge above Sel worthy; our polite host, desirous of affording vis every gratification in his power, gave orders for three or four pioneers to be ready in attend- ance the following morning; and though the morning opened with " sharp sleet of arrowy shower," we were not deterred from carrying our plans into execution, such full possession had the antiquarian mania taken of us. Our first essay was on the Selworthy ridge of hills, where, after penetrating into two or three of those venerable mounds, we failed to discover any thing besides a little charcoal, generally an infal- lible criterion to induce us to think them sepul- chral ; though, probably, we might not have fallen on the exact spot where the urns, or the inter- ment, of whatever kind it might be, was depo- sited, being all ignorant of the science of barrow- opening, which, I am told, is, in Wiltshire, almost reduced to a system. This work having proved unsuccessful, and being informed by a countryman, a by-stander, whom curiosity had brought to the spot, that a little way off, at the foot of the mountain, stretch- ing down to the sea, before we come to Minehead, K2 132 there were, close on the shore, ruins of an ancient building called Burgundy Chapel', like professed antiquaries, we caught eagerly at this information, and begged our peasant Cicerone to conduct us to the place, which he engaged to do. Our road for a few miles lay along the sum- mit of the ridge, but afterwards took a direction to the left, through hollows whose declivities would hardly admit of our proceeding. However, we followed our guide as long as he seemed to en- tertain any hopes of discovering the object of our pursuit; and in doing this we suddenly got into a narrow gulley or covered way, winding dowa towards one of the little accessible coves on the coast, where probably the Scandinavian pirates might have landed, and excavated this road to get up into the country unperceived. Near a bend which it takes in its course, on a spot more level than is the general character of the surrounding ground, and curiously sheltered, near water, we observed evident traces of early habitations; and the place is distinguished by the appellation of The Yards. After floundering for a full hour, through va- rious difficulties, our conductor fairly gave in, saying, that, though he was certain the place was near, he had lost his land-marks most unaccount- ably ; and *o Burgundy Chapel remains yet to be found. I fear the antiquary is often liable to be thus duped ! In our new characters we made but a sorry figure, and we had from this, our first essay, no 133 great encouragement to prosecute our researches; yet, notwithstanding, we turned our eyes with fresh delight towards the gigantic monuments that give an awful dignity to the opposite -mountain, which, though the advanced hour of that day put it out of our power to visit, we kept it as a bourn bouche for the next, our liheral entertainer pro- mising to add to the number of the pioneers in proportion to the increasing magnitude of the projected labour. After some driving showers of sleet and snow, the day brightened, and left the horizon perfectly clear ; so that on our return we had a most exten- sive and delightful view of the mountains of Wales, and its line of rocky coast across the channel, on the one hand, and the richly diversified scenery of the vale of Porlock just under us on the other, bounded by Dunkery, with its head in the clouds \Ve took an earlier dinner than usual at the worthy rector's of Sel worthy, where we passed a few truly Attic hours in his parsonage-house, that most happily unites elegance and comfort, giving, by a discussion of a variety of interesting sub- jects, a zest to our wine. From this " feast of reason and the flow of soul," we adjourned to liolnicote, and the later hours of the evening flew away on wings of rap- ture, leaving the mind under the influence of a sort of enchantment tlmt triumpns over sleep it- self, and keeps us awake with the recollection of pleasures, the result of social sensibilities, wit, beauty, and music; an enchantment tliat, were ir K 3 134 possible, would almost make me forget my Eliza; but her image, ever present, supplies a spell that makes every other charm powerless ; a thousand stars may sparkle and blaze; but hers, with unri- valled lustre, will ever maintain the ascendancy. But, Charles, with thy heart cased, as it might seem, in tenfold adamant, though the growth of a climate professedly under the predominance of the loveliest planet, Venus, I know thou wilt laugh at me for this weakness, in the avowal of a passion thou hast either never felt, or affectest to stifle. If such apathy be wisdom, be philosophy, I glory in being ranked among Nature's fools. In this alone I suspect thee a hypocrite : can stoic indifference dwell in such a mind as thine, than which a warmer, a manlier, never informed a human breast, with thoughts that glow, that burn, and with feelings as quick of sense as that which lives along the spider's line ! Adieu ; and let me close my letter with a little epigrammatic address to Sleep, to which I am at this moment a humble but unsuccessful suitor : the original, in Latin, you perhaps may have seen ; but you cannot have seen the translation, which I shall beg leave to subjoin, an extempora- neous effusion of a great literary character of the present day, when very young, and given to Jones by a member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, as a thing never made public, and perhaps now forgotten by the author himself, of whom it may be said, as of Goldsmith, by Paoli, " That he was like the sea, which threw up pearls without its knowing it." 135 Somne levis, quariquam certissima mortis imago, Consortem cupio te taraen esse tori j Alma quies optata veni, nam sic sine vita, Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori. Though Death's strong likeness in thy form we trace, Come, Sleep, and fold me in thy soft embrace ; Come, gentle Sleep, that sweetest blessing give To die, thus living j and thus dead, to live ! Holnicote, November 2, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, INSTEAD of being damped by the ill suc- cess of yesterday's excursion, I felt my ardour for barrow-opening rather increased, and I was up with the day, impatient to ascend the mountain that was the proposed scene of our operations ; and as it was planned over-night, I, willing to signalize myself for zeal on this occasion, set off before my companions, escorted by a weather- beaten huntsman of the late Sir Thomas Ackland, a man who had been for near half a century in the habit of scaling Dunkery, and encountering the tempest on its front of snow; yet who, so fierce was the storm of sleet that overtook us half way up the mountain, shrunk from its vio- lence: as for me, cased as I was in double and treble great coats, I felt the blast through every joint, and almost repented me of my bold under- taking; yet, ashamed to give it up, I was resolved K 4 136 to stem it, and proceed, as it had all the appear- ance of a shower only, which proved to be the case; for we had no sooner reached the summit than it ceased, and left us in a clear, but pierce-* ingly cold atmosphere. My work was now before me, but the labourers were not arrived, and I had half an hour to wait and survey those stupendous mounds of stone raised, as my fancy suggested, over chiefs who had merited highly of their country to be thus distinguished ; and to accelerate the circulation of my blood, which was almost stagnated by the in- tense cold, I flew from one to the other with an enthusiasm that would have done honour to tha most professed antiquary. My pioneers had now assembled, and I lost no time in setting them to work : I began my operations on two which had certainly been much disturbed, if not opened ; but, as I was willing to suppose, not by such as had any. thing more in view than the stones they were composed of; and, therefore, I had still hopes that the sepulchral contents might 'yet remain to be discovered. The cairns I began with were such as were not likely to keep us long in suspense ; for, though of a considerable round, their height had been much reduced, particularly towards the centre, to which our attack was chiefly directed, as from Douglas's Naenia, yesterday evening, I had been taking a lesson, and found that, in general, the interment was to be looked for as near as possible to the middle of the barrow, though there were excep- 137 tiens, but rare, to this general rule; for I np\r re? collect hearing our antiquarian acquaintance whom we met a t Haverfordwest, and afterwards at Milford, consulted respecting the prophetic in- scription found at Pill priory, say, that he had known tumuli without any central interment, but having a row of urns round the margin, a singular variety, and perhaps unique. By 0ie time I had finished the examination of the second that a little before we sat down, a genteel-looking young man, with a bundle covered over with oil-skin on a stick, entered; and as there was but that one room with a fire in it, he hoped he might be permitted to sit there. On the company readily assenting to this, he stepped out, got rid of his great coat and boots, and entered the room gay as a butterfly emanci- pated from its chrysalis. This gentleman we found was a pedestrian tourist, and had crossed the channel from Gla- morganshire last, though he had been, during his excursion, through the greater part of the other counties of South Wales, and was hurrying up to town to prepare his rambles for the press, for which he was so eager that he had got a prospectus of his intended work printed as he came along at Brecknock, and which he now handed about; and as it may justly be said to be an original, I send it you : " Speedily will be published, a Month's Excursion on Foot by an- Ex-Treasury Clerk, through the Six Counties of South Wales ; m which the cream of all the former tourists, whether pedestrian; equestrian, gleaners, giglers, eurrk-lers, or barooehcrs, is skimmed off, and a new itinerary syllabub whipped up; embellished with several etchings of scenes never before sub- mitted to the pej*cil ; plates of numerous relics of antiquity ; and an appendix, containing many scarce and va)o>able documents from authentic 155 huscript^ among which will be found a portrait of Henry VII. when Earl of Richmond, from an original done on the bottom of a trencher at a house in Cardiganshire, where he lay, on his way from Milford to Bos worth Field, with the point of a red-hot dagger by a Frenchman of the name of Brulebois, then in his retinue, and still shown with great pride by a descendant of that house, the present proprietor, who boasts to have some of the Tudor blood in his veins, from the adven- ture of that night, when it was shrewdly sus- pected that besides this coarse edition of himself in boards, the monarch left behind him a more finished one, hotpressed, in sheets ; together with an exact representation of the dagger, supposed to be one of the old Saxon seaxes, used in the mas- sacre of Stonehenge, the handle being of ivory, curiously wrought, ending in a female figure, and exactly agreeing with the account given of its form by the old British bards and chroniclers ; an engraving of a comb and mirror left by a mermaid surprised while sunning herself on a rock off the coast of Cardiganshire, and preserved by the son of the person who found them ; the comb made of a sort of mother of pearl, and the mirror of a substance like jet, but harder, of the highest po- lish, oval, and of the size of a battledore. " In the appendix, among many other rare articles, will be introduced an account of the first appearance of the sweating sickness, in a letter from Henry VII. to a merchant of the name of White, of Tenby, and communicated by a geft- 5 156 tleman of Bristol, whose ancestor, then an ap- prentice with the said Mr. White, copied it from the original, in French ; a treatise on the belief of Fetch Candles, by Jeremy Taylor, D. D. then Chaplain to Lord Carbury, at Golden Grove, in Carmarthenshire ; a manuscript found among a bundle of old books and papers at a peasant's house, in the neighbourhood of that noble man- sion, soon after the fire that consumed it, about the beginning of the last century; and a cir- cumstantial account of the burning of Bishop Ferrar, in Lammas Street, Carmarthen, by a by-stander : the whole to conclude with three itinerant bed soliloquies, in blank verse, while the authors linen was washing." Exulting in the fascination of such a bill of fare, and full of the golden visions of approaching authorship, the little Treasury tourist slipping into his half- dry great coat and boots, left us, saying, that he meant to visit the ruins of Glastpnbury that pight. He was no sooner under way thah Jones, who had for some time with difficulty restrained his spleen, broke out into a vehement exclamation against the swarm of modern tourists that infested Wales every summer, and with whose crude per- formances the press was made to groan every winter, from the pitiful, piddling pedestrian, the walking W r, up to the pompous, pragmatical, petulant, plagiarist pedestrian too, though on stilts, M n. The same slobbered tale is still repeated, and is always worse told by him that "157 'tells it last; till, like college furniture, too often thirded, it becomes too threadbare for credit. How can a man, without knowing the language of the country he professes to travel through* and hurrying between showers, see any thing of, or procure such information as ' to enable him to write about it, who scarce ever deviates from the main road in search of any thing, and all whose new matter is taken from ostlers or chamber- 'inaids? They may, indeed, serve up a miserable salmagundy from Leland, Speed, Camden, Tay- lor the water-poet, Drayton's Polyolbion, and old Churchyard. Half the book is filled with a detail of their own miseries ; the process of cooking eggs and bacon ; the account of a fe- male barber,- their invectives against a whole country because the landlord of a hedge-ale- house understands his own language better than theirs; because his wig did not well cover his ears; or his small-clothes were made of corderoy. Besides, a late quarto tourist had presumed to give from other performances, as history and fact, two or three passages which the getitleman who first gave them to the public told me had, in a playful sally of genius, been fabricated by him, as an experiment to see how easy it was to quiz the age, and become a successful literary impostor. He wished for a severe shower of criticism to brush away such insects, that multiply to the mis- leading all who wish for information and truth, jby adopting fraud and propagating rror. hoped he should yet live to see, for the honour of his own country, a native tourist spring up with the talents of a Pennant, an antiquary, a scholar, and a gentleman, who would undertake to ex- plore South Wales on the same plan as he did North Wales, and rescue it from insult and mis- representation. To his knowledge there were va- luable materials in the archives of many of the great houses of that part of the principality yet unsunned, but not inaccessible to a Welshman, properly introduced, and found competent to turn the treasures to account. " I think a Review," said one of our masquerad- ing friends, " conducted by gentlemen of fortune, independence, and learning, would be the means of reforming the press, and free it from the pros- titution it submits to now. I question much if this would not contribute more to the fostering genius than the Royal Institution, with all its boasted parade. In such an age, when new so- cieties gre hourly forming, from the Blue-stocking to the .^Black-leg club, that men of fashion ;aid talent cannot' have the virtue to lay the plan of an .association for the protection and advancement of literature, that would gain them immortal honour, jinstead of debasing themselves into stage-coach- men, or wasting their lives and fortunes in listen- ing to the rattle of the dice-box !" He said we were not happy in our private or public institutions, and instanced the Antiquarian the principle of which he was entirely deceived in, otherwise he never would have be- come a member of it. He was led to think that this society was formed of men all fond of anti- -quities, and though not all, perhaps, skilled alike in illustrating the suhjects that came before them, yet that it involved many who were equally capable as desirous of throwing a light on most of the curious articles that from time to time f us seemed disposed to abridge the truly Attic enter- tainment of the evening ; we therefore agreed to pass the night where we were. To our temperate circulation of the glass tea succeeded, and in th interval between tea and supper we mustered a little concert, as we found that one of the strangers played the violincello, and the other the violin, and had their instruments with them ; and you know that Jones plays most encbantingly on the flute. After supper we all sang in our turns : Signer Parvidoglio treated us with a most charming Ita- lian air; as did his companion with a French bac- chanal song, without an exception the most ex- quisitely characteristic song I ever heard, and to which, I think, Connoly, had he been present, who certainly is very fastidious, has too much taste not to allow merit. Jones gave sus his glo- rious Welsh hunting song; and I brought up the rear with your favourite Irish air, D'Carrol's Whim, to your own elegant lines written during our fishing party near Mullingar, which is never heard, poor as the vehicle is, without being en- cored. Our concert over, we sat down to a supper pro- portionably early to our dinner, and had an hour after to devote to conversation over oubnegus, without trespassing too far on the night ; and we all did our best to supply it with topics. Our new acquaintance in what they introduced displayed H 162 great acuteness and novelty : we talked of the old custom of drinking healths and giving toasts, as nearly exploded : " Why, then," says the counter- feit Italian, " there will he an end of drinking; for without some object, it is beastly to sit a whole evening over the bottle; whereas, let each glass be, as it were, a libation, the conviviality it pro- motes becomes the is the most national creature breathing: it was just on the stroke of twelve, and we all seemed dis- posed to retire, particularly our stranger compa- nions, who were obliged to be off early, to reach their place of destination to breakfast. The time we had been together had passed so much to our mutual satisfaction, that we parted with some degree of regret. My Cambrian friend, though as vivacious as any man in company, and with no somnolency near him, yet when the hour of rest is announced, is always prepared to sacrifice ta Morpheus, and tells me, that from the moment he lays his head upon the pillow, he is asleep, and seldom wakes till his usual hour of getting up. 167 This is a luxury, and a luxury it certainly must be ; you have often heard me say, I have no con- ception of it, having always been a bad sleeper ; don't wonder, then, that to finish my letter I have sat out my fire, and outwatched the waiter. Adieu ! and with anxious expectation of finding a packet from you at Stourton, where we propose being to- morrow night, believe me, Yours, &c. P. S. Jones, just as he was retiring, handed me the inclosed poem, the effect of the Muses' ges- tation on the cold summit of Dtmkery, while we were in the act of violating those primitive sepul- chres that crown it, and which I had promised to send you. THAT plaint again ! was it the howling blast ? Again that shadow ! 't was a cloud that pass'd ; Oh ! no -, for see I not a giant form Half hid in mists incumbent on the storm ? A more than human voice methinks I hear j Or broke the distant thunder on my ear ? " 'Tis not the ihunder on thy ear that breaks, It is the spirit of the mighty speaks j That, hov'ring round these death-devoted piles, Th f inactive sabbath of the grave beguiles. Then, wretch, forbear, suspend thy impious deeds, Know in each stroke no vulgar victim bleeds. The stated flux of many a thousand tides Has lash'd this sea-confining mountain's sides , And springs of thousand ages dews have shed To flower the heath that blooms around the dead. Since first upon this solitary waste, With mystia rites, my sacred urn was plac'd ; M 4 168 Fill'd by the Druids from th' extinguish'*! pyre, And virgin guardians of th' eternal fire. Barbarian ! yet till thine no hand profane, Scythian or Roman, Saxon or the Dane, Has dar'd the grave's dark secrets to betray, And give my dtist irrev'rently to day : E'er> they, all reeking from their bloody toil. And insolent with conquest, and with spoil, With rev'rence gaz'd on the stupendous mound, And trod with chilling awe this hallow'd ground. Yet callest thou thyself of British race ? Renounce the spurious tide j rather trace To the fell Saxon, or more mnrd'rous band Of fierce sea-kings that once o'erspread this land. Perhaps thou think'st I liv'd unknown to fame, A savage of these wilds, without a name : > Know, that to sway a sceptre was my boast, From Ex's fountain Co the Severn's coast : At Dunkery's rough base my palace rose, Whose site the still remaining rampart shows ; With thorns o'ergrown, and now become th* abode Of beasts obscene, the serpent and the toad ; Where circling mead united rival kings, And rival bards maintain'd the strife of strings : Above was seen the mountain's front of snow, And Homer's torrent waters rag'd below. Here o'er the boundless heath I drove my car, And practis'd in the chase the mimic war j For real war ne'er shook my peaceful throne, Safe in my people's guardian love alon r I saw the wandering rider of the mam, Yet never panted to enlarge my reign : The Tyrian I forbade not to explore My earth's rich bowels for the tempting ore j He gave in vain to my nndazzled view Gems that refracted rays of every hue j Yet breath'd I not a wish by impious trade, Which prompts mad man through seas of blood to wade, 169 In distant dimes to seek the flaming mine, Of peace destructive, where such baubles shine : lie saw his metal well supplied by stone, And polish'd iv'ry rivall'd by my bone ; Saw that the sea, my native factor, brought The jet and amber to my coasts unsought. No wonder then, that, curious to behold, All richly studded, and o'erlaid with gold, The stranger's gift, the dagger by my side> Slept in its scabbard useless and untried ; For ne'er in wrath my bended bow I drevr, Ne'er, wing'd with death, my flint-tipp'd arrow flew, Save when the branching victim was decreed, In aid of regal luxury, to bleed j Or Tghen a horde of that ferocious brood, Whose trade was robb'ry, and whose sport was blood, Dark ocean rovers, chanc'd to touch my land, And left their limbs to bleach along the strand j Sad monument ! to mark to distant times What certain vengeance waits such daring crimes ; To punish those who Freedom's sons provoke, Man lifts the arm, but Heaven directs the stroke. Freedom ! at thy dear mention I would fain Reanimate my clay, and live again. Thou first, best gift, the strongest proof of love To mortals ever granted from above ! How wert thou wont to glad my happy plains ! Where but the shadow of thy name remains ! And, ah ! I see with sorrow every day That e'en this shade is flitting fast away : And are there they be vengeance on them hurl'd 1 Who wish it fairly banish'd from the world ? Yes ! there's a monster, to whom hell gave birth, And let him loose to desolate the earth ; Who, trampling man, almost defies his God, Idol of Gaul, beneath whose iron rod The nations of the world are taught to bend,, Save Britain only, Britain to the end ' 170 Girt with her azure zone, may she disdain Basely to drag the tyrant's galling chain, And, firm in native energy, oppose Hers, and the worst of human- nature's foes ; Preserve her birthright to her latest breath, And leave the proud inheritance in death ! Oh ! that I could, to combat in her cause, Fate's chain unbinding, alter Nature's laws ! Oh ! that my ashes could to life awake, A separate form my every atom take ; As from the dragon's teeth when sown, of yore, The soil a sudden crop of warriors bore 3 Then would I urge thy violence to bare My dust prolific, nor entreat to spare ; Myself had then been foremost to have bless'd The thought that led to violate my restj Ample atonement wouldst thou then have made, And thus propitiate my offended shade. Though to my dust be miracles denied, Yet there less powerful virtues may reside : Then scatter wide my relics to the gale, That every breath the hero may inhale. In this wide amphitheatre on high, Beneath the grand pavilion of the sky, Here let remote posterity convene, (A cloud of power, I will invest the scene,) Here let my sons, and let their aged sires, Vet'rans from whose yet unextinguish'd fires May be deriv'd as much as needs of flame To light up glory in the youthful frame, Meet round this pile, and, as at holiest shrine, Their hands in pact inviolable twine ; And, more to sanctify the solemn rite, Oh ! may not only hands, but hearts unite, Till like one man become, and pledges g'rvert Of union firm, by dread appeals to Heaven, In one compatriot vow they shall agree To die like Britons, or continue free 1" 171 . Stourton, November 7, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, HAVJXG not-, started early from Piper's Inn, it was dark when, we alighted at the inn of this place; and as we were not a little fatigued by a journey the most unpleasant I ever had, in which the little we saw of the country was by snatches between the showers of snow ; we were not inclined to be very' fastidious as to our accom- modations, but this house seemed to indicate a competency' to -supply every comfort that hungry and fatigued travellers might require. A large party of people of fashion, who in their transit towards Bath had stopped to see. Stourhead, had taken an early dinner there, and were just gone, so there was an apology made for introducing us, into a smaller room, the best room being in too much disorder; the very thing that suited us, as, after what we" had undergone all clay, " snug was the word ;*' and snug we found every thing, to the utmost latitude of its meaning. Hearing that there was a great deal of company at Sir Richard Hoare's, we came- to a re- solution of not delivering our credentials from Holnicote, which we accepted conditionally, con- cluding that we should feel ourselves much more independent, and be freed from the toil and cere- mony that must naturally result from the intro- duction they were likely to procure. "- As our hasty repast on the road did not deserve 172 the name of dinner, we were both well disposed to order supper in good time ; and now have feasted sumptuously, and sufficiently early, so as to admit, without trespassing on the reasonable hours of rest, before we retire, of my giving you an account of our travels of this day, and of Jones passing an hour in his hortus siccus. It being rather late before we took our depar- ture from Piper's Inn, our transit through the country we passed was too rapid to allow of any digression from our road, or of any stopping. The little we saw of the country, as I have already hinted, was by snatches ; and that little, to eyes accustomed to the charming scenery of Wales, and that part of Somersetshire we had just vi- sited, so different in its aspect, so tame, and so monotonous, was very insipid indeed: a great deal of low lands all overflowed, and the little swells crowned with windmills ; so that if we had been Quixotes, we should not have wanted such giants to encounter with. The highest point that met our eye during a temporary suspension of the fog, was Glastonbury Tor, the only ancient part left of that once splendid monastery, a very con- spicuous object; but what is remarkable, thi* fragment only, as we were informed, belongs, or did lately belong, to Sir Richard Hoare ; so that he could boast of possessing two of the finest ob- servatories in the kingdom : this Tor, and Alfred's Tower, in his own grounds at Stourhead, both gommandipg a view of each other. To you, who have, I believe, all Dugdale's Mo-. 