imagined he went up that day, with eager and anxious hope, and which he came down, doubtless disappointed, dispirited, and foreboding evil; for this was a dark hour in the history of that unhappy monarch's fortunes. But how inconceivable it is, that a man, with his blood not frozen in his veins, could stand upon a wall and see his own battle fought out, beneath his very eye-himself an idle spectator!

I am not conversant with antiquities, but there seems to be evidence that Chester was anciently a Roman station. Indeed, I believe the philologists derive the name of Chester from the Latin castra, a camp. It is said, that there are remains of a Roman bath to be found in a cellar here; and a Roman altar was discovered near a fountain in this vicinity, in 1821. It now stands in the Marquis of Westminster's grounds, at Eaton Hall, raised on a platform of marble, taken from one of the palaces of Tiberius at Capri: so far westward did the wing of the Roman eagle stretch. This altar might have been erected to the god Terminus; but it is dedicated to the nymphs and fountains-for thus runs the inscription:

Nymphis

et

Fontibus
Leg. XX.
V. V.

I shall not undertake any minute description of this estate and seat of the Marquis of Westminster. But conceive of a sort of township of land fifteen or twenty miles in circumference, under the most perfect cultivation, and laid out in the beautiful style of English countrygrounds-broad lawns intersected by smooth roads and gravelled walks, with noble clumps, and winding belts, and majestic avenues of trees in every direction the gardens and ornamental grounds alone employing sixty or seventy men the year round; conceive of an immense Gothic building of hammered freestone in the centre of this domain, spreading four hundred and twenty-five feet-about twenty-six rods-in front; enter this building and survey the magnificent apartments, some of them fifty feet long, and thirty-five feet in height, with gilded ceilings and painted windows, and filled with gorgeous furniture of every description; visit the chapel, large enough to accommodate a small congregation, and where daily prayers are said, during the residence of the family; go to the stables and outhouses-a little village by themselves; and then pass through the garden, filled with hothouses and conservatories, enriched with rare plants, blooming with flowers, and laden with fruits enough to supply a village; and then take into the account, that this is but one of the seats of its wealthy owner, and you may have some idea of the princely state of the Marquis of Westminster. From the moment that you set your foot on this magnificent domain, everything reminds you that you have come within the fairy circle of wealth and taste, elegance and luxury. You enter by a pretty Gothic lodge, two or three miles from the castle. You are borne on, upon a smooth and winding road, with not one pebble to jar your carriage wheel: the edge of it as accurately defined by the bordering, smoothshaven greensward, as if the thing were done with scissors; a fine belt of trees accompanying it on either side, at the distance of twenty or

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was the

thirty feet, and only interrupted here and there, to open to you the view of an almost boundless lawn, covered with herds of cattle and deer. When I was going through the garden, the immense quantity of fruit led me to ask the gardener who accompanied me, what was done with it; for," I said, you cannot possibly eat it at the castle; do you sell it, then?" The man drew himself up, and said, "Oh no, sir, nothing is sold from this garden." Well, then," I said, "what is done with it?" "It is sent in presents to my lord's tenants, reply. A very pleasant way, doubtless, for my lord to make himself agreeable to his tenants! There must be something good and grateful in a relation that leads to acts of kindness like this. And the corresponding deference and gratitude of the tenantry may, doubtless, in a certain state of society, have their uses, and proprieties, and beauties. But is there no danger of servility on the one hand, or of tyranny on the other? And do not fixed conditions like these of lord and tenant, necessarily tend to prevent, in the lower classes, the fair expansion of character? I certainly do not believe in the expediency of such a state of social relations; and yet, when I have seen those in our countrythey are not the many-whom fee simple and freedom have taught to respect nothing but their own importance, I have thought it had been better for them to have been tenants of an English landlord. If men will not reverence anything higher, then let them reverence the Marquis of Westminster!

BANGOR, July 3, 1833.-On the road to Bangor are Holywell and St. Asaphs, not remarkable, except as all these Welsh towns seem to me remarkable, for ugliness; built without any order; the streets narrow; scarcely any sidewalks; the houses mostly small, dingy, brick buildings; and yet, every now and then, is seen some singular, picturesque-looking house, with its walls covered with ivy or vines, and with shrubs, roses, &c. about the door and in the windows-redeeming features in the scene, and indications of that diversity of provisions for the gratification of taste, which is so much more striking in the Old World than in ours, and of tastes too that rise above physical wants.