173 nasticon by heart, and of course must be well versed in the history of Glastonbury, it would be an insult should I attempt to compress the various legends I rmve read, and have heard from my fellow-traveller on the road, of its origin, to give any thing like consistency to which seems ex- tremely difficult. What is your opinion of the account given of the discovery of Arthur's grave ? Credulity may certainly be indulged to a weakness ; but is not the opposite quality too often carried to such lengths as to induce the possessors to question things as clear as the noon-day sun? It is no wonder that by many the finding the body of Ar- thur should be disputed, notwithstanding the plausible evidence that is adduced to prove that fact, when there are those, and, I believe, Hume among the number, who doubt that such a man ever existed. The Britons for many ages could not be persuaded but that he was still alive, especially as the manner of his death was not clearly ascer- tained (there being at that time a policy in giving a mysterious air to his disappearance, like that of Romulus), or the place of his interment known ; a circumstance referred to in a prophecy of Mer- lin, and in that curious fragment of Taliessin called the Grave of the Warriors : " The grave of the steed, the grave of the man of conflict, the grave of Gwgan with the ruddy sword, and the grave of Arthur, are mys- teries of the world." To confirm the hereditary prejudices of his 174 countrymen, long after his time, in supposing their favourite hero, if not immortal, at least not dead, my fellow-traveller has furnished from his note-book, half a dozen of which he always carr ries about with him, written in his clear small hand, containing the essence of every author Avho has treated of British history, some very curious documents, which you have below*. He says that there were two Arthurs, a real and a mythological character; the Arthur of romance and the Arthur of history, who are * '< Ipse verb Arthurus, juxta Merlin! vaticinium, dubium habet exitutn, quia utrurn vivat an mortuus fuerit, nemini cer- tum estimator esse," inquit Vincentius Belloracensjs. " Verissli.e quidem, addit Merlini interpres, Alanus Insulensts, sicut hodieque probat varia hominnm de morte ejus et vita opinio. Quod si naihi non credas, vade in Armoricum regnum, id est, in minorem Britannism, et praedica per plateas et vices, Arthuvum Britonem more caeterum mortuorum mortuum esse : et tune certe reipsa probabis, veram esse Merlini prophetiam, qua ait, Arthuri exitum dubium fore : si tamen immunis evadere inde potueris ; quin aut maledtctis audientium oppvimaris, aut certe lapidibus obruaris. Huuc enim Britones tantse famae tantaeque gloriae virum nulla ratione adduci possunt ut mortuum credant, praesertira cum in nullis annalibus inveniri possit scriptum, ubi- nam vel mortuus fuerit vel sepultus ; sed omnis, aut poene omnis ilia natio adhuc eum in insula Aballonis, quolethaliter vulneratus curatum deportatus est delitere, ac vivere opinantur. Quibus et illud Radulphi Nigri addere possumus. Quia Britannica historia de ejus morte nil certum tradiditj Britones eurn adhuc vivere delirant. Et Mathaei Florilegi quod sequitur : " Occultavit se rex moribundus ne casui tanto insultarerit inimici, amicique molestarentur. Unde, quoniam de morte Arthuri vel ejus sepultura nihil referunt historiae, gens Britonum ipsum tdriuc vivcre, pra magnitudine dilectionis, contendunt," 5 175 too often confounded, and hence all the incon- sistences which render the existence. of the latter doubted. The Silurian chief who was elected to the sovereignty of Britain, was not only a patron of the bards, hut said to have heen a bard him- self, and is recorded in one of the Triads, that curious British chronicle, by threes, as one of the irregular bards, with two others, the life of a warrior being incompatible with the profession of bardism, the basis of which was universal peace. Jones tells me that there is one poem preserved that has been ascribed to him, of which he has favoured me with the translation of two or three stanzas, though, he says, the spirit of the original must unavoidably evaporate by an attempt to transfuse it into a language too weak to follow the flight of the Gwentian rhapsody. You will find this animated fragment as a rider at the end. The subject of the poem appears to be a descrip- tion of his knights companions of the round table; and the poem has the reputation of being handed down hereditarily in a family near Caerleon, in Monmouthshire, where Arthur held his court, and which boasts to trace its lineage to that illustrious monarch's cupbearer. Jones transcribed it from a manuscript that seemed to have been in the pos- session of the great antiquary, Edward Lhwyd, by the marginal notes he had introduced in his own hand-writing. In pursuing Arthur I am got widely out of my course ; but had I continued in it, my progress would have been next to a blank ; as, after Glastonbury Tor, wh^t with fog and dark- 176 ness, we were not treated with the sight of any- thing six yards out of the road. The last thing that presented itself while daylight lasted was the park wall (keeping us company for a full mile) of Red Lynch, an old seat of the Earl of Ilchester, hut which, I understand, has not been regularly inhabited by the noble family it belongs to for several years, but is left at the mercy of two most destructive occupants, rat and dry rot, to get rid of which no process of ejectment has yet been discovered. After passing this, night shut in upon us, and all was terra incognita till we were unchaised at this comfortable inn, where neatness and quiet contend for the mastery. Jones, who is at another table, in the midst of his herbarium, has just reminded me of his Arthurian stanzas, so I m ust close my letter, to make room for this very curious fragment, or his nationality will be Yours, &c. * Spread be my board round as the hoop f of the firmament, and as ample as my heart, that there may be no first or last, for odious is distinc- tion where merit is equal. Who is he with his spear yet dripping with gore? It is MeurigJ, the eagle of Dyved, the Notes in Ed. LwhydCs Hand. * This clearly alludes to his famed round table. f- The words in the original signify the horizon. J Meurig was a fcegulus of Dyved, or Pembrokeshire, and 177 terror of the Saxons : he gave a banquet to the wolves at Cmyn Hiraeth . Woe be to him who meets him |n his wrath ! I have heard his shout ! T was the spimd of death ! His guards of Cemaes |j exulted J like lightning flashed their blades around him the signal of blood. They know no sheaths but tlje body of the foe. The whirlwind of war is hushed. A lion among roses is Meurig in peace ; rniJ4 as a sun- beam in spring, in the circling of the festal horn*, when the womb of the harp quickens at his touch, said to be one of the four who bore golden swords before Arthur at his coronation-feast. Most of the gentry of Cemaes trace their pedigrees to him. There is a place on the confines of Pembrokeshire of this name ; that is, the mountain of longing or desire, literally ; but here Hiraeth is used as desiderium in Latin sometimes for grief, as in that passage of Horace : " Quit denidcrio sit pudor aut modus.'" And on this spot I was shown hundreds of little hillocks, by tra- dition graves of those who fell in battle, it having been the scene of a sharp conflict between the Saxons and the Welsh, and 09 doubt the same that is here mentioned. || That district of Pembrokeshire where it is said he had his palace, at L\an Nyfer, and probably on that spot which after- wards the Normans occupied, and where the Lord Rhys was m durance. j - ' * The heroes of Cambria, like Homer's, were accustomed to solace themselves with music during their short intervals of rest from their martial labours. 178 or when lie conquers in the little battle f of the chequered board. Son of Urien J, thy place is here. In the strife of blood Owen and Meinig were inseparable;- twin lions! they fought side by side, and at the feast .-shall they be divided? Leset with foes, the barbed steel once reached Mcurig's breast ; Owen spread his shield before his wounded friend. The ^ iwyddelians saw his ravens j, and fled; he pur- sued, and the Cynhen ran red with blood. Urien, thy fame is with- tlie bard ; but Urien can never die whilst Owen lives. j- Out of lack, little, and cammawn, battle, sprang lack- gammon ; and there can be no doubt but the game here alluded to was chess ; a game that, I was told by my antiquarian friend, the Worshipful John Lewis, Esq. of Munarnawan, in Pem- brokeshire, was understood by the most unlettered peasants of Cemaes, as if inherited from the time of Meurig. To this gen- tleman's communications from a finely illuminated pedigree> that traces his family to Arthur's illustrious gueit, I am indebted for these notes. And the coat armour which Mr. Lewis bears, viz. aaure, a lion rampant in an orle of rose*, or, may solve the ex- pression used above, of a lion among roses* $ This was a prince of the northern Britons, who came to South Wales to the aid of the sons of Cunedda, to expel the Gwyddelians, and was recompensed with a portion of territory in Carmarthenshire; and some say he built Caercynhen Castle, a rery strong fortress on a high rock above the river Cynhen. -The cognisaunce of hi* shield was three ravens, the coat still borne by Mr. Rice, of Newton, and all the other families, who boast their descent from him. 179 Stourhead, Novembers, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, AFTER a night of delicious repose, in which I discharged all my arrear of sleep, I rose with, recruited spirits, and a mind in harmony with every thing around me. I had often heard of the inn at Stouihead being delightfully situ- ated, and well conducted ; but I found it exceed every expectation that could have been raised; for when I opened my windows in the morning, it was like magic, for the night being dark when we arrived, we could have formed no idea of the scene which presented itself in the morning, as it looks into the most charming part of the gardens and pleasure grounds, which come up to, and, as it were, mix with the village, consisting of the church, the inn, and a few neat houses, overrun with the climatis and the Chinese rose, then in rich bloom, inhabited by the steward and the mar- . . ried servants of Stourhead. After breakfast we debated how we were to commence our operations for the day, and it was determined to visit the house and its paintings, &c. first ; particularly as the weather, there hav- ing a good deal of snow fallen in the night, was unfavourable for viewing the pleasure-grounds. The mansion-house of Stourhead is built on an extensive lawn, having a very parkish appear- ance, with here and there a few line old trees of various sorts, intermixed with hawthorns of large 180 growth, and commands a most extensive, pic- turesque, and ricli view in front, charmingly di- versified, including several very delightful objects; such as the woods and broken grounds in the far- thest distance, round AVardoiir Castle ; in the se- cond, the cheerfnl variety of Knoylc, the hill of Shaftesbury, woods and tower of Fonthill ; and still nearer the eye, the finely undulating ridge crowned with the castfe of Mere, several fine co- nical hills ; the whole bounded on one side by the soft and sinuous outline of the downs terminating "there, and producing, by contrast with the richly 'wooded landscape they skirt, the most pleasing effect. The present mansion does not occupy the site of that once inhabited bv the Stourton fa- v mily, but another higher up on the lawn, better chosen, and was built anew after a design of ' Colin Campbell, the greatest architect of his day, which Was published in his Vilruvius fititannicus ; ' but two wings have within these few years been added by the present possessor, Sir Richard Hoare. The architecture is simple, and in the Italian style. Fe\v houses can boast of a hand- somer ground-floor, or four sach rooms as the Ciitrance-hnll, picture-gallery, library, and saloon. To avoid the inconvenience of a show-house, so ' that the family might not he liable to intrusion, or the visitors to disappointment, it has been di- ' vided into two compartments, separated, as it we're, by the entrance-hall and staircase. The di- vision to the right, dedicated to show and the public, contains all the most valuable original pic- 181 tures, &c. &c. ; that on the left, dedicated to study, convenience, and domestic comfort, con- tains only the inferior pictures. The whole col- lection merits a catalogue raisonnc, and I wish I was equal to the task; hut I shall not expose myself by affecting to speak of the masters, whose names, perhaps, I never heard of be- fore, as my acquaintance, or of the merits of their works, as if I was qualified to decide on them; to do which properly, requires ta- lents I am conscious that I do not possess, and cannot presume to challenge. However, as I know you are an amateur, having from your childhood lived among fine paintings, and a little of an artist too, I shall not pass them over totally in silence, but shall enumerate the most remark- able, and tell you, perhaps, how I was affected by some of them. The entrance-hall is appropriately hung witji family pictures. The next room, to the right, iu the show wing, is filled entirely with landscapes, among which three are particularly deserving of notice, viz. a landscape by Claude Lorrain; ano- ther by Gaspar Poussin ; and a night-scene by Rembrandt. There are also two fine pictures by Veniet; two by Wilson, whose delightful imita- tion of nature struck even mo ; how much mow. then Jones, whose admiration was heightened by nationality, and not very remote kindred; one by Marlow; two by Canaletti ; and a most charming one representing a morning scene, by our coun- n Gainsborough, This is calkd the cabinet- room, from a most sumptuous cabinet that occu- pies a recess on one side of it, that originally he- longed to Pope Sixtus V. and ornamented with his own portrait, and twenty others of the Peretti family, to which he was allied. Its structure, which is remarkahly elegant, involves every order and style of architecture, ' and among its superb decorations its variegated inlay displays specimens of all the richest marbles, and of all the known precious stones in the world, the diamond excepted* The festooned curtain of blue velvet, richly fringed with gold, issuing out of a gilt mitre over the centre of the arched recess, and falling in fine folds of drapery on each side, is disposed of with great taste and effect. In the ante-room leading to the gallery there is one most superb picture by Carlo Dolce, representing Herodias with John the Baptist's head on a charger : the face of the beautiful female figure is finely charac- teristic of the passions that might be supposed to divide her breast; vindictive exultation almost subdued by pity : the appearance of death in the head is beyond what I thought the power of co- lours could have produced ; and the execution of the whole picture is admirably delicate. Here is also a most spirited battle-piece by Ito'rgognone, and a dignified portrait of a cardinal by Doineni- chino, in his best manner. We now enter the noble apartment dedicated to the works of the Italian school; among which some may junfl^ be esteemed chef-d'ccuvres of the -art. The P-ye of the Sabines, by Nicolo Poussin, - is -esteemed the 183 finest work lie ever executed; and a smaller pic- ture by the same master, rep resenting Hercules between Virtue and Vice, does not yield to the larger for chastcness and correctness of design. Next to this picture is a Holy Family, by Fra Bartolomeo, a cotemporary of Raphael, who .flou- rished from the year 146'9 to 1517. A large alle- gorical picture by Carlo Maratti, in which his own portrait, as well as that of his patron, the Marquis Pallavicini, are introduced. The centre compartment of the room is filled by a very large and magnificent picture by Lodovico Cigoli, painted in the year 1605 ; the subject, the Adora- tion of the Magi ; it is in the highest preserva- tion, and its colours as vivid and brilliant as if painted yesterday. The next picture that attracts attention, and that most forcibly, is the finest representation I ever expect to see of a female suppliant, Cleopatra on her knees at the feet of the stern, phlegmatic, cold-blooded Augustus; a figure so fascinatingly beautiful, in an attitude so exquisitely touching, that if such was Cleopatra, who would not have sakl with Anthony, " All for Love, or the World well lost?" A Madona and Child, by (iuercino, has great claim on no- tice; as have a line alt ar-pirec, by Andrea del Sarto ; an old woman's head by Murillo ; the .por- trait of a girl in the character of St. Affncs. bv c* ^* ^ Titian; the Marriage of St. Catharine, by 13a- roccio; a Holy Family, by I^conardoda Vinci; the Flight into Kgypt, by Carlo Maratti ; and two little choice pictures by Schidoni. But the pic- K 4 tune that of all others most struck me represents the Prophet Elijah restoring the dead child to life, by Rembrandt; which for interest of feeling, truth of expression, and fine execution, may rival any work of the same master; and I think I may venture to challenge the whole school of painting to produce any thing superior to the character of the Prophet, as expressive of the confidence of faith and the fervour of prayer. Two large mo- flern pictures have been admitted into this gal- lery, and, for the credit of the artist who exe- cuted them, they do not disgrace their situation among their elders ; the subject of one is the Shipwrecked Sailor-boy, from an idea of Thom- son the poet ; the subject of the other the Death df the Dragon by Red-cross Knight, from Spenser ; both productions of the pencil of Mr. H. Thomp- son, of the Royal Academy. Repassing the hall you come to an aute-chani- Ber, lighted by a cupola, which separates it from the great room called the saloon, and includes the staircase, whose walls are hung round with very choice landscapes, over which drops a curtain of green silk, to preserve them from the sun. Be- yond this room, and entered by a door exactly facing that which leads to the hall, is. 4 most splendid mom, the saloon, near fifty feet long, if I tnight judge from my paces, and of propor- tionable width and height, used occasionally as a dining-parlour for large companies, and other great entertainments. The ceiling is richly and singularly ornamented; all its small 185 being thrown into perspective : it is furnished in every way with a style of magnificence to suit the character of the apartment. The pictures ate Tcry large, and were painted to fit the different pannels of the room. The chimney-piece, of the h'nest white marble, is uncommonly superb, as to design and execution ; but every tiling, to the doors, and the minutest article of furniture, is in true proportion. When the door of this room, which faces th* great window* at the end of it, happens to be open, as well as the opposite door of the hall, in which state I saw them, the effect is uncommonly striking, as you see at once the whole depth of the house, and gain a most pleasing view on either side, through the window of the saloon, of an open part of the grounds, studded with a few trees, terminating by' the obelisk, backed by noble woods, and in front of that richly diversified pro- spect already described. A great deal of the day was consumed, as we could not be said to go over our ground cursorily, for we were so fortunate as to join a lady and gentle- man who in their way to Bath had stopped that morning to see Stourhead. The gentleman seemed & great amateur and critic in pictures, and was very diffuse in his comments on the different mas- ters, seemingly with perfect knowledge of his subject; and to this accident, perhaps, you arc indebted for such an account of the pictures as I have given you. He gave us several curious anee- ilofces of the different painters, particularly those 186 f>f our own country; he said Wilson was ori- ginally.a portrait-painter, and that it was to Ca- jialetti at Venice, who first discovered his talent for landscape, and encouraged him to apply to that line, that we owe the boa^t of having pro- duced so celebrated an artist; and yet so low was the taste for painting in "Wilson's early time, that he heard from the only pupil that Wilson ever had, a Mr. Jones, that Cock the auctioneer, the Christie of that day, for one of Wilson's best pictures, that now would fetch five hundred pounds, could get no more (and thought that a great price) than ten pounds. Finding that the library, of which we had heard so much, was occupied by the learned Baronet the whole morning, the day having proved unfavour- able to the sports of the field, but that the follow- ing day it might be seen, we attended our con- noisseur companion and his lady to their chaise, and after traversing the lawn, then sprinkled with a flock of South-down sheep, from one lodge to the other, both possessing a character of the most ele- gant simplicity, we returned to our inn to order our dinner, meaning, while that was getting ready, to make use of the little daylight left, in a stroll not too distant; yet the weather not improving, but growing worse, we were obliged to limit our ope- rations of the day to what we had already seen, and reconcile ourselves to confinement for the rest of it within doors, as it began to snow. How- ever, we had this satisfaction, that our aceommo* dations were something more than comfortable ; 187 the res culinaria, were we even epicures, not ob- jectionable; and the wine most excellent; over which, after shutting out the storm, with the 'aid of a fine fire of Radstock coal, we truly enjoyed ourselves. We conversed on various topics; and among others, fetch-candles, ghosts, Welsh lan- guage, and literary impostors, had a share of dis- cussion. Having exhausted our stock of conver- sation, we hetook ourselves to' our journals and particular studies ; Jones, .to arrange his botanical acquisitions; and I, to examine my late purchase of the Shakespearian manuscripts, and finish the perusal of Sir Richard Hoare's Tour: through Ire- land, the companion of my travels. Among the fragments ascribed to Shakespeare, I have been much struck with several of the little poetical pieces, full of quaint and brilliant con- ceits, and smacking strongly of the great drama- tist's playful manner. But the most interesting portion of it consists of letters that passed be- tween him, Sir Christopher Hatton,- Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Southampton, Richard Sadlcir, Henry Cufte, &c. ; part of a journal, like most journals, carried on for a month together, then suspended during a period of four or five years ; and memoirs of his own time written by himself. Some of the items are uncommonly curious, as they give you not only the costume of the age he lived in, but let you into his private and domestic life, and the rudiments of his vast conception. As the volume professing itself to be a transcript of an old manuscript col- 18$ lection found in a htatc of such decay as to render it necessary, on account of a curious process- made use of, to sacrifice the original to the copy* is prefaced with a short history of its discovery, and the proofs of its authenticity ; I believe I shall, if ever I succeed in my Hit' If or dd ad ven- ture, and have leisure to arrange it, publish the whole ; yet in the mean time I will not so far tantalize you as not to treat you with a specimen of this curious farrago, but shall tack on to this letter a small sample of the prose and verse. Preparing to retire, I have closed the Irish Tour, and am induced, from a passage I have jiust been reading, to ask you if the disgraceful custom of taking vails, censured in it, is so generally pre- valent with you. Sir Richard Hoare says, " It has been justly remarked, and with credit to the higher class of society in Ireland, that it is easier for a stranger to find his way into their houses than out of them. Abolish the vale parting token which the mssniul servants in many houses expect, and Irish hospitality is complete." But I fear that it is not in Ireland alone that this most illiberal of all customs is found to obtain. Notwithstanding the abolition of it in many houses over England, to my knowledge, as it is not universal, the root of tlie evil remains, and, like all noxious growth, it known to spread apace. To get rid of it effec- tually, the whole kingdom must concur in a reso- lution to extirpate it, for, if but one fibre is left, it will again propagate. It is in vain for one spi- rited fanner to use every possible method tq rid 189 his land of moles, if his neighbours around are not equally attentive, and disposed to combat the evil ; and so it is with respect to vails ; the root- ing it out should hecome a national object, or the inconvenience will never he removed. The gen- tlemen of Norfolk once, at the great session, took it into consideration, and at that public season of meeting fell on such resolutions as freed the county from this odious tax on hospitality. Oh ! that all counties Would follow such a laudable example * ! My botanical companion, as well as myself, is more under the influence of the poppy than any other plant, at present ; so adieu for to-night, and believe me ever Yours, &c. Out of a Manuscript Collection of Pieces in Prose and Verse, said to be written by SHAKESPEARE to his Wife and others. WITH A RINGE IN FORME .OF A SERPENT, A GIFT JO HIS BELOVYD A3* A, tfftOM W. S. Withinn this goulden circlette's space, Thie yvorie fingers forra'd to cltppe, How manie tender vows have place, Seal'd att the altaur on roie lippe. i . * The placard they published was to this effect : " January ;, 1766. In pursuance of a regulation proposed and agreed to by the grand jury and principal gentlemen of the county of Nor- folk, the custom of giving vtrils to wrvsmts ceasei ia that county.'' Then as thie finger it shall presse, O ! bee its magicke not confined, And let this sacred hoope noe lesse Have force thie faithfull hart to binde. Nor though the serpent's forme it beare, Eiubk-me mie fond conceipt to sute, Dred thou a foe in ambushe theare To tempt thee to forbidden frute. The frute that Hymen in our reche By Heven's first commaund hath placed, Holy love, without a breche Of anie law.maie pluck and taste : Repeted taste and yett the joye Of such a taste will neaver cloie, So that oure.appetits wee bringe Withinn the Cumpass of this ringe. A LETTER INSCRIBED " TO MISTRESS JUDITH HATHE- WAY, WITH MIE IIAUTIE COMMENDATIONS." ' ' COOD COZEN JUDITH, I A3i out of necessitie to enact the part of secretaire to my. wife, or shee would have payd her owne dett ; for in trying to save a little robin from the tiger ja\ve of puss, .her foote slipped, and her righte waiste therebie putt out of joynte r which hath bin soe paynfull as to bring on a fcaver, and has left her dellicat frame verie weake and feeKle, wherefore I have takin her a countrie loging, in a hoxvse adjoyning the paddock of Sir Waulter Rawleigh, at Iselinton, where that great .man shut in, often regales himself with a pipe of 191 his new plant called tibacca, in a morning, whilst the whole -world is .too narrowe for his thought, whiche I hear helpeth it muche, and may be said for a ti'Ueth to enable him to drawe light from smoke. In an evnvnc: he sumtvmes condesends V O V to fumigate my rtirale arbourc withe it, and be- t\v r eene evrie blast makes ncwe discovries, and contrives ncwe settelmentes in mie l}'ttle globe. Mie Romeo and Julictt, partlie a child of yours, for in its cradle you had the fondlyng of it, is nowe oute of leding stryiigcs, and newlie. launched into the world, and will shortlie kiss your faire hand. I think mie Nurse must remynd you of on Id Debborah, at Charlecot ; I owne shee was mie moddel; and in mie Apotticary you will dis- cover ouid Gastrell, neerc the churche at Stratford ; but to make amendes for borrowing him for mie scene, I have got him sevrall preserved serpents, stuffed byrds, and other rare foraign productions, from the late circumnavigators, Thankes tor the brawnc, which younge Ben, \vhosuppd last nighte with us, commended hugelie, his stomach prooving he did not flater, and drank the helth of the provyder in a cupp of strong Stratford. You are a good soule for moistuing mie mul- berrie-tree this scorching wether, the which you mayc remembrc that I planted when last with you, rather too late, after the cuckow had sung on Anna's birth-daie, and I hope you maie live to gether berries from it. but not continew uuwcddid till then. Have you gott my littcl sonnett on planting it ? for if you have not, it is lost, like a thousand other scraps of mie pen. And soe poor Burton, my ould schoolmaster, is gone to that " bourne from which noe traviller returns :'' I fancy I still see him, when every Munday morning, as was constantlie his custome, lie gave a ncwe pointe to his spryggcs of byrch, growen blunted in the ser- .vice of the forgone week; a practise felt throw the whole schoole, from top to bottomc * You maie soonc look to hear from your crippled kinswoman, whose limm is muche restored by Sir Christopher Hatton's poultise ; soe fare ye well, and lett us live in your remembraunce, as you as- jsuredlie doe in that of your sinecure and lovyng- Cozen, WlLLiAM From my Log'uigc at Iselinton, June IZmo 155 . . . Stout-ton, November Q, ISO/,. MY i)AK CH^MtlXS, THK rosy-fingered morn opened my cur- tains, and presented me with a view illumined with sunshine, the snow that fell yesterday evening having been washed away by showers i.i the night, which had likewise mollified the air, and restored a parting farewell of summer. At this season of 193 the year I never opened my eyes on a more lovely or enchanting scene ; for, to say nothing of the autumnal, tints the remaining foliage wore, so abundantly scattered are the laurels and other evergreens over the grounds of Stourhead, that the withering hand of winter can scarcely be seen or felt. Wishing to avail ourselves of this gleam of sunshine, contrary to our usual habits, being both of us great loungers at breakfast, we hurried over that repast, having laid our plan so as to visit the remaining part of the house, agreeably to ap- pointment with the housekeeper, who shows it during her master's absence, this morning, and afterwards some of the home scenes of this charming place, which to see it as it deserves re- quires at least four or five days, and therefore we were resolved not to put ourselves under any restraint as to time. We walked up from the inn of the village, and entering the turretted gateway at the western lodge, we pursued the same approach to the house that we had taken before. On entering, we were soon attended by the gentlewoman whb shows it, and were admitted into that part of the mansion appropriated to the family, to study, and to domestic comforts. The first room you enter is a drawing-room, of the same dimensions with that containing the cabinet, having a similar re- cess, filled with an organ. It is hung round with very fine paintings, but of an inferior order to. those in the other wing; a door opens from it to a comfortably proportioned apartment, the usual dining-parlour, the space for the sideboard being 194 separated by columns. It is hung with highly- finished pictures in crayons ; and within this, two smaller hut elegant rooms, occupied hy young Mr. Hoarc ; the one as a library, and the other as a music-room : over the chimney-piece of the first there is a very fine painting of the young gentle- man when a child, playing, hy Sir Joshua Rey- nolds, in high preservation, and of which I think there has been a print. Another door from the drawing-room we left, opens to an antechamber connecting it with the library, a most magnificent room, and suitably furnished with chairs, tables, and carpet, a 1'antique, of the most classical pat- tern, having one end lighted by three noble win- dows, opening to a retired lawn, where you see pheasants and hares sporting together as familiarly as if they were domesticated. Over the lower tier of windows, and filling all the semicircular space above, is a grand display of painted glass, with figures as large as life, representing the school of Athens, and executed by Mr. Egginton, of Birmingham. The clebrated design from which it is taken was painted in fresco, by Raphael d' Urbino, on the wall of the Vatican palace at Rome ; and for composition and masterly execu- tion has ever been esteemed one of the finest pro- ductions of that great master's pencil. The right angle represents a groupe of an aged man showing- certain mathematical figures on a tablet, and ex- plaining them to four young men, who are attend- ing to him with the strongest signs of admiration. Bramante, the architect, is here portrayed in the character of Archimedes, and the hindmost figure 195 leaning over him is meant for Frederic Gonzago, Duke of Mantua, Iri the centre compartment are the characters of the following philosophers, viz. Pythagoras, Epictetus, Empedocles, and Terpander. The most conspicuous of these is Pythagoras, who is en- gaged with great eagerness in writing. Empedo- cles, looking over his book, and apparently taking notes from it; Terpander; and behind him the graceful figure in white of Francesco Maria del-la Rovere, Duke of Urbino, form the pyramid of this groupe. On the -other side, absorbed in contemplation, is Epictetus ; near the pedestal, and behind the head of Empedocles, is the beautiful profile of Aspasia. The other characters in this fine groupe are unknown. In the left angle is the figure of the cynic Dio- genes ; and in the back ground is the head of Ra- phael and his master, Pietro Perugino. On the whole, nothing can be more highly appropriate to the situation it here occupies, than the form and subject of the painting. The collection of books is extensive, and systematically arranged, under the heads of " Auctores Classici ;" " Antiquitates, Inscriptions, Numismata ;" " Foreign History ;" and " British Topography." The collection both of Italian and British topography is one of the completest in England. The chimney-piece, of white statuary marble, is a choice specimen of the powers of the chisel; and the figures of the Muses in the centre compartment of it are of the n V < most delicate workmanship. Over the fire-place is the fine portrait of Pietro Lando, Doge of Venice, in the year k>4.5, by Titian ; and on each side of it a series of most beautiful drawings, of buildings, pa.- geants, and processions at Venice, by Canaletti, The antechamber contains miscellaneous publica^ tions, and books of more general reference. I was informed (but this is a shocking anti-climax), that the basement-story, for its character, as in- volving every comfort and convenience, is as well worth seeing as any part of the house ; and that the Baronet's cellars are a model of perfection in that way, and are copiously furnished with the richest produce of the grape. Leaving the house, I fall into a walk leading towards the obelisk, which passed, I enter, through a gate, on a grassy terrace of the most velvety sward 1 ever trod, extending for some miles, fol- lowing the summit of a hill that bounds the vales which form the so much admired pleasure-ground;* of Stourhead. The surface of this noble terrace is as level and fine as if it was mowed, from being- kept constantly fed by a large flock of South-down sheep wandering over it ; and so clean, that it will not soil a lady's silk shoe ; in short, for a delight- ful promenade and ride in a carriage, or on horse- back, I may venture to say there is nothing to rival it in the kingdom. Its course is an easy iwecp, which in point of breadth expands and Contracts in different reaches. At the end of this sweeping line, at a point where it takes a sharper i, stands Alfred's Tower, a triangular build- 197 ing, erected by Henry Hoare, Esq. grandfather of the present Baronet, to commemorate the spot where it is supposed that Alfred, after he had long continued under a cloud, broke out and erected his standard successfully against the Danes ; and therefore to this day called King's Settlehill, in token of that event. It is built of brick, one hundred and sixty feet high, and from its top, which we ascended to, commands one of the most extensive views, perhaps, in England : we saw Glastonbury Tor, and into Wales, distinctly.. In a Gothic niche, over the door, is a statue of Alfred, and under it this inscription : Alfred the Great, A. D. 870, on this Summit Erected his Standard Against Danish Invaders. To him we owe the Origin of Juries, The Establishment of a Militia, The Creation of a Naval Force. Alfred, the Light of a benighted Age, Was a Philosopher and a Christian, The Father of his People, The Founder of the English Monarchy and Liberty. The character of Alfred I have ever contem- plated with admiration and astonishment. To think that in a short life, subject to hourly pain, harassed by formidable foes, and in the t\vilight of learning, he should have acquiied so much knowledge, and carried into execution so many pa- triotic plans, would almost exceed credibility, o 3 198 unless so indubitably attested. At approaching this illustrious monument, I felt an awful venera- tion, little short of sacred, and Jones, whose " Eye I saw in a fine frenzy rolling," gave vent to his raptures in the following IMPROMPTU. Whoe'er thou art who dar'st approach this pfle, And feelest not thy bosom all on flame, Boast as thou wilt alliance with this isle, Renounce thy title to a Briton's name : For 't is to him whose image meets thine eye, The Christian hero, Alfred, that we owe Freedom and right, than which beneath the sky Heaven has not richer blessings to bestow. HOARE thankful felt th* enthusiast patriot's fire, This sacred spot with awful reverence trod. And bade the votive fabric to aspire, An off 'ring to his country and his God : For when the trophy to the man was rais'd, 'T was Heaven, who lent him, in the end was prais'd. The terrace, that here takes an abrupt bend t the left, still continues in its dressed state for some distance farther on, though not so broad, but confined more like an avenue : vet I hear that 7 / the possessor of this fine place, whose taste and spirit keep pace with each other, has it. in con- templation to extend his ride in continuation of the terrace, over the summit of his boundary hills, for its whole length, so as to take in a circuit of nine or ten miles. So much time had been taken up in our visit to 155 the house in the morning, and so delighted we were to saunter where there was so much beauty to admire, in our way to, and round and up Al- fred's Tower, that we agreed to abridge our walk, as the shades of evening were advancing, and make for our inn the nearest road. Wherefore, retracing our steps so far, we turned down the vale in which the Stour rises, from its six foun- tains ; and not wishing to forestall the pleasure of examining the lower and most interesting part of that vale, where are concentrated the greatest at- tractions that tlie grounds of Stourhead can boast of, we turned up an oblique path, that brought us again out at the obelisk. Our dinner was well dressed, as usual, and our rambles had begot us an appetite that was not disposed to quarrel with the cook, and fitted us for enjoying our bottle of port by the Radstock blaze. Our conversation, as you may well suppose, chiefly turned on what we had seen ; \>ooks, pictures, and painters, claimed a share ; but Alfred's life we discussed cri- tically and minutely, in doing which Jones la- mented much that there was no translation of the Saxon Chronicle into English, with copious notes, and that the old Saxon language was not more studied ; by the help of that well understood, he said, numerous errors would be corrected, and contradictions reconciled in our history ; we should draw our information purer from the spring itself, than from the polluted streams at a dis- tance from the sourcp, He said he had always been puzzled to account for the Stourton amis, o 4 200 till he had heard, since his visit to this country, -what was its origin ; he was therefore highly gra- tified by seeing the spot that bears in nature what the Stourton family have represented on their es- cutcheon ; and this was a bearing very character- istic of their great command, and particularly of their rights in the fishery of the Stour, co-exten- sive with its run : this was literally tracing their consequence to its source ; few armorial cogni- zances have as much meaning as this, when once explained. He questioned if the Stourton crjst was not a pun, being a de-mi monk, and might have been assumed on a marriage of one of the Stour- tons with a Le Moine, by which their posses- sions were much increased; and the lady be- came half a monk only, her better half being then a Stourton. Jones having picked up this morning a rare plant he had been long in search of, is impatient to lay it out, by a pro- cess he makes use of, that though dried it will never appear shrivelled ; so "while the botanist is busy in his hortus skew, I will send you ano- ther extract from my Shakespeare's urifatling gar- land, viz. a few items from his journal, and a sample of his own Memoirs by himself. Adieu, and believe me Yours, &c. lOmo April 1595. Neere noondaye, and but juste stirringe, haveing tasted noe sleepe till after 201 sunrise, mie chambere and bcclde havcins: been ' r> greevouslie infested with fleas, which never weare remembred to swarme soe abundantlie before, the whole kingdome over. Sandie countreyes more overrunne with this little bloode sucking- varmin then others, which was confermed by that which mie noble and trulie liberal! patrone mie Lorde of Southamton, related yesterdaye morning of manie people within this moneth dying of a flea feaver neere the Erie of Kent's, att a smale vy liege called Sylveshoe, beeing a soyle composed of sande. Mie Lorde honored mee by callinge agen to- daye, and returned me mye tragedie of Richaide III. which he was pleased to speake of in straynes of high prayse; not that I have haulf fynished mie crooke-backed tirante. Flea-bitten was wonte to be a terme of lowe reproche, but it can be no longer accomted soe, for mie Lord of Southamton compjayned noe lesse than me of the plague of the past nighte; and I noted his linen, that it must goe with noe richer blazonrie then his poore fellowe-suffrers to the bucking ; and the flea, this litle chartered lybertine, as impudentlie runs his capers in the Qeen's Majestie's ruffe, as Mistress Shakspere's. 2,5mo Sept. 1590. The honorable goode ladic the Countesse of Pembrok hath condescended to requeste that I would sitt for mie pictore to a fo- rainer, one Signior Succaro, who loges at the back 202 ef Ely Pallacc. Her Majestie I have scene painted by him, withe my Lord Southamton, and it is a. trulic rare creacion. Out of Shakespeare s own Memoirs, by Himself Having an ernest desier to lerne forraine tonges, it was mie goode happ to have in mie fathere's howse an Ittalian, one Girolamo Albergi, tho he went bye the name of Francesco Manzini, a dier of woole ; but he was not what he wished to passe for ; he had the breedinge of a gcntil- man, and was a righte sounde scholer. It was he tought me the littel Italian I know, and rubbid up my Lattin ; we redd Bandello's No veils togi- ther, from the which I getherid some delliceous flowres to stick in mie dramattick poseys. He was nevew to Battisto Tibaldi, who made a transla- cion of the Greek poete, Homar, into Ittalian, h showed me a coppy of it givin him by hys kins- man, Ercolo Tibaldi. He tould me his uncle's witt was neaver so brylliaunt, and he neaver compoasid soe well as when he was officiatyng att the shryne of one of the foulest of all the Roman dieties, and had left a large vollume of reflexiones whilst emploied after this sorte, intituled, Petmeri digeriti. Altho he trusted me with muche, yet he smo- thered some secrettes whoose blazin was not to be to eares of fleshe and bloud, that dved withe hin\. 203 His whole storie known meethinkes would have bin a riche tyssew for the Muses. By an Italliun stansa tyed rownd withe a knott of awboin hayer found hanging att hys brest, hys misfortun, and thatt mysterie he studyed to throwe over it, was oweing to an erlie passione for a fayer mayden at Mantua, whiche urgid him to kill his rivalle in a duell. His knolege of dying woolle was nott that he was broughte upp to the trade, butt from his being deepe in all kindes of alkymy, wherewith he was wont to say he could produse gould owt of baser metalles, butt he would not increse the miseryes of mankynd. What would yong Benn have gy ven to have knowne hym ? Stourton, November 10, ISO/. MY DEAR CHARLES, A SHORT summer has again commenced, which, as you may imagine, contributes greatly to the fascination of this enchanting place, though in all weathers it has its charms; for in eveiy thing we see here, there is such a happy union of elegance and comfort, such a provision against tl>e season, that leaves most fine places for five months dreary and cheerless, as little of nature as .possible sacrificed to ostentation, and such an air of tranquillity over the whole, and so many happy 04 human faces occurring every where, and even the unreclaimed tenants of the wild mixing in your path, fearless and tame, as in Eden ere sin had entered; there is no satiety, and you fancy your- self in a better world. We hurried our favourite repast, and so impatient was Jones for starting, that he would not spare three minutes to hoil his second egg. Having settled our bill of fare for dinner, and given the necessary direction for the comforts of the evening, we sallied out with spirits unclouded as the sky, and as light as the at- mosphere then around us. We at first took the same road as on the preceding mornings, entering the turretted gateway, and falling into a walk on the left, that leads from the house to the gardens, through a grove of tall laurels, excluding all the landscape. Nearly at the end of this laurel-sheltered walk, a turn to the left brings you to a door that opens into the walled gardens occupying the side of a hill which faces the south, in a gradation of slopes. In the first range is the green-house, or conserva- tory, not overgrown, but well furnished with a choice assemblage of plants, including a large collection of heaths, arranged with great taste, and externally covered with the evergreen rose at that time in most luxuriant bloom. In the next are the hot-houses for grapes, peaches, nec- tarines, &c. seemingly in a most productive state. There are no pines. Having seen the gardens, we pursue a walk skirted on one side by some of the most picturesque veterans of the forest^ and on. the other by a beautiful lawn, lightly 2 205 lightly dotted with trees, into which the library opens, and over which, as I have already re- marked, you see every morning a hundred phea- sants, intermixed with hares, playing their gam- bols with a confidence and familiarity that is de- lightful. We then descend through a rich avenue of laurels overshaded by the most majestic forest trees of every sort and character, into the first vale. But in order to make my account intelli- gible, and for you to form a clearer estimate of the extent and variety of the grounds at S tour- head, you must know, that they comprise three vallies, nearly parallel, yet by most happy insinu- ations contracted and expanded so as to destroy any monotonous uniformity, and each of a character widelv differing from the other. The first vale v C* we now enter, as nearest the house, you may sup- pose, is more highly cultivated and decorated, more under the dominion of art, and more in full dress than the others ; for here chiefly are found the temples, grottos, and other adventitious orna- ments, yet all so happily disposed of, such elegant and classical models of art, or chaste imitations of nature, that no person of the smallest taste would wish them fewer. Every thing that partook of that fantastic order once too prevalent in the king- dom, and by which, lam told, this line place had been disfigured, such as pagodas, Chinese bridges, &c. have been long since swept away by the pre- sent gentleman, whose taste is too correct to ad- mit of such deformities existing. At the foot of the descent into this vale, a vralk receives you 206* that takes nearly a straight course on the margfa of the lake hefe covering the whole expanse of the vale. The water is most remarkably clear, and free from weeds, with its hanks finely fringed with laurel, aider, and the most grotesque growth of every kind ; and the hills on each side, richly clad with trees, fall with a gentle slope towards it* whilst its surface is enlivened by swans and abun- dance of wild fowls of various sorts, which through the season afford a regular supply for the table ; nor is the water below unpeopled, as it pro- duces carp, tench, and eels of an exquisite fla- vour, so that the Baronet's bill of fare never need lack fish, though those of the sea may not be pro- cured ; which I am told with him rarely happens, \ so providently and methodically is every part of his establishment conducted. Out of this walk a turn of a few yards brings us to the ferry, where there is a boat in summer to waft passengers over, but is shut up in a boat-house in winter, so that we were obliged to prosecute our walk on that side a considerable way, to enable us to get over by land, and connect us with the corresponding walk on the other side. This opposite walk, car- ried over a fine lawny projection from the woody hill above it, leads us into a covert of trees of the most wild and entangled appearance, and so, intermixed as to conceal the lake, and the en- trance into' the retreat buried beneath their dark shade, leaving imagination at work to picture what you are to encounter. In the midst of this matted umbrage a grotesque arch scarcely seen 207 till entered, admits you into a subterraneous* grotto, where the eye loses sight of every thing but ths interior, lighted faintly by an opening in its roof, and the ear hears nothing but the echo of your own steps, and the murmuring lapse of waters. The passage you enter at is rather narrow, but, soon expands into a wide circular space, whose sides and roof represent as nearly as possible a natural cavern, and on whose floor various kinds of pebbles are so xlisposed of as to work a curious mosaic. In a recess on ojie side, recumbent on a couch of white marble, lies asleep a Naiad, of ex- quisite workmanship, with water from behind streaming in every direction over the figure, and falling into a basin below, on whose margin, com- posed of a white marble tablet, is inscribed Pope's translation of the following Latin lines by Cardinal Bembo : Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis Dormio, dum placidae sentio murmur aquae : Parce precor, quisquis tangis cava marmora, somnum Rumpere, sive bibas, sive lavere, tace. Nymph of the grot, these sacred streams I keep,, And to the murmur of the water sleep j Oh ! spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave, And drink in silence, or in silence lave. J agree with Jones, that lave is a weak, if not an improper word, and very unworthy Pope; a pitiful shift for the sake of rhyme : I believe Pope was the only person who ever used lave as a verb neuter, a property that Johnson very servilely allows it on the strength of this solitary instance. 203 Opposite to the narrow passage leading out of tin* part of the grotto, in a rocky caverned recess, another fine figure to represent the river deity of the Stour, in white marble, forcibly arrests the at- tention in the midst of the most transparent water, sitting on a rude fragment of rock, pour- ing the silver stream from his urn. The whole of this grotto, with its accompaniments, both within and without, is so appropriate, that it is impos- sible to visit it without feeling disposed to pay a just tribute to the fine taste of the designer. .After emerjnnur from this Eo-erian retreat, and revisitino- O Cj O O the day, a beautiful path, under the noblest hang- ing woods, leads you by a picturesque Gothic cottage, -covered with various sorts of creepers, woodbines, and clcrnates ; and a little farther on, by a fountain trickling from a rocky aperture, through moss intermingled with wild flowers, to a gently swelling elevation, just above the lake crowned with that superb building the Pantheon, the exact model of the building of that name at Rome. This noble edifice is a rotundo, thirty-six feet in. diameter, lighted from the dome, and fur- nished with statues in niches all round it ; among which some of the principal are, an antique of Livia Augusta, in the character of Ceres ; a Flora ; and a Hercules, by Rvsbrack, the chef-d'oeuvre of his art. From the front of this building you have a most charming view, composed of an assem- blage of the chief beauties of the place : an am- phitheatre of rich wood, embosoming, on the oppo- site side of the lake, the beautiful temple of Flora, 209 whose portico you catch, the cross, the village and church, and the polished mirror of the lake (as it was, when we saw it, unruffled by a breath) reflecting the inverted landscape. After passing the Pantheon, and having nearly made the circuit of the lake, we came to and entered a grotesque rocky adit, conducting us by rude broken steps over the archway leading from the village to the hermit's cell. Nothing can be more characteristic of a hermitage than the profound seclusion of thU spot, from which you cannot hear 1 " The distant din the world can keep." Still ascending, we reach the temple of Apollo, or the Sun, after the model of that at Balbec, placed on the summit of the hill above the village. Here the view is very extensive, tak- ing in the whole of the gardens and grounds as far as Alfred's Tower, over the most ma- jestic gradation of wood that can be imagined. In our ascent we went above the road, but in our descent we pass under the road through a subterraneous passage that brings us, by a walk through picturesque spruce firs, rendered more so by the circumstance of the leading shoot having been destroyed, and an irregular leader formed*, to the much celebrated cross, * In Sir Richard Hoare's Tour through Ireland, page 313, you will find the mode made use of to produce, this effect, strongly recommended, and most satisfactorily illustrated by a reference to the very trees here noticed. P GIO so placed as to appear from the village, just without it, as a cross, that might originally have belonged to it ; but this exquisitely fine specimen of that species of building was brought from Bristol, and formerly stood near the centre of the four principal streets when it was first erected, in 1373, and afterwards adorned with the statues of several of the English Kings, benefactors to that city, prior and subsequent to its erection, viz. King John, Henry III. Edward III. and Edward IV. In the year 1633 it was taken down, enlarged, and raised higher, when four other statues were added, Henry VI. Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. It occupied its original site till the year 1733, when, to give more room to the streets at their confluence, it was taken down and removed to St. Augustin Street, College Green, where it stood till it was finally taken down and sold to Mr. Hoare, who thought so- highly of its merits as to be at the pains and ex- pense of bringing it stone by stone to Stourhead, notwithstanding the city of Bristol had disen- franchised this ancient member of their corpora- tion, and sent it packing with all its cargo of royalty, leaving on record a memorable instance of their taste, their gratitude, and their loyalty *. After minutely surveying this elegant Gothic relic, we turn to the left, and have an opportu- * Jones informs me that he had been told by a profound Welsh antiquary of a tradition existing in Pembrokeshire, that this cross was removed from Tenby, where it first stood, to Bristol. 211 nity of contrasting it with a very different style of architecture in the Temple of Flora, whose portico only had caught our eye from the opposite side. It bears in front this inscription : " Procul, O procul este profani." Near this place I was shown a fountain of the most translucent water I ever beheld, as well as of the finest taste, whence the drinking water of the house is supplied. In- deed, all the water here is very excellent, the soil that it passes through being sandy, acting as a filter. Here we closed our excursions for this day, and returned to our inn, where, after a most sumptuous mental feast, on the recollection of what we had seen, nature, that pander to the body, put in her claim for a dish of South-down mutton, to relish which nothing was wanting but the laver and the samphire of Milford. After our wine Jones treated me with some delicious music, having set up his flute for the first time since we have been here ; and feeling the inspiration of the muse, he has, in his usual rapid way, thrown off a song, set it to a favourite air, and sung it with great taste; and now, while, to atone for the insi- pidity of this letter (for I am very awkward at local description), J am preparing to copy another sample of my Shakespearian collection, the pro- duction of a lady bard, Anna Hatheway, after- wards Mrs. Shakespeare (for she too, it seems, had tasted of Helicon); Jones has promised me a copy of his song, both which I shall inclose ; so adieu, and believe me Yours, &c. p 2 212 TO HER OWXE LOVYNGE WILLIE SHAKSPERE. From mie throane in Willie's love, Whilest raoare than roialle state I proove, Circledd proude withe mirtle crowne, I onn Englaunde's queene looke downe. And proude thie Anna welle maie bee, For queenes themselves mighte envte mee, Whoo scarse in pallacis cann finde Mie Willie's fence, withe Willie's mynde. By formes forbidd to telle theire smarte, And of the canker ease the harte, Withe them, alas ! too ofte *t is scene The wooman sufferes for the queene. But, oh ! withe us, moare blest than thay, Heere happie nature hathe her swaye j Wee looke, we love, and, voyde of shame, As soone as kindledd owne the flame. ANNA HATHEWAY. Bye Avone's syde. SONG. A truce to all this idle schooling ! Preach musty precepts to the old j For, whilst yoa counsel, youth is cooling, Then keep it till *t is fairly cold. To scare my steps from Pleasure's bowers, I value not what greybeards say; That aspics lurk beneath the flowers, That dang'rous syrens line the way ; The ear that cautious prudence closes, The syren's incantation scorns j Nor shall I fear to pluck the roses If virtue wait to sheath the thorns. 13 MY DEAR CHARLES, Stourton, November 13, 1807. AFTER another day devoted to the lovely grounds of Stourhead, and another proof of the excellence of our inn, I sit down to recount yesterday's adventures. After breakfast, in com- pany with our landlord, who undertook to be our Cicerone, we took the road leading under the gro- tesque archway, over which we yesterday ascended to the hermitage and temple of the Sun, and turning to the right, followed a screen of laurels of the noblest growth I ever remember to have seen, till we came to a gate, which having passed, we kept to the left for the purpose of visiting the principal keeper's house, pleasantly situ- ated above a running water, and connected with the kennels, that are so disposed of on a declivity open to the south, as to admit of their being flooded, and so easily kept clean and wholesome. These were on each side of the house : one for the pointers, the autumn dogs ; and the other for the spaniels, the winter dogs. The dwelling-house over the door has this inscription : Venatorlbus atqt, amicis : and is decorated with prints representing the sports of the field, exhibiting \vithin and without every thing that can render it pictu- resque, comfortable, and appropriate ; a remark applicable to every thing appertaining to Stourhead, and that cannot fail to be made by all who see it. Hence by a gentle acclivity, under a beautifully wooded knoll, we take the path towards an ele- gant cottage fronting us, the residence of the cu- rate of the parish, than which no situation can be p 3 214 conceived more delightful ; with its courts, its garden, its orchard, and all its little elegant ap- pendages facing the sun, and looking On a view that can never tire. You no sooner pass this cot- tage than a scene grand and interesting bursts upon you, consisting of a voluminous, and, seen at that distance, an apparently connected, expanse of woods, only of different heights, as the summits they cover are more or less elevated, and the inter- mediate breaks wider or narrower ; but in descrip- tion as well as prospect, the pen, in giving an idea of a general view, must foreshorten no less than the pencil, otherwise the writer would be as un- intelligible as the draughtsman. In the centre of these rich inequalities rises a beautiful conical hill, having its sides clothed with pines of the most majestic character. Beyond and above these woods you catch the tower of Alfred, which of itself, were it unaccompanied by so many other striking objects, would give dignity to its situa- tion, had it been raised on the blasted heath. The road here gently falls into a vale, rendered very cheerful by several neat cottages, prettily sprin- kled over it. It for some time takes a straight direction, then, crossing the vale, winds round the base of the conical hill, under the awful shade of its pines, preparatory to your entering a most sequestered spot a little farther on, whence you suddenly fall on the convent, a building most judiciously placed, and constructed to produce the desired effect. Here one of the keepers lives. The principal room is hung round with prints of the different religious habits, and some old painty 215 ings, said to have been brought froniGlastoubury. In the windows is a great deal of ancient painted glass ; and in every part of its exterior as well as interior, the true monastic costume is preserved. To render the scene more sombre, the tree that here predominates is that species of fir which most truly harmonizes with it, whose branches feather down to the ground, and are so tiled as almost to exclude the light of day. Having strug- gled through this monastic gloom, and again felt the cheering influence of the sun, we meet with walks of a more cheerful character, taking various directions; and one of green turf, lightly over- arched with trees, and winding through an ex- panse of forest of eveiy growth, and which must form one of the most delightful summer rides or walks imaginable. However, we took the more open and frequented road, gradually ascending through the upper part of this valley, till it loses itself in the terrace, which again brings us to Alfred's tower, that august monument to the greatest of men ; for which, in this our second visit to it, we felt our respect rather increased than lessened, especially when contrasted with that proud, ostentatious turret seen from it, that unmeaningly crowns the summit of Fonthill. The prospect from the back of Alfred's tower, and immediately under it, looking over the vale of Bruton, is very rich, as we now saw it in all the splendour of a meridian sun. Hence by a lovely, circuitous, and diversified route through open and woody grounds we come to the third p 4 216 valley, which, though not so dressed as th two former, displays uncommon charms in dishabille,' and capable of being equally heightened and im- proved, unless it be " When unadorn'd adorn'd the most." The outermost hill that bounds it our host recom- mended us to cross, to explore a spot that of late many travellers who came to his house went to see ; since our initiation at Holnicote we had con- tracted the true antiquarian curiosity, and needed no great inducement to follow the directions of our Cicerone, who brought us to a common in- cluding several hundred acres, thickly covered with circular excavations of various depths and diameters, called Pen pits, adjoining the little church of Pen. The learned are divided in their conjectures as to their origin and use ; some suppos- ing them quarries, and others habitations. If quar- ries, this natural question results : What became of the stone? as there is no large city or town near, and certainly could not have been at the time they were worked, the whole country round being the great tract of Selwood Forest. Besides, can we suppose people so ignorant, even in the most sa- vage state, M'ere they quarries, as to prefer a per- pendicular to a horizontal adit for drawing out the stones? From our examination of them we don't hesitate to join those who contend for their having been the habitations of some of the earliest inhabitants ; for Jones ha$ furnished me with a note from Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, that tends strongly to confirm this most general 217 opinion, proving from Ephorus, that the Cimme- rians were a people undoubtedly of the same stock with our Cymry, that is, primitive inhabitants dwelling in subterraneous habitations, called ar- gillas; and it is a curious analogy in language, that argel in the British means a covert, or place covered over. At the bottom of several of those pits, querns have been found, stones that minis- tered to the primitive mode of triturating grain, before the invention of that complicated machine, a mill; and this, I think, is a strong presump- tion in favour of their having been habitations. Having ordered our dinner at half after four, our landlord begged leave to remind us of the time, which would only allow of our getting to the inn five minutes before our appointment with the cook ; so we hurried to return, with appetites grown keener by our long walk, in healthy pure air. A fine fire, as usual, awaited us, and preparations for dinner gave us no small pleasure. A piper, a fish of the gurnet species, and a fine beef-steak, removed by a pheasant, made up our bill of fare ; which gave relish to our bottle of port, the very best I ever tasted at an inn ; but at such an inn, so situated, I am surprised more people do not make parties to stay a day or two, instead of pay- ing hurrying visits, by which means they do not see half the beauties, or enjoy half the com- forts, of this place. In the evening we were too much fatigued for any thing but conversa- tion. Even botany on Jones's part, and the Shakespearian manuscripts on mine, could not tempt us out of our arm-chairs. I took some 218 pains to reason Jones about his prejudices with regard to fetch-candles and ghosts, which I fear, notwithstanding his strong mind on all other subjects, are too inveterate to be overcome. I tried him with reason ; I tried him with raillery but in vain ; and when I attempted to laugh him out of it, his country flew into his face, he asked me if I recollected what Johnson said, talking of ghosts, when in consequence of Miss Seward treating the subject with an incredulous smile, he with a solemn vehemence addressed her, " Yes, Madam, this is a question which after five thou- sand years is yet undecided ; a question whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most im- portant that ever can come before the human un- derstanding." After the discharge of this blun- derbuss I fired off no more of my popguns, but gave the discourse a new turn; I said I envied him his facility at writing short-hand, though I never could be brought to attempt learning it, from an idea that it would be more difficult to read it when written, than to write it at first. " Why," said he, " with my inquisitive mind, and but a bad memory, what should I have done without it ? you see by this means what treasures I have collected, and how little room they take ; I owe it all to short-hand : I was, like you, deter- red at first,, but there are no real difficulties ; they are all ideal. Had I the memory of a grand- aunt of mine, I slxmld hardly need the aid of such a science : I liave a sermon written by her from recollection, after she came home from 219 church, where she had been to hear the great Tillotson, and I have had the curiosity to collate the manuscript with the same sermon afterwards printed, and the difference was very trifling; per- haps owing to some alteration it had undergone from the author himself, to fit it for the press." He said lie had been told by his father, who well knew Wood fall, the printer of the Morning Chronicle, the first paper that professed to report the speeches of the House of Commons ; that he had seen him in the gallery of that house for three hours, with his cane-head to his mouth, never varying his posture, and never taking a note ; and yet the following day reporting the speeches without the loss of a single word, though, per- haps, he would call at the theatre in his way home to see a new farce, or a new performer, for his criticism ; and that his memory disposed of such various gleanings without the least confusion, or any apparent technical help. What an enviable talent ! From parliamentary reporters the transi- tion was easy to the House of Commons, the great assembly of the United Kingdom, squeezed into a room not half large enough to contain it ; which, when full, must be suffocatingly oppressive : ill lighted, and un wholesomely heated, with every thing so dingy about its appearance; as if it was meant for the rendezvous of conspirators, and not of the patriots and legislators of the land. How much the want of a senatorial habit is there felt ! not that it would absolutely confer on its wearer intellect, eloquence, or integrity, yet it must cer-. 