But Conway is really worth seeing. It is an old walled town-the wall still standing, with twenty-four circular towers in very good preservation. The castle of Edward I. in ruins, flanked by four immense round towers, is a sublime object. This castle, which also "frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood," brought to mind Gray's ode, where the ghosts of the ancient Welsh harpers are represented as hurling down anathemas upon the "ruthless king." Time has executed the anathema upon the building itself, for the grass is growing upon the tops of the towers.

THE MENAI BRIDGE.-Who could ever have thought of calling a bridge sublime? And yet that is actually the impression made by the Menai Bridge. It is very different, to be sure, from the sublimity of castles or cathedrals; it never, perhaps, can have the sublime of association-a battle, indeed, might give it; but this structure has a grandeur of its own. It bestrides an arm of the sea-connecting Anglesea with the mainland. It is an hundred feet from the water. The part suspended is 550 feet in length. The arches and towers are masses of masonry as stupendous as the Roman aqueducts.

The sole material of the part suspended is iron. As I approached it

-it was towards evening-I could see nothing but the towers. And when you distinguish the fine delicate tracery of the iron chains and supporters, it seems as if it were nothing but gauze or cobweb, compared with the mighty masses of masonry on which it rests. The vehicles travelling over it look as if they were suspended in the air. I went down to the shore below, and as I looked up, it seemed to span a whole third part of the heavens. A celebrated lady, since dead, in speaking of this stupendous work, said, that she first saw it from the Isle of Anglesea, so that it was relieved against the lofty mountains of North Wales; and she added in a strain of eloquent and poetical comparison familiar to her, that " Snowdon seemed to her a fit back-ground for the Menai Bridge.'

July 4.-To-day I made an excursion down to Caernarvon, through the pass of Llanberis, to Capel Carig (Kerrig) and back again to Bangor, and on to Holyhead.

At Caernarvon is another old castle of Edward I. in ruins: the town, too, like Conway, is surrounded by a wall with towers. The walls of the castle are very thick, in some places ten feet. I should judge the space enclosed must be 1500 by 150 feet. There are several huge towers, one of which I ascended to the top: the stone steps much worn. It consisted of two walls, with narrow, dark passages all around between them. On the inner wall, abutments on which the beams and floors of the successive stories were supported, were evident; and also the fireplaces. An anteroom to one of these central apartments (about twelve by seven feet), was pointed out as the birthplace of Edward's son, the first Prince of Wales. It was thus, as history says, and Welsh tradition still holds, that Edward the I. claimed the promise which he had obtained of these intractable mountaineers, that they would submit to a native-born prince.

The

This is indeed a place in which to muse and moralize. Who can look upon the humblest hearthstone of a ruinous and deserted cottage, such as I have sometimes seen, even in our own country-our only ruins— without reading on it the whole history of human affections? The hearthstone seems everywhere like a tablet of the heart. But here kings and nobles have come, with the tramp of horses, and the blast of trumpets, and the ringing of armour. Here proud men have bid defiance, and brave men have died. Here fair women have mingled in feast and song, or started and turned pale, at the summons of the besieger's horn. And now all is silent and desolate. Grass overgrows the court-yard, and waves from the tops of the walls and towers. birds build nests in these turrets, and chirp about them as if they were grand old places for aviaries; and the visiter comes, not to feast, but to meditate. What different scenes have passed here! what thoughts have been revolved around these lonely, deserted, and scarce discerned firesides! what affections have here kindled, and glowed, and withered, and faded away! what footsteps have been upon these rough stairs! Enough! they have been the footsteps of men! Light and joyous hearts had they borne, though they had not been the hearts of princes. And heavy hearts had they borne, though they had not been carried wounded and bleeding from the battle strife.

* Mrs. Hemans.

Everything about this old castle shows the purpose for which, mainly, it was constructed; small apertures rather than windows, out of which arrows, or other missives could be thrown, and opening inward to a space in the wall large enough for a warder to stand in; three or four narrow loopholes on each side of the great gate of entrance, for the purpose of reconnoitreing those who approached; and inside of the gate, the groove in which the portcullis slided up and down.

I am satisfied that in order to gain any approach to an idea of these things, without seeing them, one must not be content with barely reading the description, but must lay down the measurement upon some familiar spot. For instance, the walls of this castle, I judged from a rough measurement, to be two hundred rods in circuit; and they are nearly eight feet thick, and perhaps thirty feet high; and the principal tower may be ninety or one hundred feet high, and fifty feet in diameter. So of the Menai Bridge, or of Eaton Hall. I am sure I got a far more impressive idea of Niagara falls, and probably far more just, by laying it down on a landscape three quarters of a mile in extent, and then conceiving a precipice of one hundred and sixty feet in height, and an ocean pouring over it.