220 tainly contribute to give to the house in general that dignity at least to the eye, which it never can assume in its present motley character of dress. Is it not to be wondered at that the graces of oratory are so little studied, or so little dis- played, as in England, and that it does not con- stitute a more essential part of education ; or, if it does, that the effect of it is rarely visible in the pulpit, at the bar, or in the senate? Great pains are taken to teach us to dance, that we may be better enabled to enter a room, make a bow, and play a thousand other monkey tricks ; but to adapt atti- tudes to speech, so as to give it greater powers of persuasion, has never yet been made a science. Indeed there has of late years a method been adopted at most schools of making boys spout parts of plays by way of introduction to oratory ; a most pernicious practice ; as, if it does not create in them (which I fear it too often does) a passion for the stage, and the vagabond life of a player, it gives them ever after a ranting, turgid, bombast manner of expression ; as distant from what I humbly conceive to be the true graces of eloquence as one pole from the other. "VVe both agreed in rejoicing at the visible decline of private theatricals, a sort of mania that had at one time been universally prevalent ; which led to more expense and more mischief in the families who favoured them than any other entertainment : and all for what? to see a play murdered : to say no- thing of the dangerous tendency it had to inflame the passions, and so corrupt the morals of the younger, and particularly the female, part of the dramatis persona. Thus over our tea, careless how far our colloquial wanderings led us, we pro- tracted the evening till the stroke of twelve re- minded us of the lapse of time and the dues of nature, which we hastened to discharge, there being few preparatory ceremonies to be attended to, as my companion had not his botanical apparatus to put by, or I my manuscripts, which I prize like the leaves of the Sibyl *. Breakfast waits, and so adieu ! P. S. I had almost forgot to tell you, that, chiefly owing to the light thrown on the Hwlfordd pedigree by what was communicated to me by the gentleman we casually met at Haverfordwest, and who afterwards joined us at Milford, I have nearly established my claim to the intestate's pro- perty, having just heard from my uncle to that effect ; and there is but one trifling point yet to be cleared up, and that I think I can easily do from documents I was so fortunate as to pick up at Minehead, from the papers of a great anti- quary there, whose ancestors for several genera- tions had been eminent attornies in that country, fo whom I was directed, who, tacked on to an old * J say Sibyl ; as Petit, a French physician, has endeavoured to preve, and not without strong arguments to support his as- sumption, that there never was but one Sibyl, and that her name was Herophile j that she was born at Erithncea, and died at Cuma ; and that the diversity of names was occasioned by her travelling from one place to another. marriage-settlement of one of the Arundels, about two hundred years ago, showed me a family chart involving the very link that was defective in the chain I had formed, and makes my title complete. Stourton, November Id, 180?. MV DEAR CHARLES, YESTERDAY heing Sunday we rested from our labours, contenting ourselves with a quiet re- capitulatory survey of the principal home scenes we had seen before, and a silent contemplation of the various beauties of nature and art, which for these last two or three days had engrossed our thoughts; after attending divine service at church, which afforded us a grateful opportunity of hearing- it performed to a most respectable congregation with proper devotion by the inhabitant of the beautiful cottage I noticed in a former letter, the curate of the parish, under the well-known literary character, Archdeacon Coxe, who is the rector, Uy the presentation of Sir Richard Hoare. The church is a neat Gothic building, but in point of archi- tecture, or monumental contents, it has no pecu- liar claim on the notice of the traveller or the an- tiquary ; but in a higher character, as the house of God, it is entitled to the praise and admiration of every one who, like us, may be so fortunate as to visit it on that day set apart for devotion, and may have an opportunity of witnessing the 4 223 proper manner in which it is kept, served, and attended, which will ever be the case while the head of the congregation sets so laudable an ex- ample of regularity in the discharge of his reli- gious duties. From repose such as we had not enjoyed for some time, procured by exercise less violent than usual, and minds tranquillized by the peaceful employments of the sabbath, we rose re* freshed, and prepared to encounter a fresh treat, that we were told we were likely to enjoy this day in our intended ramble. Though cold, it was bright and calm ; therefore hiring a couple of horses, we varied our amusement, and ascended the downs, where we rode in various directions for several miles, over the finest turf imaginable, breathing the purest air, and looking round us on a richly diversified country. Here the chalk hills end, and present, towards Stourhead, a most charmingly varied outline. Occupying an exten- sive and bold projection, we entered a large en- campment, strengthened by several lines of cir- cumvallation, in all probability Danish, as there is a covered way leading from it to a little valley on the left, called Sweyn Cwm, or, the Vale of Sweyn. The downs here are studded with nume- rous tumuli, of various forms and dimensions, most of which have been opened under the judi- cious eve of Sir Richard Hoare, the contents of V which, now preserved in a museum at Heytes- bury, have proved highly interesting, being of different ages ; some clearly of as remote anti- quity as the earliest population of the island, be- 224- fore the use of metal, when flint and bone sup- plied its place ; and others of a later, wherein weapons of iron and a mixed metal are found, probably Danish. It seems the learned Baronet has in contemplation a most splendid work of the ancient history of Wilts, from records that cannot falsify, for ages locked up, but lately discovered by the application of the spade and the pick-axe, without the help of an ostentatious tantalizing folio index ; older it is true, yet more accessible, often better preserved, and more intelligible than those in the Tower or the Augmentation Office, to get at which, though every British subject may of right claim to inspect them, I blush to say, that, even with the gold key in hand, one must frecjuently submit to more humiliating toil and encounter more dirt, than the barrow-pioneer in his subterraneous researches. This work, illus- trated from drawings of the various deposits found in the tumuli, is, I am told, in great for- wardness ; while to make it equal to its subject, no expense is spared, and facts are more minutely and judiciously investigated than they have ever been before, either by Stukely or Douglas. After surveying with a sort of reverence those monuments of our ancestors, we left the downs, descending to Mere, a little straggling town, with a ridge of hills to the south, on which formerly stood a castle, the remains of which, for the sake of the stones for building, have been perfectly ransacked ; so that nothing remains but the bold, 225 irregular site. The church is a respectable, digni- fied building. We wished much to have seen the Abbey at Fonthill, whose proud and lofty tower attracts the notice of the traveller ; but were told that no person was admitted unless the professed of the order, and particularly known to the abbot. Having; much of the day yet undisposed of, we extended our ride through pleasant lanes and vil- lages, to Silton, where we were told by the tree-en- thusiast we met at liridgeWater, there was a remark- able oak under which Judge Wyndham, in the time of Charles II. who in that village usually passed his vacation, used to sit and smoke his pipe. The situation of the place is charming ; most cheerful, and yet retired ; a retreat that must have been highly grateful to the venerable lawyer, after the din of courts, and being " in populous cities pent." The oak we visited with peculiar reverence. It was of immense size, but more striking from its picturesque form than its dimensions: perfectly hollow, with the greater part of its limbs decayed, showing on one side only symptoms of vegetable life. Inquiring of the villagers, we found that this was the Judge's principal country residence, and were shown his mansion, now a farm-house, not far from his favourite tree. He died on the cir- cuit, in his painful vocation, at a very advanced age, and was buried in the church of Silton, where we saw a beautiful monument in the chancel to commemorate him. His statue, erect in his robes, as Q 226 large as life, is of white marble, and of exquisite workmanship. After a very interesting excursion we returned to our inn about four o'clock, and just above Stourton pass a large farmhouse called Bonhomme, which had of old times, as I was here told (though I suspect the information to be unfounded), some connexion with the only establishment of that order in England, at Hedington, in Wiltshire ; for Jones, who is a walking library, and knowing that we were to touch at Stourton, had, during our sojourn at Ilolnicote, copied out of old Leland the little that relates to this country, furnishes me with the following ([notation, which is decisive of its origin : " There is on a hill, a little without Stourton, a grove, and yn it is a very praty place, caullyd Bonhomes, buildid of late by my Lorde of Stourton. Bonhome of Wiltshire, of the aun- cienter house of the Bonhomes there, is lord of it." There still exists a Romish chapel here, as in the neighbourhood are several of that persuasion, a remnant of the old dependants of the Lords Stourton. We again experienced all the comforts and independence of an inn evening, nor were the at- tractions of the table or the fireside inferior to those we acknowledged on former evenings. After dinner a packet of letters awaited me, and till the hour of repose I had them to digest and answer. Another letter from my uncle in- forms me, that all my Jhclfordd claims are allowed beyond the fear of any new opposition to them. I find the real property in Ireland is but small, 227 consisting of a few houses in the vilest part of your capital, near St. Patrick's, and one farm and a church-lease in the north of Ireland. The houses my uncle advises me as soon as possible to get rid of, being no\v more saleable than they will be a few years hence, as they have lately undergone thorough repair. The intestate being a specula- tive, sensible, observing man, seemed to foresee the commotion that took place a few years ago in your country, and wisely got rid of most of his little landed property, turning it all into money, to the amount of about ten thousand pounds, which, during his residence in North Wales, whi- ther he retired at the commencement of the troubles, through the medium of an eminent at- torney or two he formed an acquaintance with in that country, he vested in sound mortgages, now forming the bulk of the property. After meeting my uncle in London in the spring, I purpose vi- siting North Wales, as well on account of its pic- turesque beauties, as to examine my landed secu- rities ; so don't wonder yet if you find me turn hermit among the Snowdonian mountains. But by way of counterbalance to this favourable ac- count, calculated to raise my spirits, I hear from, another quarter what has an equal tendency to depress them. Health grows every hour more and more a stranger to my Eliza; and weighed against her happiness, riches, fame, and honour, are but a feather in the scale. Charles, Charles, pity my weakness ! I have touched on the " string that makes most harmony or discord in me," and its Q 2 vibration will not soon be over. Oh ! to forget her thrilling through my heart ! Adieu ! Stourton, November 14, 1807. MV Dl.AK aiAKI.F.S, HF.UF. we still are, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the season, fascinated by the superior charms of this lovely place, where the absence of summer is so happily supplied by crroves of evergreens, that winter cannot be felt. Yesterdav v. e partook of a treat, such as I had never been a guest at before. Hearing that it was in contemplation to open an im- mense tumulus with the popular name of Jack's Castle, in the vicinity of that memorable spot where Alfred's Tower rises, which had been always con- sidered to have been a beacon, and probably might have been made use of for that purpose several hundred years after its first erection ; I signified to the landlord, that if he thought there would be no impropriety in it, I should be happy to be present at this ceremony. He said he was well assured that nothing could be more gratifying to Sir Richard Hoare than the presence of any gentleman actuated by sucli curiosity ; adding, that he would, with our permission, as it were from himself, get our wishes made known. This produced a most polite invitation from the Baronet", and we hastened" to obey the summons. The men employed to open those primitive sepul- chre^, and who by almost constant experience are deeply skilled in the operation, had been early in the morning- to prepare: the work, which by twelve o'clock, when the company assembled, was in such a state of forwardness as to render every stroke of the pick-axe, and every motion of the shovel, highly critical and interesting, charcoal being 1 perceived, the never-failing 1 crite- rion of its having been sepulchral. On this symptom the gentleman who presided at this bu- siness, and under whose eye the solemn process was graduated, descended into the opening that had been made, and by some minute, and to us mystic observations, feeling as it were the pulse of the barrow, was justified in pronouncing that " the consummation devoutly to be wished" was at hand ; for no sooner had he pronounced this, than the cyst or factitious cavity, in which, in- stead of an urn, the ashes of the dead were depo- sited, was discovered, among which was found a stone hatchet, with a red blotch over part of it, as if it had been stained with blood, grown after a lapse of ages to look like red paint, time not having the power to efface it : this little weapon was highly finished. There was likewise a piece of a spear's head, of brass or mixed metal, the produce of countries more civilized, the effect of barter, for it hardly can be supposed that a people who had the means of fabricating such a weapon of metal would submit to the slow and tiresome process of resorting to stone and flint. The acquaintance we had formed did not en-<>-aHv, sordid villages I OO . ' O ever passed through. Here one of the coheiresses of Manasseh Bissett endowed with all her patrimony an hospital for female lepers, being herself afflicted with that dis- ease, and the first patient ; and to this day the place looks as if the leprosy had cleaved to it, and was not to be cleansed. The hospital was annexed to a priory founded there before by her father, over which presided a prior, with secular priests, a sort of spiritual physicians, to cleanse the le- prosy of the soul, being entitled by the founder most equivocally, procurators mulicrum. Of one of the priors Jones, from his universal vack-mtcum i)f oddities, has furnished me with a curious anec- dote he extracted from a manuscript in the Cot- tonian library, which referring to the prior of Maiden Bradley, says, " A none medler withe marrith women, but all withe madens the fairest could be gottyn. The pope considering his frailtye, gave him lycense to keep an hore, and hathe good writing (sub plumbo) to discharge his conscience." Such indulgences were a great 238 source of the papal revenue. Jones says he has seen the original parchment, containing an annual absolution of Clement VI. and a printed book called the Custom-house of Sin, with a regular table of rates for all crimes annexed. The best and the only thing worthy of being mentioned as an appendage to a great man's house, was the park, not large, but well stocked, and, I am told, productive of good venison. About four miles beyond this wretched place we enter the grounds of Longleat, which appear very extensive, and well wooded ; the house, oc- cupying the site, most probably, of the priory, like all the ancient religious establishments, lies too low for health, on the margin of a fine piece of water, flooding the vale. The mansion is an immense pile (I only speak as to its exterior, for our time would not allow of our looking within, could admission have been obtained) ; the planta- tions near the house are most of them young and thriving, but have too great a proportion of Scotch fir, that harmonizes with nothing else, producing a most funereal effect. Here still are to be seen the venerable ancestors of that species of pine in England the Weymouth ; so called after the title of their first planter. The first Thynne who settled here is called servant to the Lord Protector Somerset; I pre- sume his confidential secretarv ; but he seems in */ * the choice of his residence to have had a much better taste than his master, who chose to abide among the lepers ; nor if we judge from the wide 239 range of fois finely circumstanced property, was he less attentive to the quantity than the quality of his great master's donation ; for, taking the grounds of the present Longleat all together, there are very few finer places. In our way to War- minster, after emerging from the vale, we passed a new piece of water of great extent, which when the young plantations that surround it shall have arrived at a growth to make them orna- mental, will he a vast addition to the beauties of the grounds ; and by the time we had reached our inn, there was very little day left. Before we were fairly disengaged from our chaise, another drove up, and who should step out of it but our masked friends, whom we parted with at Piper's Inn ! They still preserved their disguise, accosted us with apparent satisfaction at this unexpected meeting, and mutual congratula- tions took place. They said they could not pass near that lovely place Stourhead, without tak- ing a look at it, though they had been in the habit of stopping there almost every year in the course of their excursions ; they talked of paying a visit to the Marquis of Bath, the Earl of Cork, and Orchardleigh ; a place that, if we had not seen it, they thought would amply repay us for the deviation of a few miles, as now involving- great beauties, and capable of infinitely more, which the present possessor with great taste is daily calling out ; yet the beauties of Orchard- leigh have their alloy, in its proximity to the ma- nufacturing towa of Fiome, notorious for poachers, 240 and principles ever at variance with aristocracy, by which it is perpetually infested. However, they should not start till the morning ; and in that case they hoped we would have no objection to uniting parties for the remainder of the evening. We had neither of us dined, therefore agreed to order something that would he soon provided, which was done accordingly. O v We had scarcely sat down before Jones's ac- quaintance, the clergyman, made his appearance. He was a formal, shy man, and appeared to have mixed but little with the world, the living world; but we all soon discovered that he had conversed much with the learned dead, and that lie was an excellent classical scholar, a character lie had fre- quently occasion to display in the course of the evening; After dinner, having given orders to brighten our fire, over a fresh bottle, our Attic entertain- ment commenced, and our conversation was unin- terruptedly supplied with new topics, in the dis- cussion of which we all took our parts. Our cle- rical guest talked much of the geoponics of the ancients, and oftcner cited Varro and Columella than Horace and Virgil; he said the Roman and Greek writers de re rn-xtica were too little known ; on which one of our masked acquaintance asked, if better known, would they be worth reading? a thing he much doubted : but the parson urged their curiosity as a recommendation. " That," replied Signor Parvidoglio, " would, I fear, be but a poor one : the curious in agriculture is a 241 solecism ; to be valued, it must be useful and prac- ticable ; tbere is no laying down general rules for agriculture ; they must be governed by climate and nature of the soil ; the treatment the Cam pagna of Rome requires would not suit the downs of Wiltshire. I am astonished," added he, " that Apicius de re culinaria has not been published, under the patronage of some professed Pic Nic Epicuri degrege, with notes by Sir W m C s and D r P IT, the latter of whom, when glutton- ously gormandizing, has had the grace to thank Heaven for such astonishing powers of enjoyment \ and enriched with various readings by the 13 ch of B ps ; the whole adapted to the meridian of the city, the taverns round St. James's, and the two universities ; as well as to rescue that noble science from the dull nostrums of Sir Kenelin Digbifs Closet unlocked, or the greasy recipes of Hannah Gtasse: the curious would be in character there, for the more we deviate in cookery from the natural and obvious mode, the more likely is it to be adopted ; and in this age, so much under the influence of fashion, while hourly innovations take place in dress, in furniture, in manners, in houses, equipages; nay, in religion, law, and physic ; there have been fewer changes rung on cookery within these twenty years than on any thing else; but what an accession to the curious in literature and cutting of throats would Poly- itnus's treatise on stratagems be, were Bonaparte, Sir S y'S th, or G -e II- r, to favour us with a commentary J" The parson finding that a page of Arthur Young would outweigh all his geoponical and georgical authors, with some degree of petulance, and as if he was still tingling from the critic lash, snarled out, " But it matters not what a man writes, whether curious or useful, if the currency of his work is to depend on the decision of a venal Re- view, that happens not to he in the pay of the publisher of the work reviewed. I remember, in- deed, in a periodical paper, called the British Press, there was a review carried on most ably for some time, in which the hand of a ma's tor, and the mind of an impartial judge, and (to use the phrase of the old report-books) of great cou- rage, were discernible. I was congratulating the nation on this, auspicious epoch, when suddenly the critical department was put a stop to, and the learned conductor's services dispensed with, merely because he was so unfortunate in the discharge of his duty as a public censor, to speak what he thought (and he seemed always to speak correctly) of a dull yet favourite work published by the editor of the very paper which he had been auxi- liary to." " I agree with you, Sir," observed Monsieur Shamnez, " that a most scandalous par- tiality, if not venality, is justly chargeable on our reviewers, and that no talents arc a security against the daggers of those mercenary assassins, who stab in the dark. In one respect it would be an improvement if the critics were to utter their censure with their real names; a. plan that I was told the other day, a well-known veteran in the 43 ranks of literature had in contemplation ; yet it would be to be feared that in a Review of this kind few works would undergo its decision but such as had too much merit to be in any danger of being disapproved or condemned ; for where is the man who in that case would be bold enough to deer)- to the teeth of the popular applause the inconsist- encies of W r S- tt's muse, and avow witli the sanction of his real name that a schoolboy ought to be whipped for showing up as an exer- cise such bad lines as those which preface his cantos of M n, whether we consider the sub- ject, the poetry, or the application ? v hat a pity it is that this literary assay is not lodged in the hands of such as would be above all temptation to abuse it; in the hands of men of rauk> for- tune, and real learning ! it is a grand national ob- ject : under such censors the press would assume its proper dignity ; the taste, the morals, ami the literature of the country would, could not fail to improve : and this," addressing himself to Jones and me, " seemed to be your opinion as well as ours when a similar remark was made during our meeting at Piper's Inn." " Oh ! that our nobi- lity and gentry," cried Jones, with his usual ani- mation, that brought the soul to his face, and tip- ped his tongue with fire, " would be actuated by sentiments worthy of their birth and character, worthy of men, that we might truly say, in every sense of the word, with the patriotic enthusiasm of Goldsmith, R 2 244 ' I see the lords of human kind pass by :' but as things are, we are certainly a reproach to our neighhours on the continent; we are not happy in any of our public institutions, neither in their principle nor their management; we hegin where we ought to leave off; like reading He- brew, we begin at the end : we have, *t is true, institutions without end, from the gulls of animal magnetism and the strokers of metallic tractors, to the idolatry of a cow's ulcered udder; and as to hospitals, and other charitable endowments, they are innumerable; and I expect to see an asylum soon opened for orphan lap-clogs, and an infirmary for sick monkies. You see subscriptions for all denominations of establishments fill, and the n; -mes of such in the list, were it not for the os- tentation and publicity of the roll, as would not, if it was done by stealth, give a penny to pluck a dying man from a ditch, or keep a poor unfor- tunate family, with sensibilities above their condi- tion, who cannot beg, from starving. Is there a charity set on foot for expatriated emigrants, though chiefly spies, or assassins in mask ; un- emancipated Catholics, or excommunicated nuns what is its origin and its progress ? Docs it spring from the only source that can j stify its creation or ensure its permanency ; from the silent and gradual operation of pity, acting on the benevo- lent and the rich, to prompt them to consider the wants and distresses of their fellow -creatures, and for their relief to * cast the superflux to them, 245 * to show the Heavens more just ?' No such thing. Some deep, designing, specious projector, with an imposing plausibilit}',and apparent disinterestedness, yet with an eye, should the establishment succeed, tp the housekeeper's, the secretary's, or the trea- surer's place, recommends the plan to some great man, whose ear he has gained by flattering ap- peals to his vanity and his pride, the only pass- ports to his favour and his purse. The train thus laid catches like wildfire, the avowed founder is puffed off in verse and prose, and the institution flames in the Red Look wy;h all its blaze of presi- dent, vice-presidents, council, and subordinate officers ; but analyse the establishment and the founder, and will they bear it ? The former, too often the crude conception of prejudice and self- interest, adopted by whim or party, if reducible, never reduced to system, and furnishing sup- port for such as, for aught the contributors to its funds know, (so little inquiry is made into the merits of the objects it professes to relieve), may have deserved a cart's tail, or to pound hemp in Bridewell ; the latter, as most frequently has been the case, one of those Proteus characters with ta- lents unhappily to match his versatility and his artifice, who, after broaching a variety of strange doctrines from the school, the pulpit, and the lec- ture-room ; at one time a furious demagogue ; at another as loud for monarchy ; now a revolutionist abroad, and now a political incendiary at home ; who, like an old courtezan, that, outliving all her charms and 'her passions, stiffens into prudery and R 3 246 piety, never misses church, and is shocked at a double entendre ; finding that he can neither sub- vert church or state, thinks it politic, by standing forth the champion of humanity, to patch up a tattered reputation, and smother principles which without being, fortunately for the world, com- bustible enough to blaze, betrayed themselves by the offensiveness of their smoke. Nay, I have got my doubts as to the utility of that charity called the Literary Fund, celebrated as it is by the elegant compositions of a Symmons or a Pye ; for whom does it profess to benefit ? Decayed authors ; words of very vague and equivocal import. Is it always inquired whether the persons appearing under this title have been authors of genius and merit, who by their writings have promoted the cause of virtue ; or, negatively good, have not as- sisted the cause of vice? Have they considered that many who would wish on such an occasion to class themselves among authors, have, only to expose themselves, deserted the plough or the cobler's stall, and, from mistaking or misapplying their talents, have done an injury to society ? I have myself known some rewarded who rather de- served reproof; men certainly of talents, but who hid them under a bushel ; who having just tanta- lised the world with a specimen of what they could do, and not loving exertion, console them- selves with this reflection : I need not work, my name is up, and I have the Literary Fund to resort to." Apologizing for the interruption, Signor Parvidoglio, with much humour, wished to know "47 if decayed ballad-singers were within the embrace of that charity ; for on the same principle that it is said there would be no thieves if there were no receivers, if there were no ballad-singers there would be no ballad-makers; so far their relation to authorship is established; and as accessaries are liable to a participation of punishments, why not of rewards ? But Jones, with more spirit from this trifling rest, continued, " Would it not be more to the honour of this nation to raise a fund for assisting and fostering infant and growing ge- nius, to enable it to stretch its wings, and soar to the heights of literature, by being properly buoyed up, and preventing its falling a prey to the rapa- cious trade, as the booksellers are called; and, perhaps, for bread prostituting itself by writing novels and political pamphlets, to corrupt the morals or foment a faction? There should be a committee to decide on Avorks of merit, to appor- tion premiums, and give the imprimatur to such as were worthy of publication. It is much nobler to prevent distress than to relieve it. What an humiliating thing it is to think that genius should be obliged to become a beggar at an age when the faculties are impaired! genius, that, if properly en- couraged at first, might have enabled the possessor to make a provision for age, after having by his talents contributed to the entertainment as well as the improvement of mankind." We were al\. unanimous in echoing back Jones's sentiments ; and the parson, who had been on the move for some time before, was ri vetted to hear him out, p. 4 245 who, with a rapture that I thought thequiet elements lie seemed composed of were not capable of feel- ing, exclaimed : " Ay, with genius so fostered, criticism under such control, and the harpy trade disarmed, the press would become a blessing, the treasures of ancient literature would be unlocked, and even geoponics, perhaps, would be more duly appreciated :" then ordering his horse, and pinning up his coat, he was impatient to be going. We pressed him to stay, but he said his lantern was lighted (it being moonlight), and his presence at home was materially necessary in the morning early, as he was going to give orders about sinking a well on the plan recommended by his Greek geoponical friend, Diophanes. However, we made him promise to meet us the following evening at Deptford Inn, and to accompany us to Stone- henge* After the ceremony of parting with our clerical guest was over, and we had resumed our seats, Jones observed, " There is a man who has just left us, the most fortunate creature alive, possessed, one would think, of every ingredient of happi- ness, but who, not content, though he set out in life without any expectations, with having succeeded to an affluent independence, is a prey to imaginary wants and imaginary pretensions, and, conse- quently, to real miseries. He succeeded early in life to a valuable college living, which luckily brought him into the neighbourhood of a gentle- man, a quondam college acquaintance, a bachelor; tvho dying soon after, left him his wholfi fortune.. 249 with a noble library, a fine collection of drawings and prints, and a curious cabinet of coins. These new possessions suddenly showered upon him, in- finitely exceeding his taste, his expenses, or his desires, became a source of new disquietude. His literature was too abstruse to be useful to the world or profitable to himself; and his independence only generated a sort of pride that aspired to at- tentions he had no claim on, and, from his re- cluse life, he had no chance of receiving ; yet the hermit, shrinking from observation, too modest to court notice, and too humble and primitive to figure away as a modern high churchman, thinks his lot hard to have been so overlooked, and that his temples have not felt the embra.ce of the mitre." The stroke of twelve now put us in mind of retiring, and we separated for the night. We rose early, and whilst I was winding up my journal, our masked friends, apologizing for their intrusion, stripped of noses, wigs, and all dis- guise, came to wish us a good morning, with the hope that some accident might again throw us into each other's company. Hearing I have half an hour yet to breakfast, Jones tyeing gone with the landlord of the inn to see a botanist a little way out of the town, and to inquire for a rare plant whose habitat is mentioned in this neigh- bourhood, I shall copy out a little poem of Shake- speare's, which, if it pleases you half as much ajs it has done me, you will thank me for inclosing. Adieu, &c. 50 TO TIIE PEERLLS3E ANNA, THE MAC, MITT !L OT MIE AFFECTIOXXES. Nott that mie native fieldes I leve, Swelles iu myne eie the scaulding tearc, Or biddes with s-.ghes mye bosom heave, * A wyse man's countrie 's everie wheare : Nott that I thus am rudelye torne f Farre from the muses' haunte I love, With manlie mynde this might be borne, Else wheare the muse might friendlie proove : But, ah ! with thyne mie vitall thredde So close is twysted, that to parte From thee, or -e'er the bridal bedde J Was scarselie tastid, breakes.mie harte. Oh ! would the fatall syster's steete Be streched to cutt her worke inn twayne, Wythelde whiche destynes me to feele That lyfe thus lenthen'd is butt payne. * In a letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach, as quoted in that valuable accession to the biography of this country, the Life of Milton, by Doctor Symmons, I remember an expression, echoed, as it were, from the great dramatist : " P atria est, ulicunque esl" f- This seems to have been written on his quitting the country in consequence of his juvenile adventure with a party of deer- stealers, as the little poem which follows in the collection from Ann^ clearly settles. + By this it appears that Shakespeare had but just been mar- ried when the deer-stealing frolic took place ; a circumstance to which, in all probability, we owe the noblest compositions of human genius. But yett a wbyle her sheares be stayde, For dicing I woold fayne reclyne On Anna's brest, and theare be layde Wbeare Anna's duste mote wedde withe myne. Deadfordlnn, November 17, 1807. MY DEAR CHARLES, BREAKFAST over at Warminster, and Jones made as happy by the acquisition of the plant he was in quest of as a barrow-opener can be in the discovery of a new relic, we lost no time to make for Hey tesbury, no great distance off, and were no sooner alighted than we called to see the museum, containing the contents of the different tumuli that have been opened for these ten years, under the patronage of Sir Richard Hoare, and the direction of Mr. Cunnington, who has the care and the management of it. This gentleman, who has all the enthusiasm that is necessary to excite the mind to a pursuit of this sort, appeared to be highly gratified by our visit, as well as the zeal we expressed at the prospect of a new epoch in antiquarian literature, from the splendid work Sir Richard Hoare had in contemplation. Nothing could be more curious and systematic than the ar- rangement of the museum : the contents of every tumulus were separate, and the articles so disposed as in the case of ornaments, such as beads, in such elegant knots and festoons, as to please the eye which looks to nothing farther. The story of several was so perfectly told by the relics they contained, that an epitaph could not have let us more into the light of the rank and character of the dead. In one drawer were displayed all th utensils employed to fabricate arrow-heads, other weapons and implements that required sharp points, there being various whetstones, of a coarse and a liner grit, with grooves in each, worn down by the use made of them ; together with bone in its wrought and unwrought state, evidently prov- ing it to have been the sepulchre of an artist, whose employ this was. In another we were shown some flint arrow-heads, very similar to those I saw at Milford, which had been dug out of a turbary in the island of Nantucket, which Mr. Cunning-ton accompanied with the history of the tumulus wherein they lay. About three feet from the apex of the barrow, in digging they came to the skeleton of a dog, and from the fine- ness of the bones supposed to be of the grey- hound kind ; but when they got to the level of the surrounding ground (where, in general, the interment is found), in the centre., on the an- cient sward then apparent, they came to a heap of ashes, mixed with some few particles of bone, not perfectly calcined, as is always the case, and surrounded by a wreath of stag's horns. In the middle of the ashes were discovered the flint ar- row-heads, and a curious pebble of a reddish co- lour, not casual, but certainly placed there with design, as in that chalk country a pebble of such a character and quality is never seen, probably some amulet. What a beautiful designation of the hunter's grave ! He told us they met with groups of tumuli sometimes of the prince or chieftain, and all his household, the prince's chiefly larger, but clearly characterized by the richness and sin- gularity of the ornaments and relics ; and many of the others as characteristic of the person whose ashes occupied them. They never find coin in any, which induces me to think that the greater part are prior to the era of mintage ; and seldom have found ornaments of gold. We saw a variety of urns from the height of t\vo feet to one, not twice as big as a thimble. The urns that held the remains of the dead were all rude pottery, and half baked ; but there are found often accom- panying skeletons, a vessel they have given the name of drinking cup to ; I presume from a sup- position, that it was filled with some fluid, a viati- cum for the dead, as it is always near the head of the skeleton, with its mouth up, and empty. The pottery of these smaller urns is much thinner, better baked, and more ornamented. When Sir Richard Hoare opens tumuli, a week is generally set apart for the operations, and the Baronet, he told us, is generally attended by a party of his friends ; their head-quarters are sometimes at Amesbury, sometimes at Everley, sometimes at Woodyeates Inn ; " and in such a company, gen- tlemen," said he, " you may well suppose the tjme passes with much festivity and good humour : though they may not all of them be as sanguine barrow-hunters as the learned Baronet, yet they are all amateurs in such a degree as to relish the 4 pursuit, and enjoy it. From the collision of great talents much wit must be elicited ; there- fore our entertainments on such occasions cannot fail to be well seasoned with it ; and, by way of confirmation, permit me to show you a little poem written at one of our parties by a gentleman who, in another part of the kingdom, is desirous, by a similar process on a smaller scale, of illustrating the antiquities of his country, and which, were I even justified in giving his name, would bring no discredit on his muse. To make the poem more intelligible," added he, " though I ought to blush when I own it, as the writer, I fear, has strained his compliment, I am the absent member referred to, being then, to my no small mortification, dis- abled by illness from attending ; but the compli- ment with which the poem closes, applied as it is, will not admit, of excess. But let the poetry speak for itself; and therefore permit me," said he, " to present you with a copy of it; the subject in it- self, though truly dignified, and thought so by the poet, is treated with so much characteristic pleasantry, as to induce those to read it who may have been in the habit of treating all the pursuits of the antiquary, particularly the opening of tu- muli, with indiscriminate ridicule, and stimulate such to digress a little from the high road of fashion, to examine the interesting deposit I have the honour of taking charge of, who, having seen it, may retire with a more just and favourable estimate of our labours, and acknowledge that too nwch praise cannot be bestowed on the. learned and liberal patron of them." I wish, Charles, you had been with us, as I am certain you would havq found it a rich treat ; we both allowed that we never passed a couple of hours more to our satis- faction. It was not only the things we saw, so totally new to us, that we were so much delighted with ; Mr. Cunnington's illustrative account of the different articles displayed very considerable powers of mind, as well as originality, and was conveyed in a language and a manner peculiarly his own, aud left us in admiration of acquirements so rarely met with in men of his rank and calling, who af- fected no other character than that of a respect- able tradesman. His knowledge was not confined to those primitive sepulchres whose contents he presided over, and move antiquarianism. As a na- turalist he had some claim on notice, having made large collections relating to mineralogy and fossils, and Jones allowed him more than superficial know- ledge in botany. On our acquainting him with our route by Stonehe.nge to Salisbury, he lamented much his not having it in his power to accom- pany us then to a spot which had occupied much of his thought, and which, often as he Jiad vi- sited it, he always saw with new delight ; but on our saying that we meant to stop that night at Deadford Inn, he promised to attend us the follow- ing morning if we would permit him, and would call on us by ten o'clock. He pressed us to take some refreshments, which we accepted, and after- wards stepped into the mail, then going by, there being places, that passed the inn we were to lodge at. Our company in the mail for the few miles we had to go were, a boatswain of a man of war and his wife, who had been at Bristol to see some relations, and were returning to Plymouth. The tar was a, man of a decent appearance, bore marks of his having served his country in the loss of an eye, and had no disposition to be taciturn ; so that, during Our short ride, the glory of the navy of England proved an inexhaustible source of conversation. He talked much of Nelson ; he said, as to naval tactics, he was at sea what Bonaparte is by land : he settled an engagement as men would play at chess ; he knew the moves and the chances, as far as a mortal could know them, and Heaven had so gifted him, that he seldom moved or calculated wrong. He was no less bold and decisive in the execution, than he was skilled in the forming of his plans. Who but he could have got us out of the scrape of Copenhagen ? it was neck or nothing. " I was in it all," cried he, " being on board Captain Foley's ship, as brave an officer as ever trod the quarter-deck ; and this Lord Nelson knew." One nautical anecdote followed another in rapid and uninterrupted succession till we were set down at Deadford Inn, where we found Jones's friend just alighted, not having yet unpinned the flaps of his coat. I call this place, meo periculo, Deadford, though usually spelt Deptford, being a village on the river Wily, the fords on which, from its s!o\vness of current, particularly at this 4 257 place, must have been of that character to entitk it to the epithet dead. While dinner was getting ready we had time to read the poem which Mr. Cunnington had pre- sented us with ; and Jones, who you know writes faster than any man I ever knew, and more legibly, undertook to copy it, that it might be inclosed to you, which I send, with all its notes, just as it was communicated to us. Our dinner over, and our wine and dessert of biscuits, apples, and wal- nuts being placed on a smaller table, we ap- proached the fire, and every thing around us seemed to wear an air of comfort, though it would not bear a comparison with that of Stourton. Our guest said he had been so fortunate as to find the water he had sought for after the mode recom- mended by an ancient geoponic writer, Paxamus\ and as to his reservoir for collecting it, he fol- lowed Diophanes, the Bithynian. But in the pre- paration of his mead, great as his veneration was for his old Greek friends, he preferred Queen Eli- zabeth's receipt for making it, as communicated by old Fuller, who says, the Queen, by reason of her Tudor blood, was very partial to it, and so must every one be who should experience, as he had done, the good effects of it on the constitu- tion. Warner, who wrote on the gout, is of opi- nion, that if no other liquor than whey was drank as a common beverage, and mead as the only wine, it would entirely eradicate this excruciating disorder. He told us he had some fifteen years Id, which to men of nice discriminating palates, 8 258 And used to rich foreign wines, he had passed off as the produce of a Sicilian grape. He followed the ancients only in one species, called Rhodo- mdites, which he brewed according to a prescrip- tion of Berytius, who lived in the time of Adrian. Jones wishing- to get rid of the geoponics, and yet pay his friend's learning a just compliment, observed, " That in reading those ancient authors, there must be great difficulty in finding out the true meaning of their technical terms."" That," replied the parson, " is the only difficulty, and many of the terms must ever remain unexplained." " Don't you think, then, Sir," said Jones, " that my namesake, Sir William Jones, gave proof of his profound knowledge of the Greek in his translation of the speeches of Isasus, the true chancery cases of that day?" " Certainly," said the parson, " it is a splendid monument of his learn- ing : as a scholar he was, indeed, a great man ; but I think he sacrificed too much to oriental lite- "rature and Hindoo mythology; had he devoted half the time he gave up to the oriental languages to that truly venerable, comprehensive, and, un- questionably, original language, the Welsh, he might have found means of unlocking treasures to which such studies would have supplied him with a key that in his hand might have done wonders ; but though he had several times, in my hearing (for we were at College the same time), confessed that he would exchange any two of his languages for the Welsh, yet he never could be brought to en- counter it, such were the prejudices he had con- 59 ceivcd against the practicability of acquiring a knowledge of it, yet I strongly suspect that pride had a share in this irresolution; for though his father was a Welshman born and bred, and had a name that of itself almost stamped him of that country, yet when, by the patronage of the Earl of Macclcsfield shown to his great abilities, he had arrived at a state of independence, and mixed with the higher circles, lie studiously avoided -being thought of a country that he must have conceived himself disgraced by, before he would take the pains he did to conceal his origin and lose sight of his kindred ; and this sort; of pitiful pride, this littleness of mind, in other respects the truly great man, his son was not free from ; who, with all his talents and boasted acquirements, that would confer lustre and dignity on any origin, yet was not possessed of philosophy enough not to be .disconcerted by any thing which glanced at the lowness of his own, I mean comparatively, be- cause he could not trace his pedigree to the nobles of the land, of whom Goldsmith says, ' A breath can make them, as a breath has made / but the honest yeomanry of Old Mona." You will perceive from the emphatical close of his sen- tence, that our guest is an ancient Briton, if not a native of the Druid island. I saw a kindred spirit mantling over Jones's countenance at the just censure passed on feelings so unworthy the great man referred to, which was ready to burst into compliment, when, having the start of him, and s 2 addressing myself to the parson, " I honour you, Sir, for your sentiments, and the exultation of pride with which you speak of your country ; a country to pride one's self on, from what I have seen and know of it, and of late I have had a considerable acquaintance with it ; for what spot on earth can be more beautifully diversified, pic- turesque, without too great a proportion of the barren and the sterile, rich on its surface, yet richer beneath, as its embowelled wealth is inex- haustible, with as much hospitality and patriotism as the Irish, without their capttousness and Qui- xotism (for you must allow the dear little island has too much of that), and as much learning as the Scotch, without their reserve, their harsh- ness, their pedantry and temporizing supple- ness to turn it to account ; to say nothing of its noble language and its literary trea- sures, every year unfolding, particularly its ethics, which, since I have been let into the light of by specimens of our friend Jones's trans- lation, I am truly astonished at, and am bold to pronounce superior to any thing handed down to us of that kind from the ancients, not even the~ golden verses of Pythagoras excepted, and which, I trust, will find a native Hieroclcs to diffuse their fame." " And you," said Jones, " have only had a sample of the moral triads ; they had their his- torical, poetical, and satirical triads, into which they found means of compressing more matter, sentiment, and point, than any human composi- tion of the same extent can boast of; for what . 261 can exceed the justness of thought and the com- prehensiveness of the following poetical triads ? Tair sail awen ; rhodd duvv, ymgais dyn, a damwain bywyd. The three foundations of genius ; the gift of God, man's exertion, and the chances of life. Tri phriv anhepgor awen ; llygad yn gweled anian, calon yn teimlaw, a glewder, a vaidd gyd- vyned ag anian. The three indispensable requisites of genius; an eye to see nature, a heart to feel nature, and bold- ness and perseverance to go along with nature. Tri harddwch cerdd; mawl heb druth, nwyv heb anlladrwydd, a dychan hb serthyd. The three ornaments of song ; praise without flattery, gaiety without licentiousness, and satire without vulgarity. " Then, for satire, what can be more pointed than the following, though rather ungallant ? Tri feth sydd ar wraig, a garo weled y cyntav nis anghar y ddau aralli, wyneb ei him mewn drych, cevyn ci gwr o bell, a gorddcrchwr yn ei gwely. There are three things, of which if a woman likes the first, she will have no dislike to the other two : to see her own face in a glass, her husband's back far off,, and a gallant in her bed. s S 262 " And who kno\vs what mines of such wealth are yet to be discovered, were private cabinets more liberally opened to research, and public li- bi\. ics better arranged ?" Jones, by his rapturous panegyric, had touched the chord that reached the very soul of his friend, routing all that was Briton in him, till his enthu- siasm knew no bounds, and even geoponics were forgotten. Then addressing himself to Jones, "I am happy," said he, " to find that, much as you have been out of it, you have not been seduced to forget your country, and that your Saxon com- panion, uncontaminated by that cockney narrow- ness of conception that induces half the English to suppose that Wales is an imperfect sort of crea- tion, has the virtue and the liberality to allow it all the merit it so justly is entitled to, Thus . ** richly endowed, beautified, protected, and bounded, it would seem as if Heaven had ordained Wales to be a sanctuary to 'preserve a genuine remnant of mankind." I know not how it is, Charles, with your coun- trymen and the Caledonians, but nationality has such an effect on these Welshmen, that not only their voice assumes a more dignified tone, and their language becoir.es more figurative, but with the en large n: en t of the mind their very forms seem to dilate. After this colloquy on stilts there was no bringing them down to the sermo pedestris, and I thought it cruel to provoke them with common topics, so I voted for retiring, that they might chew the cud on this. The morning lias risen 263 most auspiciously for; our Stonehengc excursion, and we are hurrying through all our business, to be prepared to attend the summons of our pilot of the downs, whom we expect every moment v therefore Jones is at his post, making breakfast, while his friend, by a recapitulation of some of the subjects which so interested them last night, makes the tea-brewer almost forget, if not ashamed of, the process employed in producing so unheroic a beverage, which the parson still hopes he shall live to see supplanted by toast and mead, after Queen Bess's receipt, in old Fuller, the only chance of restoring our primitive stamina, that the plant of China had destroyed. You know I am a furious breakfast-eater, and how I hate to be hurried at that most delicious of all repasts, though it lack the Cambrian hydromel, so strongly recommended by our clerical guest : so adieu till we get to Salisbury. P. S. I hope to be in London in three or four days: your letters then in future must be addressed to my Chambers. A BARROW-OPENING AT EVERLEY, AUTUMN 1805. Day has pal'd his gairish light, And yields his empire to the night j The spirits of the neighb'ring down Claim the season as their own, In murky mists as hov'ring round, They circle each his separate mound, s 4 264 And, with sad terrific yells, Mourn the;r violated cells. In this dark, this witching hour, First let us due libations pour j And be the awful tribute shed To reconcile the mighty dead j But watch, and see no eye profane Peep on us through the broken pane * j And that none with footsteps rude On our mysteries intrude : Then let the solemn rites begin, Bring the urns, the largest, in f j Round them all the smallest place, Like satellites their state to grace } And let the spear and dagger's pride Rival each other, side by side : Bring many a relic green as leek, Crusted with the verd antique j The drinking-cup, with nothing in't^ Arrow-heads of bone and flint j With the leaves of gold that shone On the Arch-druid's breast alone, When his office bade him go To cut the sacred mistletoe j Whetstones bring of every kind, From the coarse to the refin'd j Amulets of various form, Gifted to raise or lay the storm $ The talisman of power to steep The lid of care in balmy sleep j * This was literally the case, the window of the inn being in a shattered state. J- As a finale to tfce entertainment, on the last evening of our meeting, the different urns and other relics, the produce of our researches, were laid out with great taste on the board after dinner, as an antiquarian dessert. And the adder-stone, whose sway The spirits of the deep obey j In festoons then round them set Beads of amber and of jet j Next bring the smallest urn we have, Taken from a Druid's grave, Urn which we the thimble call, Than nest of humming-bird more small. With a precious balsam fill'd By magic's wondrous power distill'd, Essence of rarest gums and dews, Which Tydain *, parent of the muse, Frorr Def.