Except the sublimest, I suppose that every description of mountain scenery is to be found in Wales; unless it be, also, the contrast of hills and mountains to the perfect levels of our New England intervals and river bauks-like which I have seen nothing. The pass of Llanberis and the road from Capel Carig are almost level, while the wildest mountains rise almost from the very roadside, on either hand. There is every variety of form-steep, swelling, bald, shaggy; massy and pointed tops; sides sometimes ploughed by the mountain streams, and sometimes only seamed by the trickling rills; while around their eternal battlements and turrets, the light mist floated, every moment varying its shapes, now unveiling some stupendous ledge or crag, and then shrouding it in thick darkness. The pass of Llanberis is part of the Snowdon range; but old Snowdon himself was all day enveloped entirely in clouds.

I observed one curious effect of wind in this pass. As I was walking along the road where it is cut out of a ledge of rock, and leaves a deep defile below, I heard a noise on the lower side, as of a rushing stream chafing its base. I stepped to the wall at the roadside, and perceived that it was, not water, but wind-a mountain gust so powerful, that it was necessary to hold on my hat as I leaned over. I stepped back but four feet, and all was quiet-the air was still. I repeated the experiment several times, with the same result.

For another description of scenery in Wales, imagine something like the following: A deep dingle, sinking almost beneath you, at the roadside, with a little lane winding down through hawthorn hedges to one or two cottages half covered with ivy and overshadowed with trees; just beyond, rising and boldly swelling up from the chasm below, a noble sweep of hills, cultivated to the very top, yet not bare and naked as it probably would be in America-cultivated and rich, but studded with beautiful clumps of trees; a ploughed field sweeping gracefully around a little grove; a pasture dotted over with noble oaks; the fences on all sides verdant hedges, not always well clipped to be sure, but beautiful in the distance, &c. Now, if you will introduce on the other side,

ragged, bold, precipitous mountains, like those of the pass of Llanberis, with goats far up among the steepest ledges, quietly cropping the grass that springs among the rocks, or sleeping on the very brink, you will have a panorama of the scenery of North Wales.

GENERAL REMARKS.-The houses (always of stone or brick, by the bye) are commonly low, miserable habitations. I went into severalthose of the cottagers and small farmers, I mean—and I never saw a wooden floor upon any of them. They were paved with stone; or more commonly not even that accommodation was afforded. The women I thought handsomer than those of England-I speak of the common people-the faces not so bold, marked, and prominent, indeed not enough so, but more delicate. This provincial or national difference of countenances is certainly very curious. I perceived it as soon as I was in Wales.

CHAPTER II.

DUBLIN - ARCHITECTURE OF CITIES-BEGGARS-ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL— MRS. HEMANS-DROGHEDA-IRISH COTTAGES-PEAT BOGS -BELFAST SCENERY AND PEOPLE OF THE NORTH OF IRELAND — CARRICK-A-REDEGIANT'S CAUSEWAY-CASTLE OF DUNLUCE-STEAMER TO GLASGOW.

DUBLIN, July 5, 1833.-I am glad to get a pleasant impression of any spot in Ireland; Dublin is a fine city. It resembles Philadelphia in two respects-its regular ranges of buildings, and its fine open squares. What a pity it is, that cities, or at least streets in cities, could not, like single edifices, be built upon some regular and well-considered plan! Not that the result should be such regularity as is seen in Philadelphia or Dublin; the plan, indeed, would embrace irregularity. But there might be an arrangement, by which a block of buildings, a street, or, indeed, a whole city, might stand before us as one grand piece of architecture. If single specimens of architecture have the effect to improve, humanize, and elevate the ideas of a people, if they are a language, and answer a purpose kindred to that of literature, poetry, and painting, why may not a whole city have this effect? To secure this result, there must, I am afraid, be a power like that of the autocrat of Russia, who, I am told, when a house is built, in his royal city of St. Petersburgh, which does not conform to his general plan, sends word to the owner, that he must remove that building and put up another of a certain description. But as we have not, and will not have, any such power exercised among us, I suppose we must have such cities as Boston and New York, such streets as Broadway: which is a sort of language, too, which sets forth visibly, in stone and mortar, what is the spirit that reigns in our country-the very personification of the principle of individuality-where every one builds to please himself, and pleases to build differently from his neighbour-usually a little higher. It is a principle that spoils a city; that it will make a people, is the reflection in which we must find our comfort.

But to return. Dublin is, indeed, a fine city, and filled with noble mansions and showy equipages; but alas! all is marred by this dismal