-olani's distant shore To his much-lov'd Britain bore, Unchangeable in smell and taste, Not subject to corrupt or waste j The flame approaching, let it melt, And through the loop-hole of a celt Drop three drops into the fire, The mystic number we require ; Whence issuing a perfume is found To purify the space around, Of potency to guard from blights 'Gender'd in autumnal nights, And th' initiated to screen From every harm that lurks unseen j With many a flinty arrow-head, Found in the hunter's narrow bed, 'Bove which, companion of the chasa, His faithful dog had burial-place : Lastly, bring the relic known To be the rarest thing we own ; The kidney pebble, which appears Once, perhaps, a thousand years, * Tydain Tad Awen, the father of the muse, makes an illus- trious figure in the Welsh historical triads ; som* will have him to be the same with Taut or 266 For all the ills a sovereign cure Which sportsmen in their reins endure. Nothing now, I ween, remains But to chaunt old Arcol's strains, Which to hyrau the day he chose, When Abufy's mountain columns rose ; And, the stupendous labour o'er, His harp he vow'd to string no more ; In the chorus, got by heart, Let John and Stephen * bear a part : Illustrious barrow pioneers ! Who never yet have had their peers. But the notes seem flat and dull, The choir is not as usual full j Full how can the concert be, For Druid Mordred, where is he, At our solemnities whose pride And office still was to preside ? Whilst aguish vapours cloud his sight, Hating converse, hating light ; See ! where in his Hakpcn lower f He languishes away the hour, Dead to its furniture around, And rich mosaic on the ground. Great Mordred absent, who can tell How to pronounce the closing spell ? Which, supplied by him alone, Demands a more majestic tone j * The two labourers, father and son, who are constantly em- ployed on this work. f Alluding to a bower which the gentleman here alluded to, Mr. Cunnington, of Heytesbury, has so arranged, as to repre- sent on its floor, with different coloured pebbles, the plan of Abury, which was one of the grandest temples ever designed by man ; consisting of an immense circle of twenty-two acres, with an avenue on each sidp of a mile long, to figure a winged ser- fent. Hakpen is an oriental word signifying the serpent's head. 207 Then, till health rstore our friend, Abrupt our ceremonies end. Quick the relics then withdraw, With regret, but mix'd with awe. Or shrieks of troubled ghosts I hear ? Or is it fancy mocks my ear ? Rest, perturbed spirits, rest, Vanish and mingle with the bless'd ; Think no longer, that, your foes, We come to break your dread repose j But from motives pure we trust To scrape acquaintance with your dust; Those numerous piles of pious toil Man may level with the soil ; But with all the beauteous swells Which cover your sepulchral cells, Whatever changes be their lot, If swept away and clean forgot, This sacred, death-devoted plain In Crocker's * colours shall remain ; For know, the costly page that saves From chance of future spoil your graves, The splendid monument by Hoare Shall last till time shall be no more ! Stourton, November 19, ISO?. JIY DEAR CHARLES, AFTER an interval of two days I again resume my pen, to give you a cursory account of * A most ingenious draftsman, who attends Sir Richard Hoare on these occasions to make drawings of the contents of the tumuli, as well as tumuli themselves, for illustrating the learned Baronet's intended work, 26*8 the manner in which it has been employed, and of the things we have seen and heard. Our Cicerone from Heytesbury was punctual to a minute, and there was no delay on our parts to attend him. After congratulating us on the fineness of the day, he asked us how we meant to travel : we an- swered, in a post-chaise. " Why, then," said he, " Gentlemen, you must permit me to have the conduct of it as to its pace and its pauses, as I should wish to show you some things in the way, and introduce you to the principal object with the greatest effect ; therefore I must stipulate for re- gulating every stage of this excursion." For all the apparent mock solemnity couched under this mysterious caveat we were at a loss to account, yet we professed to submit ourselves entirely to his direction. On our road to Stonehenge our in- telligent guide showed us camps and ancient Bri- tish trackways, and made most judicious observa- tions on every thing he called our attention to ; but we had not got many miles before our con- ductor ordered a halt, insisting, for reasons he was certain we should hereafter approve of, that we should continue to proceed the remainder of the road with the blinds of our chaise un^; a mo- tion we most cheerfully complied with. Thus in darkness and durance we travelled rapidly for a few miles., till our captain, with a most majestic tone, issued the word of command, " Stop, down with the blinds ;" when, lo ! we found ourselves within the area of the gigantic peristyle of Stone- }-. ^ore. In every approach to this stupendous 269 pile, particularly that which we took, it is seen for some rriles before you reach it, and every eye will discover it too soon ; so that on this extended plain at such a distance it appears nothing, and by the time you are at it all astonishment ceases ; but when it bursts suddenly and all at once on the eye, as it did on ours, not familiarized by a gra- duated approximation, the effect is wonderful. I know not if the subject of Stonehenge has ever occupied your attention ; if it had, I think, I should have known it ; and, therefore, on the sup- position that you are still a stranger to the various opinions entertained of this majestic monument of antiquity, you may not think a summary of the whole tedious, as Jones's vade-mecum furnishes me with a brief account of the hypothesis of every writer who has touched upon it. The triads mention it as one of the three great works. Jeffrey of Monmouth ascribes the erection of it to Merlin, who, as he lived in the time of Au- relius Ambrosius, in Welsh Emrys, is called Merddin Emrys, to commemorate the Saxon treachery in the massacre of the British nobles there assembled, to meet Hengist (and the true Saxon name is Stonhengist). It seems the honour of having given a place first to these wonderful columns, is by many allowed to your country, and that they once stood on the Curragh of Kildare, but that Merlin by magic that he was supposed to be skilled in, removed them to the plain on which they now stand ; though Jones accounts for this without magic or the aid of the devil, 70 whom Merlin was said to have employed as his chief engineer on this occasion, by supposing Merlin or Merddin a o-reat mechanic for that n$>-e, ^7 O ' to have been sent to Ireland to survey your more ancient Stonehenge, and to have raised this on the model of it ; a work so colossal, and, for the rude era we may date it from, such an evidence of art and improvement in mechanism when compared with the massive simplicity of the colonnade of Abury, that it is no wonder they should resort to preternatural means to account for it. Camden considers it a piece of work such as Cicero calls insanam substructioiiem ; for says he, " There are erected in form of a crown, in three ranks or courses, one within another, certain mighty stones, whereof some are twenty -eight feet high and seven broad, on the heads of which others rest crosswise, with tenon and mortise, so that the whole frame seems to hang, and therefore Stonehang or henge." Without entering into much argument, he rather laments that the history of so curious a monument is so obscure ; adding, that in his time there were some of opinion that the stones were not natural, but an artificial com- position. Inigo Jones will have it to be a Roman temple of the Tuscan order, to the god Coelum or Terminus; a hypothesis which his son-in-law, Webb, has endeavoured to defend with a great deal of learning and ingenious sophistry. In pp^ position to him, Doctor Chaiiton as strenuously assigns it to the Danes, and endeavours to prove that it was built to amuse themselves during their 271 short-lived triumph, whilst Alfred was in conceal- ment. Sammes conceits it to have been the work of the Phoenicians. Aubrey contends for its having been a temple of the Druids long before the time of the Romans. Doctor Stukely follows him, but with all the visionariness that his fine 'fancy was capable of. Wood is nearly of the same opinion, but delivers himself more soberly in his treatise. A lecturer on the subject in 1792 will have it to be a vast theodolite for observing the motions of the heavenly bodies. A whimsical tract among Hearne's collections, entitled, " A Fool's Bolt soon shot at Stonage," maintains, but not with much humour, that it commemorates a bloody battle over the Belgre by the Gangick giants; whilst in a manuscript Jones saw with an uncle of his, in the Welsh language, said to be written by Humphrey Llwyd, evidently a piece of ingenious raillery, it is made out to be a play- place of the giant race, where the game was a sort of complicated cricket, and that the holes observ- able in soine of the stones were occasioned by the balls striking against them. That it was a grand conventional circle of the Britons there can be no doubt, and long subsequent to Abury and many other lesser works of that character to be found over England and Wales, as in its formation the pure principles of forming such circles, which would admit of no art, were in some degree aban- doned a proof that at this period probably Chris- tianity had begun to interfere with the institution. As to the stones, certainly not found near, some 278 contend that they are of various qualities and countries : granite, jasper, porphyry, and granu- lated quartz ; that the altar-stone is a species of porphyry, from the Black Mountain in South Wales ; and that others are from the Pyrenees and Finland, no such being found in this island ; but the majority are disposed to trace them all tor one family, to the Grey Wethers near Marlbo- rough, about thirty miles off, a tract of sloping ground still dotted with numerous stones appear- ing on the surface, the loose sandy soil in which these nuclei were bedded having in the course of ages been washed away ; and to corroborate this opinion, our intelligent Cicerone, Mr. Cunnington, who in his remarks on every thing he attempts to speak on is clear and convincing, showed us at inter- vals some of the stones that in the carriage to the spot had been dropped, exactly in the direction to the Grey Wethers. The day being bright and plea- sant, we traversed this vast plain in every direc- tion, were shown the cursus, which plainly tells its story to this day, on a scale to suit the magni- ficence of Stonehenge ; and groups of tumuli of all sizes, most of which had been opened uuder the inspection of Mr. Cunnington, who enter- tained us with a most interesting account of the discoveries made in them, and ingenious deduc- tions from their contents to ascertain their age and their comparative rank. There was a group called the Prophet barrows, which he said had been productive of a number of curious articles ; but being asked how they came to have that aj> 273 pollution, he informed us that the French pro- phets, a set of fanatic impostors in the early part of the last century, from these elevated mounds were used to deliver their oracular doctrines, which, wild as they were, like those of Joanna Southcote's at this day, had a large party to give them countenance. The group, he said, belonged to the Rev. Mr. Duke, an amateur antiquary, whom he had the pleasure of attending when they were explored ; a circumstance that had been made the subject of the same gentleman's muse, who recorded the Everley treat, in three sonnets, which though too flattering to him, yet as he con- sidered the little praise he was entitled to or re- ceived as part of the main compliment to the great patron of the undertaking, even when Sir Richard Hoare's name was not mentioned, he hoped he might be permitted to refer to with- out the charge of any unbecoming vanity, and request our acceptance of, to commemorate this clay's excursion, which he had the honour of conducting; and as I kno\v you are as fond of poetry as of the subject of the specimen in ques- tion, I send you the sonnets, which, I agree with Jones, have a great deal of spirit, and perhaps more so from being bastards, for they are stamped with illegitimacy. I am told that your Curragh of Kildare has some kindred features with this awful plain, and that, though you have been robbed of your Stone- henge, your tumuli still remain, and examined, if r" 274 at all, very partially and immethodically. May it be reserved for you to illustrate this venerable na- tional record, and by so doing throw a light on your early history. I assure you I have seen and heard so much of those primitive sepulchres, that, had I your fortune, there is no pursuit I should af- fect with more avidity. . Having consumed the day in owr rambles, we took up our quarters for the night at Amesbury, a town on the skirts of the downs. Here is an old mansion in a very ruinous state, formerly the favourite retreat of the late Duke and Duchess of Queensberry - % and in the groves that embosom it were once heard the melodious strains of Prior and Gay, " When Kitty was beautiful and young j** Adhere now only " The moping owl does to the moon complain/' *. The house, I believe, has never been inhabited since the Duchess's time, and the manor annexed to it is rented for five hundred pounds per annum by Sir James Mansfield,. Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, to supply him with game; but chiefly for the sport of coursing, which he is pas- sionately fond of, and where he runs down hares with as much eagerness as lie once did chancery causes, though the suits here have a quicker end. The old Judge is at the head of a coursing cluU which meets here in autuinn annually for a week, L * *A~r* /<~4*+~ &**. A & -*^&&& l*- A- during which time all the members in their turns 4 make and are made examples of-" a favourite ex- pression among the Greyhound Hunt. The inn at Stourhead made us fastidious as to GUI' accommodations; and being the scale we applied to every house we stopped at, no wonder that so few came up to the standard ; yet in the present case, the whole day in keen air on the downs liad given us an appetite for food and fire, and, so there was a sufficiency of both, w r e were indifferent as to the cookery or the colliery. Our evening, it is true, wanted t\\z sal Atticum of our masked friends, but it had its competent seasoning of the it file and the Juice. In the recapitulation of our day's adventures Mr. Cunninsrton convinced us that he O was no superficial antiquary, but was a man of strong understanding and exquisite sensibi- lity. Jones's clerical friend gave us several anecdotes of the late Duchess of Queensberry, whom he represented to the last as retaining traces of great beauty, which her strange manner of dress, in spite of all fashion, and calculated to produce an ugly disguise, and even age, could not subdue ; and if the lustre of her eyes in the last year of life was remarkable, what must it have been at the age when Prior in his beautiful song com- pared her to Phaeton, borrowinghermamma's chariot for a day to set the world on fire ! He said that long after, at a time when their fire might be sup- posed to be abated, there Was a story current of a carter with a pipe in his mouth happening to pass T 2 376 by her carriage tvith the Duchess in it as it stopped at a silk-mercer's, and struck with her. beauty and the irresistible brilliancy of her eyes, begged the favour of lighting his pipe at them a compliment she was always proud of referring to when her admirers used to flatter, saying, That's nothing to the carter. " And pray, Sir," said I, " do you think that any lady possessed of her great understanding could have been gratified by such hyperbolical adulation?" " Yes, Sir, I really do think it ; Solon's TVM^L f that fine fabric was sacrificed to the fantastic frippery of modern designs. We ordered an early dinner, and while that was getting ready we paid a tantalizing visit to that splendid monument of Bishop Poore's spirit and taste, the so much justly celebrated cathedral, a model of the purest Gothic, till the late innova- tions had destroyed the consistent harmony of its parts ; but our examination of it was too hasty to please ourselves, and therefore I shall not attempt any thing by way of description, for we could scarcely give ourselves an hour to see what, to do it justice, demands a day at least. In <5ur way back to the inn we secured places in the mail for that evening, and had only time to hurry our dinner before we were summoned to the coach, which landed us in London about nine o'clock the following morning: I have occasionally found this mode of conveyance productive of great entertainment and great variety of charac- ters ; but in this instance I found an exception, our companions for the night being perfectly un- social: the one a Quaker, by his demureness and dress, whom the spirit never once moved to utter a, syllable, not permitting his rigid stiffness to relax intp a yea or nay ; the other an Italian, with the looks of an hereditary assassin, and a stiletto in every feature, who was as silent as the Quaker, but whose countenance spoke more, I fear, than his tongue could dare to utter. I learned that he was confidential valet to a great man : what a re- ! to think of preferring a set of foreign mis- 284 creants to our own countrymen, and perhaps by so doing nourishing vipers in our bosom. I won- der, with such a pack of wretches, rapacious and vindictive, always about their persons, that our men of fashion are not oftener doomed to feel the midnight dagger or the slow-consuming poison ; but it is a depravity, that, before it is corrected, bids fair to be severely punished. Jones, with his command of sleep, escaped from the misery of this silence and confinement that I was awake to all night; while my constant employment was to ven- tilate the coach every five minutes, and purify the air, contaminated by the rocambole breath of the Italian. At my chambers your welcome packet greeted me. It gives me infinite pleasure to find that my communications from the Carmarthen manuscript have been so acceptable, and that Conolly is of the same opinion with you as to pub- lishing the whole, which, from looking more into the contents of my purchase, will make a hand- some modern octavo, what with the Shakespearian farrago, the prophecies, and two or three whimsi- cal scraps of more recent date, probably collected by the person who last owned the book. I shall therefore avoid giving the chance of publicity to more of my ancient treasures, and yot I cannot forbear treating you with* a specimen of the pro- .phecies and their notes variorum, which I shall tack on to my next, having already. pledged my- $elf in this to give you the antiquarian sonnets I have referred to, and which Jones at another table is now copying io be inclosed. It may be somt 285 time before you hear from me again, as a letter from my uncle acquaints me with his having left town for Hampshire, where he has engaged to pass his Christinas at a relation's, and has requested me to follow him without delay ; so that to-mor- row I shall again box myself in a coach,, and Jones proposes a visit to Bury, where I suspect there is a magnet of very attractive power, that is likely to rescue him from celibacy. I have heard nothing of late from a certain quarter, and I. al- most dread to inquire. Adieu, my dear Charles, and let me live in your rern era b ranee. THREE SONNETS TO MR. CUNXINGTOX, TO WHOM THE WORLD IS INDEBTED, UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF SIR RICHARD HOARE, FOR DISCOVERIES THAT CANNOT FAl TO THROW NEW LIGHT OX THE PRIMEVAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN. AT MEETING HIM ON SALISBURY PLAIN. I. O THOU, on whom each antiquarian eye Is turn'd, as when the mariner from far Stretches his aching vision to descry Through Night's dark vault some tutelary star, Benighted long I hail thee as the day That bids the wanderer all his fears dismiss 5 What joy to meet thee, pilot of my way, And meet in such a latitude as this, Where o'er the boundless ocean of a plain To steer the self-same course that thou hast been, Is ever safe, as in the South Sea main Wherever Cook's adventurous track is seen j For, till thy time unknown, 't is thine to boast To have discover'^ well this curious coast. 28f5 O>T OPENING THE PROPHET BARROWS. II. Hither were wont mad prophets to repair For facts unborn to search Time's mystic womb. And vent their impious ravings to the air Imposture all ! who dares to pierce the gloom ? Fallacious ray allied to error found, No ignis fatuus leads our steps astray; Fearless we tread, though death's deep night surround, Where'er thy polar star directs the way. The rod augurial in the miner's hand The mineral world is gifted to unfold j More wondrous still the magic of thy wand j It turns whate'er it touches into gold. Oh ! for that splendid epoch, when the ore Its sterling impress shall receive from HOAKB ! ON ATTENDING THE REV. MR. DUCT, TO WHOM THE ABOVE GROUP OF BARROWS BELONGED, T DIRECT THE THREE OPERATIONS OF OPENING THEM: BEING THE FIRST TIME OF HIS BEING PRESENT AT SUCH A CERI- MONY. III. Auspicious morn, by prophets long foretold, To Sarum's plain once more that calls my friend, The dark sepulchral mysteries to unfold, And DUKE'S initiation to attend : Oh ! let the young noviciate for his guide Look up to thee, in mind thy precepts bear, ; That when thy mantle thou shalt throw aside, The mystic robe he may deserve to wear. In Egypt's piles, the wonder of mankind, Sages in vain the labyrinth pursue, But in our rival pyramids we find No secret cliamber that eludes thy clue : Like Maia's son, where'er thou wav'st thy hand, ! The dead appear obedient to thy wand. 2S7 December 2& 1807. MY DEAR HIBERNIAN, AFTER three weeks interruption of our correspondence I again take up my pen to give you some account of myself. A Christmas in a country gentleman's house is pretty near the same the kingdom over; a noisy mixture of epicures, sportsmen, and boarding-school boys and girls ; hunting at the hazard of your neck in the morning ; feasting every day laid with a continuardo ; after dinner hard drinking, and the chase again over the bottle; between tea and cards, by way of inter- lude, a waltz by the young ladies, and spouting by the young gentlemen; during which exhibi- tion, to please mamma, you must affect to see the graceful agility of Deshayes in the daughters ; and to ingratiate yourself with papa, an embryo Garrick or a Tully in the sons. Then succeed that odious thing called a round game, and, what is still more odious, a hot supper. However, as some counterbalance to half a dozen professed Nimrods, we had one gentleman very entertain- ing, an intimate of the late Dr. Goldsmith, who knew my father a little, and was one of the last, if not the last survivor, of the celebrated literary club of that day : he was a man who at the age of seventy-four looked only sixty, but studied to play the boy more than became him, had an inex- haustible fund of anecdote, and told a story with infinite humour. He gave us several original 4 iii traits of Goldsmith's character highly honourable to him, treated us with many jeu-d'esprits of his own and his early contemporaries, and by his lively description made the wits of times gone by pass as it were in review before us : the ponderous lexicographer pow moving like an elephant, at- tended by the lord of Auchinlcck, now playing like a kitten with his learned hostess at Streat- ham ; Garrick, all finesse, and gasping for ap- plause; Goldsmith, a strange compound of bril- liancy and blunder ; Hugh Kelly, a lump of affec- tation ; and old Murphy, who in his narratives had the opposite vice to his favourite historian Tacitus, for he said one of his stories would con- tinue from the rising to the setting sun, and he has been often known to go on with it during the whole of dinner, not the least sensible of the total inattention of his hearers. I suspect that this gentleman had been in some diplomatic cha- racter abroad when young, for he knew a great deal of most of the courts of Europe, whilst Eu- rope had courts ; he told us, among many curious particulars that had occurred to him, that . he knew a Dutchman who had been hanged and had , his throat cut, and }-ct survived to be reconciled to life; for in a fit of jealousy he had gone up to his chamber, which was over the kitchen, and hung himself up to the bed-post, but in his strug- gles he had kicked down a chair, or made some : o violent noise, which so alarmed the cook, \\ho was then dressing dinner with her knife in her hand, that she ran up stairs just time enough to 289 save her master's life, as, in trying to cut the cord he was suspended by, her knife slipped, and cut his throat, which restored him to animation. The other very remarkable thing he told us was, that lie had once dined at the Piazza Coffeehouse in company with five men who were afterwards hanged : the two Perreaus, Doctor Dodd, Hack- man, and Donnellan. He has been of great ser- vice to me, being well acquainted with Lisbon, and with the very merchant on whom I have a claim in right of the late Mr. Hwlfordcl, which without his assistance I fear I should never have recovered, though I may be obliged to go thither myself before I succeed : besides, having great India connexions, and being pleased to take an interest in my fortunes, he asked my uncle if he thought I should have any objection to go abroad, as he thought he should soon have it in his power to offer me a situation that would be worth iny acceptance. For this last week, since my return to town, I have been plagued to death with law- yers and conveyances, having sold the houses in Dublin, and that most unpleasant species of pro- perty, tithes; yet my uncle, who has not been in London for some years, and has a large and fashionable acquaintance, has given me a sort of entree into life. You know that neither you nor I had seen much of what is called the world for the two or three years we had been in town, for we had no idea of pleasure a mile from the Temple Coffeehouse, or much beyond the Theatres, and seldom threw ourselves in the way of an invitation v to the court end of the town, even shrinking from good Lady M ? s monthly dinner, though most of the guests and the whole entertainment were of a costume that might have been in fashion at the Revolution, and we might he said to he out of the world ; but I have of late been truly in it, and have seen so much of its unmeaning folly as to make me pant more and more for a retirement among the mountains of North Wales. You have routs, I suppose, as well as riots in your capital, and I presume you may have had a practical knowledge of the former ; but since Dublin has been drained of people of rank by the Union, I should suppose they must be on a very small scale compared to ours: I was the other evening at one, where, from first to last, there were from four to five hundred names announced, and two thirds of those unknown to the furnishers of the entertainment (if entertainment that can be called, which is exactly what Dr. Johnson defines a rout, a tumultuous crowd) but by a reciprocation of such follies. Having made many morning calls the same day, I had an opportunity of contrasting the faces of several of the ladies at the two dif- ferent seasons of the day ; for the pale primroses of the morning were become rosebuds, nay, full- blown roses, in the evening ; so that they could hardly be known. What a masquerade this life is ! and think you their hearts are as much in dis- guise as their cheeks? An evening party is a sort of half-way to a rout ; but a small evening party, which is generally fixed for Sunday, is the acm of insipidity; and of such I lately was so unfortu- nate as to make one : it seldom consists of more than twenty or twenty-five ; men of a graver cast, and ladies rather a 1' antique, and generally calcu- lated for the more quiet amusement of some dow- ager aunt with bad nerves, the effect of sixty years dissipation; or the gradual initiation of some female cousin, a young country put, not yet safely presentable every where, though she talks with rapture of Marmion, which she cannot under- stand, and may have written a novel, which no- body will read. Being announced in a tone of a more domesticated pitch, fitted to the occasion, you walk up with, your crescent hat growing to your side, and one dirty glove on, to the lady of the house, and after half a dozen scrapes and bows, in receding you have a chance of treading on the lap-dog, which was my case, and I was confused for the whole evening. To make your situation pleasantly tenable, the praise of Pug and the old china is an incense you must offer. The gentlemen may look sentimental, but they say little ; but all the conversation is carried on in a low key by the ladies, and chiefly turns on the amusements, of the preceding, and what is an- nounced for the coming week : says one lady to her neighbour, " Pray, my dear, what have we for this week r" " Profusion of good things," re- plies the other ; " on Monday night Lady C r sees masks to spite her beautiful neighbour Mrs. O n, who opens her house for the same purpose. Tuesday morning the dancing monkies in Bond Street, and u 2 292 the Maltese g % irl without arms, who plays the vio- lin within her teeth ; and for the evening, our old friend the deaf Countess's rout. On Wednesday Mrs. V 's dinner and the harp. On Thursday the Opera. On Friday the new actress. And on Saturday Lord B 's infantine theatricals, by children not more than eight years old ; with duets between the acts by bullfinches." For the honour of old Ireland, I hope you have nothing worse than this. In another fortnight, from my uncle's present bill of fare, I suspect I shall have wherewithal to amuse you in my next Yours, &c. London, February 22, 180S. DEAR CHARLES, I AM sick of law and lawyers : for this fortnight past I have not been a day without some interruption from, them, though they come to en- rich and not to impoverish me ; yet for all that I do not like them : ' Tiraeo Danaos et dona ferentes." You must know that my uncle in his day was es- teemed a man of vertu ; and nut having seen London for some years, he is resolved to renew his old acquaintance and revive his old habits. With most of the great painters thirty years back he was intimate, particularly with him who waji 293 faciti princeps, Sir Joshua Reynolds; but of many of those who now figure away at the head of their profession, with R. A. and knighthood in their train, he then scarce heard the names ; some of them he might have seen copying at Sir Joshua's, or trying their talents on drapery and back-ground. However, he devoted every morn- ing of a whole week to visit the most eminent of the present artists, the majority of whom are por- trait-painters ; and certainly portrait-painting must be confessed to be the noblest department of the art, inasmuch as a man excels a tree ; however finely imitated a landscape may be, still you may see a better by looking out at your window ; and in history you can catch but one point of time, it is fancy supplies the rest. Ut pictura poesis : the parallel may hold a little, but the powers of the pencil must yield to those of the muse, if nature is to be described, or the passions illustrated : were Claude to live again, and paint the four sea- sons in his best manner, I would pronounce Thomson's superior pictures ; and where is the co- louring that can produce Shakespeare's Macbeth ? But in portrait-painting the muse must own her inferiority, and resign the palm to the pencil, which is employed not only to imitate the grandest work of creation, but to give a sort of immorta- lity to that which, without such aid, perishes, not to admit of renovation in this world. Of all the painters of this class, the man whose performances please me most is Sir William Beechey: his like- nesses the most prejudiced must allow to be un- u 3 294 commonly striking ; and as to taste in the disposi- tion of his figures, and calling out the soul of character, he is unrivalled : then there is as little affectation about his style as himself all is nature; there is no parade or charlatanrie belong- ing to him, as there is to several of his fraternity : not content with being painters, some of them as- pire to be poets too : one deals in the pastoral, rural, and descriptive ; another in sea-pieces ; and a third sets up for a censor. But Mr. W 11 knows as little of the country and the scenes he employs his verse about, as a cockney who has never been further than Baonio-o-e Wells, or his o oo villa tub in a paled spot six feet by four, where he measures the progress of vegetation by the growth of a true lover's knot, or his wife's cypher in pep- per-grass ; yet his poetry has this peculiar excel- lence, that it reads backward or forward equally \vell. Mr. T nvs pencil is " resistless and grand," but his muse at sea is a perfect emetic. And as to Mr. S ee, though he certainly has some pretensions to call himself a poet, yet I doubt if his censure be just, and he is not querulous with- out a cause ; and when he affects to give precepts, let him be reminded of ne sutor ultra crepidam. Besides, didactic poetry never made a man perfect in any art; for were there no other directory for brewing cider than Philips's poem, I take it the cel- lar in Maiden Lane would have but few customers. What is Fresnoy's Art of Painting but poetical pegs, though turned in Dryden's and in Mason's athe, to hang Sir Joshua Reynoids's notes and il- 295 lustrations on ? Not that I have the honour of having- F. R. S. or F. A. S. to page the heel of my name, yet I have lately visited the two societies they characterize, my uncle being a member of both. It seems a club formed of several gentle- men belonging to the Royal Society, dine weekly together at the Crown and Anchor during the session of Parliament on the day the society meet; and my uncle having an extensive acquaint- ance with many of them, particularly some he had known in India, was invited as well as myself as guests : a circumstance from which I promised myself great entertainment, but was much disap- ' pointed. The dinner, in the first place, was very bad, and so scantily supplied, that literally it would not have been enough were it not for some excellent doe venison which one of the members from his park had contributed ; and had it not been for the gentleman himself, we should have lacked food for the mind. The company was very motley in rank, age, and talent, and seemed to want that congeniality of sentiment which is the cement of society. You found from the conver- sation of almost every one of them his darling pursuit, and the system he most favoured : one took an opportunity at every turn to refer to gyp- sies ; another, to stones dropping from the clouds; a third, to a new mode of bleeding poppies ; a fourth, to the dissection of a pine-cone; whilst a fifth broached a doctrine respecting the human form wilder than Lord Monboddo's, of which no man could make cither head or tail ; yet take u 4 396* either of them out of his respective line, and he was silent. The first was toujours a la Bohemicnne, and nothing else. The stone-shower man, unless you admitted of the possibility of raining pehhles, was a mere petrifaction. The man of opium, shut out from poppies, was a perfect narcotic. And the pine-cone dissector's knowledge was li^ mi ted to that anatomy. But the gentleman who by his aid of the hill of fare had saved us from hunger, and hy his general knowledge and pleas- ing powers of communicating it had kept conver-* sation from stagnating, was alone more than a counterbalance for all the phlegm, formal dul- lness, and eccentricity of the rest of the company. After a temperate circulation of the glass and coffee, we adjourned first of all to the Antiquarian Society, where I found the account given of its process by one of the masked travellers no way exaggerated; afterwards to the Royal Society room, where a most tedious and stupid communi- cation, on the nature and power of lenses, was read ; a paper in itself so heavy and involved, had it not been rendered more so by the monotony of the reader, that it soon appeared to have acted as a soporific on half the room, and the reading of which, to prevent a general torpor, the President himself, feeling his lids weighed down, proposed to defer, which was done accordingly, to the no small satisfaction of most present, not excepting pld Mr. Cavendish. So much for two boasted so- cieties ! jLast night for the first time I visited the House 297 of Commons,, and my expectations were raised in proportion to the importance of the scene. Though prepared to see a room, from what I had heard, rather small, I was astonished to find it li- terally not large enough to hold all its members without danger of suffocation, ill lighted, and worse heated. However, I thought I should cer- tainly have specimens of fine oratory, and, not- withstanding I was so fortunate as to hear some of our most eminent speakers that night, they fell infinitely short of the idea I had formed of a good orator. As to the matter of the speeches, I shall not presume to enter into a disquisition of it, and hazard an opinion ; but as to the manner, without any danger of lodgings in Newgate, it is a fair subject of animadversion, and I am bold to say that, with an exception of one or two, nothing can be worse, or more anti-Ciceronian. How it is possible that the highest bred gentlemen in the land, who on other occasions deport themselves with gracefulness and dignity, can, at a moment when their most exalted feelings ought to be awake, lose sight of all, and accompany delivery turbid and inflated, with gestures the coarsest and most undignified, without ever suiting " the action to the word, or the word to the action," oh! as Ham- let says, " it offends me to the soul." My uncle in a peevish tone only muttered, " Had you seen the old Robin Hood in its best days !" I was astonished to hear some of our brethren of the gown make so poor a hand of it ; men voluble enough and eloquent at nisi prius. I have beou told that there have been instances of men of that profession who could in the Court of King's Bench speak for three hours together, to the admiration of all who heard them, in that House absolutely faintinsr in limine. as it / c^ f were, paralyzed by the awful change of situation, and in no better plight than I was on making my first motion. . My uncle talked of your House of Commons, when you had a Parliament, as a noble room, and seemed to lament, with many others, the want of a senatorial habit. I shall be again lost, perhaps for a month or six weeks, having had a summons to visit a place where every thing that is most dear to me, and every thing my heart could possibly desire, would be found, were Health of the party, which I fear is not the case. I forgot to tell you that my uncle, who yesterday took his leave of me for Dublin, is much for my accepting the offer made me of a situation at Bombay, a thing that would exactly suit my inquisitive mind, were it not for my Eliza, without whom, though possessed of the wealth of India, I could not be happy. Jones, who will be in town to-morrow, occupies my chambers till I return, and will take care to for- ward your letters. , Adieu till my eclipse is over. P. S. I believe I promised to treat you with one of the prophecies out of my manuscript collec- tion ; but my amanuensis not being there, and in the present distraction of my mind, it is out of my power to perform it. 299 Petersfield, March 28, 1808. J1Y DEAR CHARLES, IF you recollect, I some time ago told you that I should have occasion to visit Lisbon, where I have no less a sum than two thousand pounds due to me, and the recovery of which is now put into such a train, by means of the gen- tleman I met in Hampshire last Christmas, that without returning to London, having here with rne all the necessary papers for the purpose, I in- tend setting out immediately, especially as I have an incitement for expedition infinitely more power- ful than that of gold, the critical state of my Eliza's health, which it is the opinion of the ablest of the faculty might be likely to benefit by the air of Portugal, so that I shall have the happiness of accompanying her and her mother ; with haste, then, V " I fly to snatch her from the rigid north, And bring her nearer to the sun." By the first week in June I am engaged to be in North Wales, where I have much to do re- specting the mortgages I have there; and when I have settled the redemptions and foreclosures, I pledge myself to be with you as soon as the en- chanting scenery I shall pass through will permit me. You flatter me much by pressing- ou me the publication of my foolish letters, wii; 300 have any merit, they derive it from being 1 addressed to you, and your approbation ; but you assign an additional, and a much better reason for making them public, as they are the vehicle of several choice morceaux of modern poetry and curious an- cient fragments, that cannot fail to interest ; and likewise announce the prospect of much enter- tainment to every lover of literature, from an ap- pearance of a much greater portion to match the tantalizing sample. Before this arrives I may probably be in the midst of the Atlantic ; but on land or sea believe me ever Yours, &c. London, May 25, 1808. MY DEAR CHARLES, I AM once more, thank Heaven, in Old England, after having had a taste of other coun- tries and climates ; but I must say, in the rapturous language of the old song, " They are my visits, butthou art my home." I told you in my last to consider no news as good news, and to rely on it ; therefore, as things turned out better than I had a right to expect, I did not plague you with letters, but send you now a large packet, containing a cursory journal of my foreign travels. When I wrote last it was my intention to have gone to Lisbon with my Eliza and her 301 mother, but by letters received from that country the following clay it was represented to be in such a state of ferment and alarm as to render it abso- lutely necessary to abandon our first destination ; and as we found that Mrs. H and her brother were then at Portsmouth, about to set sail for Madeira, we hastened to join them a change in our plan which the medical men seemed highly to approve of; so that I in the first instance overshot my own mark, to see my treasure safely deposited in that island, and having consigned it to the tender care of our most amiable and sympathizing friend, Mrs. H , I set sail for Lisbon, where I have been successful in my mission, am returned in health, and continue to have favourable ac- counts from Madeira. During my absence I have lost my excellent uncle, who had always been a second father to me, and has left me the last sur- vivor of my family. Having never been married, and having no relations that required a provision, he had so disposed of his property as to give him a greater life income, and by that means a greater command of such things as gratified his fine taste, and contributed to his ease and comfort. Personal property was all he had to leave, and that he be- queathed to me, chiefly consisting of a well-chosen library, a valuable collection of drawings, prints, and coins ; and among the books several topogra- phical works, illustrated; that is, enriched with the spoils of others ; particularly Pennant's Lon- don, which has been swelled by that sort of inter- larding from one ordinary-sized quarto to thirty 302 volumes folio, which he has been heard to say cost him at least five hundred pounds, and has been valued at a thousand. He had, besides, a few choice cabinet pictures, and several original portraits of the literary characters of his time. Jones has not been idle ; for having left him the manuscript farrago 1 picked up in Wales, he has most judiciously arranged it for the press, and out of the rudiments of a tragical event at Lucca, as found among Shakespeare's memoranda, and communicated to him by a gentleman he there names and refers to, has sketched the outline of a most interesting tragedy, and has filled up three acts in so masterly a manner as bids fair to restore Melpomene to her pristine rank in the British drama. But yet when he has finished it, it will be difficult to prevail on him to bring it before the public, such is his extreme diffidence and genuine modesty, without a particle of affectation, owing to which I fear his great abilities will be lost to the world. I shall be nearer to you in my next, which I hope will be dated from among the mountains in North Wales ; so, till then, adieu ! Barmouth, June 7, 1808. MY DEAR CHARLES, WITH Jones still my entertaining compa- nion, though full of the tragic muse, I left London the first of this month, having taken our places in the Jiolyheud coach to Conven in Merionethshire. 303 Our fellow-travellers were two of your country- men, the most haughty and uncommunicative I ever met with : they never once condescended to address us on any occasion, but overlooked us with ineffable contempt, confining their conversa- tion entirely to themselves, and the subject of it principally to their own country. They talked of the parks and lodges of their fathers and uncles ; the beauty of their mothers and aunts ; and their alliance to half the peerage of the United King- dom ; -fighting duels in saw-pits; Cumin's elo- quence; Lake of Killarncy ; the Irish pipes ; A r O'C r; Bogwood; Dublin Bay herrings; the clearness of the Liffy; and whiskey punch. In our defence we were, therefore, obliged to narrow our colloquial amusement to each other; and though at times, improvidently perhaps, some- thing would escape us that had a tendency to rouse whatever was Milesian in them, and to isniite ' O stuff less combustible, yet it was luckily never noticed, or deemed not worthy of being so, and no flame took place. I was struck with a remark that dropped from them, reminding me of a similar one from my poor uncle at a private concert we were at in town last winter ; for said one of them to the other, and not without a strong dash of the brogue, " Why, Captain, now were you not astonished to see Mrs. B n the other evening O at Lady L *s not only as a performer but an intimate guest, after what you heard my father say of the winter of her debut at Dublin, when poor T y B n, on his return fr.om England, 4 304 where he had gone to fetch his bass-viol, was either pitied or laughed at by all who knew him? Surely it cannot be the same person ; though after a quarantine of twenty -six years one may be en- titled to clean bills of reputation. She has the credit of beinar very rich, having considerable o / o sums vested in the Junction canal and embank- ments in Wales." At Llangollen the Irish grandees left us, stopping there to pay their respects to the two ladies, their countrywomen, the Linda Mira and Inda Mora, whom every body has heard of, who came there professedly for retirement, yet whose cottage, situated on the road-side, is literally a house of call to all who travel to and from the dear country, as well as for all curious and impertinent pedestrian tourists, female novel-writers, and maudlin poet- esses. Our former hasty transit through North Wales was by a different road, so that this lovely vale I knew nothing of but from description ; and where is the pen or the pencil that can do justice to the beauty or the grandeur of the scenery? The vale of Llangollen for the picturesque stands unrivalled ; broken into the most enchanting in- tricacies, finely wooded, with the Dee winding its " wizard stream" through it, and rising from its banks the lofty conical hill of Castle Dinas y bran, crowned with its aerial castle, partly hid in clouds. What a pity that art should be employed to de- form this lovely scene by the formal line of navi- gable canal above the margin of the romantic river that rolls and roars beneath it ! it is like tattooing 3, b.autiiul face. It seems, us we heard afterwards 305 ' at Corwen, that we 'had passed close to the site of Owen G lend wr's palace, in the heart of his vast pos>- sessions, which I should have cast my eye OH with pe- culiar reverence, as, in my opinion, he was a great man, and merited a more honourable appellation than that of rebel. At Corwen his portrait supplies the sign of the principal inn. This is a noted rendezvous for the disciples of old Isaac Walton ; and here I saw, on an angling party, a gentleman whom J recollect to have been pointed out to me one morning last winter, at an eminent painter's in town, as one of the greatest patrons of the mo- dern artists, and into whose gallery, which, I un- derstood, was superbly furnished, none, or very few, pictures (perhaps by way of contrast) are admit- ted, highly to his honour, but those of the British school. Hence we diverged, in a chaise, to Bala, where I had business with the ao-ent of a gentle- O O man on whose estates I had a mortgage of two O v_> thousand pounds. The day happened to be the last of a Methodistical association there, which generally continues for part of three days; so the town was crammed. The weather being remark- ably fine and'warm, the dome of their temple was the canopy of heaven : as the street, filled from side to side, was impassable, we abandoned our chaise, and wedged in among the crowd to hear the peroration of the sermon, .then near its close; and in the preacher recognised our lame fellow- traveller in the mail from Carmarthen last Oc- tober. His manner was not at all ranting; his language and allusions very familiar, yet not low, x 506 and the effect on his audience wonderful. His discourse was a mixture of Welsh and English, t>r chiefly Welsh, with some striking portions for the benefit of a casual Saxon auditor, like myself, paraphrased into English. It was the farewell germon. He and another of the officiating chap- lains at Lady Huntingdon's Chapel, in Spa Fields, were the most distinguished in the multitude of preachers. A number of pious cadets between the acts, and now at the finale, before the curtain dropped, had an opportunity of trying their ta- lents, and feeling their ground, by prayer. With these miscellaneous ejaculations the association was dissolved, and I followed the preacher to his horse, which his servant had in waiting, for him immediately to mount, being engaged to perform in the evening at the next town. I purposely threw myself in his way, and he recollected us with the same smile of good humour, and tbe same cordiality, that marked his parting with us at Nar- berth, when his heart seemed at his fingers' ends. He rode a fine cream-coloured horse, that would not have disgraced His Majesty's stud. In his walk I could perceive not the least halt; and our naval mail-coach traveller would have said that he was repaired and sound in his lower timbers. I am told that the salient mania, to which this holy man owed his accident, as the naval wag informed us, and which spread like wild-fire over the princi- pality, had its origin at this place, and that the first fanatic bacchants filled the roads by night for 307 miles round, and fatigued the echoes of Aran* with their orgies, though at present the frenzy appears to have much subsided. The Lake of Bala is the first piece of water of the true lake kind I have ever seen, and that I am therefore in raptures with it there can be no wonder. It is called in the Welsh language, Llyn Tcghyd; The beautiful lotig lake. It is in compass about nine miles ; the water extremely clear, and in the centre very deep : it abounds with trout, perch, and a species of fish, they say peculiar to it, called the gwyniad, but mean eating. On the south side of it, in an elbow of the hill, prettily recessed and embosomed in wood, at the head of a lawn that gradually slopes to the margin of the lake, having in front the blue range of the Arennigt Moun- tains, stands the elegant villa of Sir Richard Hoare, who, we heard, was then there, and to whom, after dinner, we took the liberty of paying our respects. We found him at home with a gen- tleman, a friend of his, of similar pursuits. They were just going to take their usual evening diver- sion of perch-fishing, in a commodious boat be- longing to the Baronet below the house. We were pressed to join them, and had we not had sport, the luxury of the scene would have amply gratified us. There was not a breeze to ruffle the azure mirror of * Aran is the name of the highest mountain that bounds the lake of Bala. f So called, as Jones conceives, from their summits being broken into kidney-shaped forms : Arennigt he says, being an ad- jective that would answer to kidneyish in our language, could w be bold enough to coin it. X 2 308 the lake, in which the inverted landscape, with all its grandeur and variety, then richly illumined by the setting sun, was charmingly reflected. After an hour's amusement on the water we took tea, and had a treat of most interesting conversation. The Baronet's guest, I found, had hcen bred to the bar, and, if not a native of North Wales, had once gone that circuit, for he knew my uncle Ro- bert well, who passed the greater part of two summers about seventeen years ago between Car- narvon and Beaumaris. They had, during the month of May, been rambling over South Wales, and were reposing for a fortnight after their fa- tigue, in order to be prepared for exploring the northern part of the principality. During their sojourn here their mornings, if fair, were occu- pied in antiquarian excursions near home ; and if rainy, by their pens and pencils : they dined at the rational hour of three, and their evenings were passed similar to this. Being made acquainted with the principal bearings of our journey, they were so polite as to sketch for us such a route as would best accommodate itself to our time and course. The hours flew away insensibly, and w r e tlid not reach our inn till half past eleven, where we found every thing hushed after the raging tempest of methodism. I had often heard it said that the best house in every town through Wales is the attorney's, and so we found it here. The next morning, with our itinerary made out, w r e set off for Dolgellcy, and arrived there to dinner. This town is situated in a beautiful valley, on the banks of a charming river bounded by Cader Idris, a S09 mountain very little inferior in height to the peak of Snowclon, on one side, and by hills on the other, which, but for their opposite neighbour, elsewhen- would be deemed high. After an early repast, wishing not to lose time, we went to see the cas- cades in the vicinity of this place, leaving- our as- cent to the mountain to the following morning. Our guide to the falls was one of the greatest cu- riosities we met with in our travels, though a little shrivelled man, at least eighty-five years old, yet active as a goat, and vivacious as a viper, with a great deal of low humour, who had that day been up with a party very early to the top of Cader Idris, and still had vigour enough to accompany us on this excursion in the evening. He is for four or five months in the year in the habit of un- dergoing such toil on an average four days in the week. The falls we saw, to an eye like mine, which had seen nothing: before to deserve the O name, were most romantically beautiful, broken in the happiest manner, with their due proportion of wood and rock, by way of accompaniment; and what was most fortunate, the Naiads had their urns full, but not overflowing, for it rained the night before just enough to produce the effect de- sired. We lamented now more than ever our total ignorance of the use of the pencil, for never were subjects better calculated to employ it on. The next morning was as auspicious for the mountain as a warm sun and cloudless sky could make it. With our little guide dressed in the most fantastic manner, and on horses not much bigger than goats, x 3 310 and as sure footed, we set off for the regions above, and, clear and warm as if was below, we fell in with somefleecycloudsjwhosc skirtswere humid and cold, but they were transient, and, soon dispersing, left us an extensive view, though the horizon was in- volved in a warm haze. We agree, notwithstand- ing this sublime prospect, that, taking the hazard of disappointment as to weather, on, and before you reach the summit of, the mountain, and the no small toil, as well as, in some places, owing to a giddy head, danger in attaining it, into the ac- count, what you gain, exclusive of the boast of having been there, does not repay you ; and it is one of those things that is better on paper than in reality. A nap on Cader Idris, as on Find us of old, has the reputation of making a poet; but my companion being already made, and duly acknow- ledged by the Nine, had no need of sleep there to enable him to throw off the expressive lines I in- close, which he did with his usual rapidity when the fit is on him ; and he certainly seemed to feel inspiration from the mystic seat he occupied. Having started early, we had descended time enough for a three o'clock dinner, and to get to Barmouth in the cool of the evening on horseback; a de- lightful ride of ten miles, following the river Maw, navigable almost up to Dolgelley, and which, discharging itself at Barmouth, gives to the estuary the appropriate name, in Welsh, of Abermaw. We got to our place of destination before it was too dark to explore it, and take a mouthful of sea air, a luxury we enjoyed. The situation of Barmouth is the most 'singular I ever 311 saw; till within these few years, since it lias be- come a sea-bathing resort, the place, with the ex- ception of a very few houses on the Hat, consisted of only two or three tiers of buildings on ledges in the rock, one above the other; so that from the windows of the upper tier you could look down the chimnies of that below it ; but now at the base of this rocky cape, so built on, a new town has sprung up, having several good houses, inter- spersed with showy fashionable shops, and two or three large hotels, the most frequented of which is the Corsygedol Anns, where we inned for that night. The principal street is literally a bed of sand, ancle deep ; and if there is any wind, so much does a man inhale of it at every breath, that, before night, he becomes a perfect hour-glass ; yet such is the Oikophobia that prevails the whole kingdom over, that people of the first rank, to fly from home, and to be fashionable, prefer this arenaceous promenade to the velvet surface of their own lawns, content to occupy bed-rooms no bigger than band-boxes, and subject themselves to associate with all sorts of company at an ordi- nary here. After our short ramble, to avail our- selves of the post, that moves off at five o'clock in the morning, we bespoke a quiet but small room, and were retired for the evening : being too fatigued, from our mountain excursion, to be social, and mix with the supper party in the pub- lic room, we were resolved to minister to your enter- tainment ; Jones by his poetical inspiration among the clouds, and I by my humble prose. Adieu, x 4 312 iticl in future" expect letters ofteflfcf, f6r Sacli day shall supply its journal. And so Conolly has be- come a Benedick and a soldier \mo Jlatu ; this erratic planet has at last fixed between Mars Venus ! 0& fHfc SUBMIT OF CADER IDKIS. Here, where of old great Idris sate, 1 occupy my chair of state, And, all unrivall'd and alone, Feel myself monarch on my throne, Whence, as on little paltry things, I dare look down and pity kings j While, high above what clonds their scene, My mind enjoys a calm serene, And reason, with despotic sway, Forcing the passions to obey, No rebel sense provoking sin, Creates a little heaven within. Hence from gross vapours purg'd, my eye Shall pierce the sapphire of the sky, That from th' excursion it may come Humbler, and therefore wiser, home. Hi-re, where no debt? or dons annoy, Let me my solitude enjoy,, And from the mountain's beetling brow, The scene quick shifting, turn below, Now, while the medium is so clear, To view my forked fellows there, And, with the help of optic glass, Describe the pigmies as they pass, See them pursuing different game j To undermine their neighbours' fame By subtle practice, like the rnoles, Insidious in their dirty boles., 313 See ! some industriously employ'd ; Exulting, some, o'er fame destroy'd : See ! up yon hill crowds puff their way, To swell a great man's public day, Who weekly spreads his ven'son feasts, T"o make himself and others beasts ! Yon prig, the priest, displays no note Of his high calling but his coat, To hunt, drihk, dice, and give the toast, Is all his learning, all his boast; His thought the flesh alone controls, Let who will take the cure of-soula. Yon wither' d thing, so bent with age, Feels in his veins the lecher rage, Into each alley pokes his nose, And after every tid-bit goes : And can cold embers hide a flame To mutiny in such a frame ? Of glow-worm phosphorus a spark, The fire of touchwood in the dark ! And are those they, the reptiles men, With whom I 'm doom'd to mix again ? Of every passion to be slave, To deal with knaves be half a knave ! Rather, like Timon, let me run Monsters in human form to shun, t)eep buried in some shaggy wood, The spring my drink, the herb my food ; Or live a pensioner on air, Entranc'd in this mysterious chair. Yes, to the world ere I descend, And this enchantment have an end, The spell I '11 cherish while I can, Forgetting, and forgot by man, And, purer from my reverie, Grow more like what I oughi to be. The mist collects, enough is seen, The fleecy curtain drops between> 314 And shuts out from my painful view The world and all its motley crew ; Then let me, pausing, turn my eyes Into myself, and moralize ; A moment giv'n to thought sublime Is worth an age of after-time Doom'd to be spent 'mong such as crawl And yawn out being on this ball., Which having ceas'd, no trace is seen To show that they had ever been, Nor other epitaph supplied, Th^n that they liv'd and that they died. Tanybwkh, June p, 1809. JHY DEAR CHARLES, I HAVE passed another day among the rocks and sand of this place ; and though I should not like to spend a whole summer here, yet I think it as well worth seeing as any thing in Wales. In our morning rambles we fell in with an anti- quary, who was busily emplo3 7 ed digging in se- veral parts of the sand, even as far as the tide had receded, in quest of grave-stones, on the credit of some of the country people, who aliirm, that many years ago, after a violent storm, which had washed away the sand to a great depth, tombs inscribed, but not legibly, were seen, as if a churchyard had been bared, and by them insisted on as a proof of the existence of that lowland region, which extended for many miles sea-ward, from the high ground now bounding it, called Can- 315 trcv Gwaelod, that was said to have been over- flowed sometime between 460 and 590, in the time of Gwyddno Garanhir, the then regulus, and to whom most of the gentry of this coast, I was told, trace their lineage, the posterity of his clan having continued to settle near the first spot of high land they met with in escaping from the ra- vage of the inundation : but this gentleman I tak* to be a suckling in antiquarianism, to suppose that as early as that period, to which we ascribe the first Christian establishment in this island, a cemetery rilled with common grave-stones, de- scribed to him as those of modern days, could have been found, for I presume few churches (and very few they were then) had that appendage called a churchyard marked out ; that devoted pre- cinct, as well as the posthumous tablets it con- tains, being of much later date. Passing the seemingly disappointed antiquary, for he clearly dug in vain, we fell in with a roving party like ourselves, and you know it is our plan to turn, or try to turn, every thing we meet to account ; there was no digressing, for the ocean was close on one hand' and the high sand barrier and beach on the other ; so unless we had melted into conversation we must have been sulky indeed, and incapable of dissolving into sociability. The party we over- took consisted of four human creatures as unlike each other as it was possible : one was a gentle- man, who, though dressed in clothes of a cut fifty years distant from the present fashion, had still the visible appearance of a former beau, that no* thing could obliterate ; a young Cantab, a true bang up four-in-hand man ; a blunt original cha- racter, with a strong understanding and a slight squint, which rather improved a very plain face, who was very loquacious, and never opened his mouth but a quotation from Iludibras flew out, that lie always applied most laughably and dex- terously ; the other I could not place higher than the rank of a cockfeeder or cook to a kennel, who was as silent as his companion was talkative, sel- dom opening his mouth but to shift -his quid. We found the two very opposite characters, as well as the young Cantab, were all in the train of the gentleman first noticed, who, I presume, was a man of large fortune in that country, as frequent reference was made to his draining and his mines. He had a racing calendar in his hand, seemed a perfect Clarencieux in horse-heraldry, talked of Newmarket as if he was at home, and was deeply read in the annals of the turf and the Jockey Club. After our luncheon of sea-air and sand we returned and dined at the ordinary ; we sat down about fifteen.; the principal were, the group we joined on the shore; the tomb-stone hunter, the disappointed antiquary ; a clergyman, who had the purpiircus jlos, not of jimentce, but, I should suspect, from his attachment to that beverage, of cerevisite, talked much of Charles Fox, with whom he had been of Hertford College, and talked of it with some degree of pride, as having been of the same society ; a gentleman and lady, of whom the buzz went round that he had kept 317 an E O table, and was groom of the chambers to Graham's celestial beds in his youth, and married a Cyprian priestess from King's Place. He had here a splendid carriage, and frequently took oc- casion to mention his ho'inds, his hot-houses, and other luxurious appendages at his country-seat ; while she, affecting piety, talked of nothing but the new light, the C r of the E r, H h M e, the Society for the Suppres- sion of Vice, and the 13 p of St. D d's: a strolling player, who, as we learned afterwards, was a candidate for an engagement at a week's theatricals shortly to be furnished by a gentleman of that neighbourhood, who gave us after dinner a specimen of his talents in a few passages from Romeo and Juliet and Richard the Third, which he managed above mediocrity ; an elderly lady with two or three fine girls, her daughters, and one of them, who from the great familiarity that passed between her and the knight of the buskin, I imagine would have had no objection to have played Juliet to his Romeo: but the most striking figure of the whole set, and with whom I close the catalogue, was an old Cherokee country squire, who affected to talk Welshy, carried a hunting-pole as tall as himself, was followed by half a dozen terriers, and in his dress gave us a specimen of the old school : a blue velvet coat, a scarlet waistcoat, laced with gold, and gold laced hat triple cocked : the leader of our sand party and he were well known to each other, bandied about their raillery, and mutually gave hard knocks ; 518 but the man of .lace was rather an overmatch for the miner, though backed by his t\vo aid-de-camps, the quoter of Hudibras and the quidder of British rag, and ably by the former. It seems the mine- ing gentleman, professing to work after a Stafford- shire plan, by perpendicular shaft, conducted his operations horizontally, which gave his antagonist such an advantage, that he and his bottle-holders shrunk from the contest, and soon retired. The party was now become small, there being none left but the old fox-hunting squire, the parson, and ourselves : smoking and ale Avas the order of the day, and as- there was great originality and good humour about our companions, we joined them in the ale, making a virtue of necessity, for the wine was execrable ; when Nimrod addressed us, saying, " You seem, gentlemen, to like our ale ; it is a noble beverage if well brewed, but we have lost the art; our wives and daughters are above superintending a process their mothers were educated to understand. I remember the days of the Ciesars ; but you, Sirs, may not understand my reference : Which way are you travelling? for if you are going my road, towards Harllech Castle (but that is worth going ont of your road to see), I could bring you better acquainted with the Roman Emperors I al- lude to. These were the days for ale and smoke- ing, when the bland vapour of the tube was not offensive to the finest lady ; which of late I could not have presumed to regale myself with till every female had vanished. Oh ! had you known the Druid society in its glory, you then would have 319 witnessed to a scene, clouded as it was, full of spirit and fire, when I remember, at the Bull in Beaumaris, as much smoke as was raised by the Romans when the devoted groves of old Mona blazed round the Druids of old such was the honour paid to the Virginia plant ! The old King of Spain, who was none of your wine-bibbers, but had drunk at that time as much ale as would have floated a first rate, and I, have often sat with our pipes touching, and yet could not see each other for half an hour together ; and so had Sir Hugh and I at the Friars ; nay, in my own smoking- room, so deliciously obnubilated have we been, that I scarce saw one of my guests for the whole evening, our pipes being never out of our mouths, but to charge them anew and swallow our nip- perkins. During one of those festive fumigations, I shall never forget a young barrister entering at the most inspissated moment of the vapour, with whom I talked for some time unseen, knowing him only by his voice ; a conversation, as you may imagine, very mellow through such a fleecy medium ; but suddenly we lost him, for, not sub- limed enough for -company like ours, he had slunk away by favour of our clouds to the ladies : a mere milksop ! not w r orthy of associating with such en- lightened beings as we were ; a sing-song fellow, full of small talk and himself, who was famous at handing round a plate of light cakes, and could write an ode on the head of a pin." Finding that our road lay exactly in the direction of this mansion, to which was attached the history of the twelve Ca?s.ars, He proffered lais services t esewt us $p far; so next morning, having agreed to start early, we left this region of rock and sand, and after a ride of about five miles, with the sea on one side, and a ridge of cloud-capt mountains on the other, we turned out of the inain road through a gate which led by an ascent of great length into a woody avenue, previous to our approaching the place of our destination among the mountains, called Corsygedol (the arms of which, as a sign, the inn at Barmouth displayed), the baronial residence for centuries of the Vaughans, descended from a branch of the Fitzgeralds in Ireland, soon after their being grafted on that country from South Wales, and to which our Cicerone boasted to trace likewise. The entrance to the house was by an old gateway, through a porter's lodge, so that we might have fancied it led to a college, and the whole building wore an appearance not very foreign from it. " Now," said our conductor, " you are within the august precinct of the Caesars : you must know, then, that in this house it was a' custom more honoured in the observance than the breach, to fill twelve casks containing a hun- dred and twenty gallons each with strong ale, de- nominated after the twelve first Emperors of Home, and that each cask was twelve years old before it was of age to be tapped, and as soon as it had passed its minority there was another brewed, so that the imperial series was always complete ; but, alas ! the Caesar-brewing family is extinct, and now there is nothing left here but the husk of hos- 321 pitality; indeed, for some years I marked with regret the decline of this Roman empire, and the noble fluid that characterized it ; for at the last gentleman's table, who preferred whey, which he called the mulsum of Hippocrates (no Welshman, you may be certain), to that heroic beverage, very little was drunk, but in the form of a posset at supper, and it was no bad night-cap I assure you : but I will show you a room in which some super- annuated or supernumerary servants, and other old pensioners, a sort of heir-looms, useless live lum- ber, in the house, were drinking it from morning till night; they lived on nothing else; like Boni- face in the play, they might literally be said to eat their ale and drink their ale ; it glued them toge- ther, and they lived to a great age without dissolv- ing, and at last they melted like sugar-candy." The family of this mansion, he said, at the time when the two roses divided the nation, which might have exclaimed, in the words of our im- mortal Shakespeare, "A plague on both your houses,'* were strenuous adherents of the Lancastrian party, and he showed us a cell in the garden where Henry VII. before his elevation to the throne, had been concealed, to avoid his persecutors. If it had not been for our new Cicerone, we certainly should not have seen this venerable place, which, on ac- count of its situation, character, and history, is worth a much greater digression than we made to pee it. Our companion, not willing to lose us, and seeing that we felt an interest in his commu- nicative originality, begged to conduct us as far y as Harlech, which, much as he extolled it all the way, we found merited any panegyric that could be bestowed on it. It is one of the most finished specimens of the castellated architecture of Ed- ward's reign, with a view to strength more than elegance, and, seen from the sandy plain below, incorporated as it seems with the precipitous rock it stands on, strikes you with astonishment as to its height and massive solidity, which, if got pos- session of, would be tenable against almost any force ; for a sturdy Welsh captain, as Jones, from his universal vade-mecum, informs me, one David ap Evan ap Einion, kept Harlech castle, and all the lands belonging to it, fifteen years for the House of Lancaster, notwithstanding the formi* dable efforts to dislodge him, at last effected by Sir Richard Herbert, the rival of the Welsh cap- tain in prowess, person, and stature. Our moun- tain squire was not a little proud of having some of the blood of this gallant Welshman in his veins, which he trusted would run uncontaminated to its last drop. " You see," says he, " the effect of being suckled by one of the Cassars ; no doubt the Harlech hero drank Corsygedol posset in his cradle an infant Hercules !" Jones having drop- ped some hints as to his veneration for Welsh ge- nealogy, and the squire, having much to boast of in that way, with a voice loud enough for a view halloo, addressed us : " Gentlemen, J have not yet given you my pedigree, which I have by heart; and though it is indebted to a thousand apy for stringing it together, I don't think I should lose 323 a link in the chain ; a nun is not more perfect in the tale of her beads, so habituated have I been from my first lisp to call the roll over ; for the first exercise my tongue and memory were put to was to enumerate my ancestors from the post-cap- tain in the ark to his latest descendant in Merio- nethshire, and my father's hounds by their names : -so now,* 1 said he, " as I find my countryman here has a smack of our national failing, a taste for pe- digree, I will accompany you to Tanybwlch, the place of your destination, as I understand, for this night ; and perhaps in that sort of learning, which I am not behindhand in, I may give you a treat; besides, my presence may serve to improve your quarters, for I am as well known there as the sign-post ; and if you like cockles and pancakes, you will have them there in perfection. I shall dispatch a messenger over the mountains to say where I am, and then my absence matters little, as I can swear the bastard child here to-morrow as well as at home, having that part of Burn at my fingers' ends ; and as for the hounds, the parson, my whipper-in, will be on parade with them early enough to take the field, and I dare say will have unkennelled by the time I shall join them." This charming little inn is situate in the beautiful vale of Festiniog, which old Lord Lyttelton so much and so justly celebrates, where he says, " With the woman one loves, the friends of one's choice, and a few books, one might live here an age, and think it a day :" and it truly is the most lovely retired spot I ever was at ; the house Y 2 324 all accommodations good, and the pancakes so su- perior to any thing in batter I had ever tasted, that they ought to have a patent for making them. It was late before we dined, and the evening was chietly spent in conversation between the two Welshmen, on subjects that fairly excluded me ; on the excellence of the Welsh language, a com- parative examination of its different dialects, and Cambrian genealogy. Jones contended, as a South Wales man, for the merit of his dialect, which he called the true Attic; and as a proof of it in- stanced the translation of the Scriptures, the book of life, in that dialect. " Yes," said his oppo- nent, " because the principal translators might have been men of that country." " Quite otherwise," replied Jones ; " for that noble work was known to be conducted by men of the northern part of the principality. Queen Elizabeth in 1,566 issued a royal mandate to have the Bible translated into Welsh; however, the New Testament only was then published, the joint work of Richard Davies, Bishop of St. David's (though a North Wales man), and William Salisbury, of Caeder, in the parish of Llansannan, Denbighshire ; but the Old Testament was not completed till 1588, for which we are indebted to the labours of Dr. Morgan, a native of Merionethshire, afterwards Bishop of Landaff, with the aid of the Bishops of St. Asaph and Bangor; Gabriel Goodman, Dean of West- minster ; David Powell, D. D. ; Edmund Prys, Archdeacon of Merionydd ; and Richard Vaughan; all decided Venedotians ; and yet they adopted the 325 dialect of Deheubarth or South Wales, undoubt- edly from a conviction of its superior excellence before they would presume to use it as a vehicle of those sacred oracles." " Well supported, I ac- knowledge," rejoined the Squire; " and if it is so, I have no way of accounting for it, but by sup- posing that impiety prevailed more in South Wales thaii here, and that accordingly the language of that infallible directory to salvation was calculated for that people, who were esteemed to stand most in need of it." They then began a genealogical chase, springing at every step fresh game of princes and heroes, which they hunted down through as many subtle doublings and windings as a fox would take ; and I left them in a warm dis- pute about the dignity of the root of their respec- tive family trees, a contest that, Jones told me, was strenuously maintained on both sides, and was not decided till midnight, and then only by a sort of drawn battle. Notwithstanding t|ie late hour of retiring, the Squire was up early, and soon roused the whole house ; having got his justice bu- siness over, arid swigged a bowl of milk punch, he was off for the mountains, leaving us with a com- pliment to Jones's heraldical knowledge, adding, that he ought to be made garter king at arms foi Wales. I am here among mountains of no con- temptible height, but my next will be from the more Alpine region of Carnarvonshire, where the monarch Snowdon holds his court : I expect a packet of letters at our next stage, which will de- termine the course and duration of my wander- 326 ings ; for till I hear from abroad I scarce can be said to have any fixed plan ; only in this I am de- cided, that I am, and ever shall be, Yours most sincerely, &c. BeddCelert, Jane 11, 1808. MY DEAR CHARLES, WERE it possible to feel a satiety of fine scenery (though we lose half by not being able to draw), I certainly should by this time have expe- rienced a surfeit ; but there is no such thing ; for there are features here so strikingly prominent, that there is no possibility of escaping, yet, by the change of the spectator's position, perpe- tually varying their effect, and incapable of tiring. Having seen the most interesting parts of Merio- nethshire, I proceeded to the adjoining county of Carnarvon, having occasion to make some little stay, if the news I shall hear will leave me master of myself, at the county-town, being en- gaged to meet an eminent solicitor there, with whom I have business relative to a mortgage that is likely to end in a foreclosure, on a spot that is described to me as possessing some of the most essential requisites of a picturesque, if not a ro- mantic landscape, and where we may yet meet to talk of the past and plan the future. I entered this county by way of Pont Aberglaslyn ; that is, Aberglaslyn bridge, a view of which I dare say you 327 have often seen, it having been a favourite subject with the artists and amateurs of the pencil. Above the bridge is a noted salmon-leap, where, particularly after any fresh from rains in the river, as was now the case, you hardly need wait ten minutes before you are entertained with the frequent exhibition of this salient property in the creature to surmount difficulties under the strong impulse of nature for the preservation of its species. The singular cha- racter we parted with at Tanybwlch recommended it strongly to us to visit a place not mentioned in the route sketched for us at Bala, a new creation of Mr. Madocks, Member of Parliament for Bos- ton, but a native of North Wales ; instead, there- fore, of going to the right, according to our first intention, we took a turn to the left, and by a de- lightful road along the margin of an extensive tract of sand, at high tides partly overflowed, and under precipices of various heights, shagged with wood, over the crags of which here and there were seen " the pendent goat," arrived at Trema- dock, called after the founder's name. It con- sisted of above fifty houses, a large inn, and a town-house, with several buildings begun, and is situate in a small opening between the mountains, till within these six years all sand and moss, but by judicious embankment converted into solid fer- tile land. But this enterprising gentleman, a most valuable accession to his country, having had a grant of that vast tract of sand called Traeth- mawr, so dangerous to be crossed, and which every year multiplied the coroner's inquests, is Y 4 328 now employed in shutting out the ocean, prepara- tory to his reclaiming this sandy waste, and re- ducing it to the same state with the contiguous proof of his former successful exertions. His own beautiful villa is niched like an eagle's nest am on a: the cra^s overhanging his new town, o o o o * amidst thriving woods of larch and other trees, which now clothe the mountain's side ; in every part of which singularly built and situated man- sion, both within and without, the greatest taste is displayed. And though the patriotic proprietor regularly attends his duty in parliament, and, con- sequently, must be absent for several months, yet his works are carried on with the same spirit, and are the result of his own vigorous mind, which at that distance can judge of and direct every stage of the proceedings, without trespassing too much on the attentions he must necessarily pay to the senate, and those circles of fashion he is accus- tomed to -move in. He has established races there, and preparations were making for the festivity which marks that season, there being a great deal of company expected, particularly gentlemen of the turf. No man seems to have consulted more the union of the utile dulci than Mr. Madocks; for I observed an avenue leading to a sort of Belvidere on the knoll in the midst of his new creation, that was contrived a " double debt to pay," having been, and capable of still being, a rope-walk likewise. The hard serpentine his hills are composed of, and of which he has an inexhaust- ible fund, he ships off for London as paving- stones ; 20 every thing is turned to account. After 329 retracing our road to the foot of the bridge we di- verged from, we pursue that which leads towards Carnarvon, and rest that night at Bedd Celert, stopping time enough whilst our dinner was or- dered to explore the vicinity, which involves as many curious circumstances as any place I have yet visited within such a compass. Jones for the evening, having picked up several scarce plants, has sufficient to occupy him ; whilst, a prey to fear and hope till I receive letters, I have lost my relish for all enjoyments ; so stealing away unseen from the botanist. I shall wish you a good night, and see what my pillow can do to compose me. Yours, c. Bangor, June 14, 1808. MY DEAR CHARLES, JONES having a great desire to see the roost accessible of the mountains, passes, and lakes, prevailed on me to devote one day to such an excursion, as we were then at the base of Snowdon, and should not again be so conveniently situated for that purpose ; and I requiring some- thing new to divert my thoughts, we procured a guide and horses, and meant to penetrate as far into this reg;ion as our limited time would o allow ; but to describe what we saw requires a lan- guage I have yet to learn, or a pencil such as yours. It had rained hard in the night, so that 2 350 every lake was full, and every Alpine stream a cataract: besides, the day was clear, and Snow- don and his attendants condescended to be un- covered. Our guide was a fisherman, and had his rod with him, which on one or two of the lakes he used successfully, whilst we were surveying, the surrounding scenery ; Jones with a botanical eye leaving no crevice of the rocks unscrutinized. Our intention was to go to Bangor that night, where I had some expectation of meeting my attorney, and our route was so conducted as to give us time, after cursorily viewing this majestic scenery, to get there by night ; but we had no sooner left the recesses of the mountains, than the clouds began to collect, and threaten an approaching storm, which suddenly came on with such violence, at- tended by incessant thunder, lightning, and rain, that we were compelled to seek shelter; and fortu- nately about two hundred yards from the main road, in a sequestered little nook, above a torrent stream that roared beneath it, in the midst of fine young plantations, a neat cottage presented itself, which we made up to, and without much cere- mony, the fury of the tempest being our apology, alighting, begged to be housed from the rage of the elements : a gentleman of middle age most courteously desired us to walk in, and partake of such "fare as his humble roof could afford, entreat- ing us not to feel embarrassed, as he had a spare room double-bedded, and could accommodate our guide and the horses ; saying it was hopeless to ex- pect a change of weather so soon as to admit of our 4 331 prosecuting our journey that night. From the ur- banity and heartiness with which the offer was made, we could see in a moment that any stiffness on our parts would have distressed him ; so we most thankfully accepted it: " Then," said he, " we have nothing more to do, than, by drawing on my stock of turf, to refresh our fire, and enjoy it; but, Gentlemen, I presume you have not dined; I have some fine fish which that young angler, my son, here," introducing us to him, " has this morning caught in a neighbouring lake, esteemed of fine quality, which with a fowl and a bit of bacon and some peas (early, you will say, for the mountains, but I am my own gardener), may be instantly got ready :" so having given the neces- sary orders for this repast, he returned, and pressed us to consider ourselves at homej and endeavour to forget that we were strangers : " You see me here a hermit, but though I have had some reasons for leaving the world, I do not profess to be a cy- nic, and shall to the last ' court the offices of sweet humanity.' If there is one gratification greater than another, it is to afford light to those who need it, to open the door to the benighted tra- veller; or by soothing kindness and seasonable counsel reclaim the mind that is gone astray, and correct its wanderings; from my peculiar situ- ation here I have had some practice in this way, and I have the conscious satisfaction to think that I have more than once contributed to the repose of the wayworn traveller, the wounded spirit, and the victim of sensibilitv. I have lived much in 332 the world, and long enough to make me sick of it; have suffered from the instability of fortune and the delusion of friendship ; but, profiting by my follies and my inexperience, am got into port be* fore I \vas fairly wrecked, having had the resolution to retire before I had lost my relish for the enjoyment of happiness, and happiness I had to enjoy till the grave swallowed it up." The tear swelled in his eye ; he had struck a chord that was too moving, and instantly changed the strain, saying, " How thoughtless I am, gentlemen ! I should have asked you if you would have taken any thing before your dinner ; I have mead of such strength as to merit the name of cordial, and in cases of extreme fatigue or lowness of spirits I have known it ope* rate most wonderfully as a restorative ; and, per- haps, from your toil all day, and the agitation which the awfulness of the storm might have oc- casioned till you saw a place of shelter, you may require something." On our replying, that we were not in the habit of resorting to such aids, and taking this opportunity of giving a new turn to the conversation, we thought his countenance resumed a melancholy smile, which settled into apparent cheerfulness. His little parlour was a model of elegant -neatness; it was hung round with a set of drawings from the pencil of the young gentleman, his son, of scenes in the neigh- bourhood, in which was discovered a master's hand. The young draftsman was not then pre- sent, being gone to see that proper directions were given about the horses and guide, so that we were 333 lavish of our praises. His father said that he was skilled in three things that were valuable resources in retirement : music, drawing, and angling. l-'or his drawing, the specimens before them would brat vouch ; of his music they might by and by have a proof, as well as of his angling, in the dish of trout that was preparing. He said, that of all ac- complishments drawing he ranked highest : ia music the entertainment ends with the perform- ance ; and if you excel in it you wish for an au- dience ; a man is soon tired of gratifying his own ear ; whereas, in drawing you must be alone; you want no company but your pencil, and when your work is over you leave something behind you. Our dinner Was now announced; the trout was delicious, and we could not avoid remarking their colour, approaching to that of salmon in full sea- son. " This is nothing," said our host, " to what the fish of a more distant lake, which my young angler once visited, exhibit, of a much deeper red and higher flavour : and yet no wonder, when we trace the origin of this superior excellence by traditional lore.. It is said, that in the first colo- nization of the country, the men of a certain mountain district, wanting the indispensable means of providing for population, women, in an adven- ture similar to the rape of the Sabines, forcibly seized the females of a neighbouring province, and carried them orf; but being pursued, a bloody conflict took place, in which the ravishers fell, and the violated ladies, whose affections they had won, resolving not to survive their gallants and their disgrace, in the glow of injured honour, a little subdued by the delicate blush of a softer passion, rushed into a neighbouring lake, which has ever since been called by a name commemorative of the event, Llyn y Morwynion, The Maiden's Lake, where if they were not fairly metamorphosed into trout, they had the reputation at least of having given them their colour." After our repast, which was served up with the same neatness which characterized every thing that met our eye, we were treated with the finest ale I ever drank ; thin, vinous", and flavoured in the brewage with lemon-peel ; and mead most excellent. " You see," said our hos,t, " every thing is done in honour of Wales : AVelsh ale ! Welsh mead ! and I am not without my Welsh harp, though no Welshman, * sic honor et nomen JVallieE." Then addressing himself to his son, he begged he would give us a national tune on the national instrument, which he most obligingly did, singing Welsh words (having learned that venerable language since he had been a resident here) to the air he played ; he likewise favoured us with some beautiful Scotch airs on his flute, which Jones says he managed in a superior style. The young gentleman having retired, which he did at an early hour, and a fresh pyre of turf laid, our host, with a frankness that seemed natural to him, let us a little into his his- tory, which, to avoid the prolixity of detail, he said he would beg our acceptance of a little pam- phlet, a few impressions of which, by the help of a small printing-press, which he and his son worked, he had struck off, entitled, The History 335 of a Man -disgusted with the World, if we would at our leisure condescend to look it over. Our conversation now became very various : we talked of the acquaintance formed at public schools be- tween men of different ranks, which very seldom outlived the school-days : our host said he never knew disparity of rank succeed in friend- ship or in love. He M 7 as a melancholy instance of its failure in the former : he was at a public school, Oxford, and the Temple, at which three places he had been in habits of the greatest intimacy with a few young noblemen and men of large fortune, some of whom he lived to see in power, and able to serve him ; but the instant he asked a favour they made a point to cut him, as they unmeaningly term it. There is now a little man with whom he had often mixed his commons, high in office, who swells to fill his situation, who scarcely deigns to recollect his name ; but to counterbalance such pi- tiful pride, there is a senator of no less eminence, an acquaintance of the same standing, who, after a lapse of twenty-two years, happening to meet him, took him by the hand with the same cor- diality as marked their Temple intimacy, un- changed, with his heart glowing at his fingers* ends, a rare instance, he must own, and therefore more to be valued. De minimis non curare seems to be a maxim, he believed, with statesmen as with the law : " but commend me," says he, " to the man who when at College, and his expenses, as there is generally the case, exceeded his allowance, 336 and he could not pay his taylor, gave him a sump- tuous dinner, and did not spare the wine, which so disarmed the man of the needle, that he could not think of pressing his demands, fresh indulgences being still purchased by fresh dinners. Yet when he came into administration, and had the keeping of the fountain of preferment, though he had long before honourably discharged all his debts, yet he remembered Snip and several of his other trades- men, by giving them small places. Such considera- tion in the midst of the most important state affairs, in my estimate, outweighs all the mock patriotism of these last fifty years, from W s to Sir F s B tt, or the boasted talents of the late Pilot who weathered the storm, and his rival the Revo- lution historian. Before we parted in the morning J was struck with the sight of quill feathers stuck upright every where I cast my eye, through all his garden and little pleasure-ground ; which, though nil admirari in general is my motto, I could not help noticing inquisitively. My host had heard that in his predecessor's time, a clergy- man, a man of learning too, who was in the habit of visiting the place, never passed a feather that occurred without immediately planting it in the earth, a ceremony he religiously observed on such occasions, and for which he never assigned any reasons ; mere superstition ! Our hermit host seemed to regret parting with us ; he said all part- ing was painful to him, and he felt it in a greater degree every day. At Bangor we met the attor* 337 ney, but not the letters, expected. Another night of misery, then, is mine. Adieu, my clear Charles ; remember and pity me. Bangor, June 13, 1808. MY DEAR SIR, WHAT I long dreaded has come to pass ; our friend this morning received letters full of alarm as to the state of her health for whom he lives ; and he has torn himself from me in a state of distraction, resolved instantly to set sail for Madeira. I offered him all the consolation I had to give, or that friendship could dictate; but " who can medicine to a mind diseased?" After the first paroxysm, summoning his fortitude, he became calm enough to have a letter of attorney filled to empower me to complete the business he had to transact, and to make his will. He told me he had left us both trustees for his nephew, young Benson ; and as to publishing his Letters, as well as the contents of his Carmarthen manu- script, he left that totally to you and me, saying, he felt but little interest "in any tiling now. His fortitude then forsook him, his manly cheek was wet with tears, his heart was bursting. At last,, grasping me by the hand, in an agony of conflict- ing passions, with " Remember me to O'Brien,'' which were his last words, he turned from me, never looked back, rushed into the chaise, and i 538 drove off. I shall be here for at least a fortnight, before I can finish the business left me to accom- plish ; so I may hope to hear from you, and it would be but charity to endeavour to raise the de- pressed spirits of, dear Sir, Yours most sincerely, H. JONES. THE END. ERRATA. Page 25, line 19, for lonely, read lovely. 37, line 20, fir way, read weigh. 77, line 12, make the same correction. 90, line 15, insert end after east. 169, dele the full stop at the end of the last line. 178, line 16, for Munarnawan, read Manama wan. 190, for waiste, read wriste. 252, line 5, after heads insert and. S. 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