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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #52539 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52539)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beautiful Wales, by Edward Thomas
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Beautiful Wales
-
-Author: Edward Thomas
-
-Commentator: Robert Fowler
-             Alex J. Finberg
-
-Release Date: July 9, 2016 [EBook #52539]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL WALES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                            BEAUTIFUL WALES
-
-
-                           AGENTS IN AMERICA
-                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
-                     64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
-
-[Illustration: THE STACK, HOLYHEAD]
-
-
-
-
-                            BEAUTIFUL WALES
-
-
-                        PAINTED BY ROBERT
-                        FOWLER · R·I · DESCRIBED
-                        BY EDWARD THOMAS
-                        WITH A NOTE ON MR.
-                        FOWLER'S LANDSCAPES
-                        BY ALEX. J. FINBERG
-                        PUBLISHED BY A. & C.
-                        BLACK · LONDON · MCMV
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-                                PREFACE
-
-
-A few of my jests, impressions of scenery, and portraits in this book
-have already been printed in _The Daily Chronicle_, _The World_, _The
-Week's Survey_, _The Outlook_, and _The Illustrated London News_. I have
-only to add that the line of verse on p. 34 is by Mr. Ernest Rhys; the
-lines on p. 71 are by Mr. T. Sturge Moore; and those on pp. 130 and 178
-by Mr. Gordon Bottomley: and to confess, chiefly for the benefit of the
-solemn reviewer, that I know nothing of the Welsh language.
-
-                                                          EDWARD THOMAS.
-
-
-
-
-                                CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                                   PAGE
-                               CHAPTER I
-
- PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON MEN, AUTHORS, AND THINGS IN WALES             1
-
-
-                               CHAPTER II
-
- ENTERING WALES                                                      28
-
-
-                              CHAPTER III
-
- A FARMHOUSE UNDER A MOUNTAIN, A FIRE, AND SOME FIRESIDERS           41
-
-
-                               CHAPTER IV
-
- TWO MINISTERS, A BARD, A SCHOOLMASTER, AN INNKEEPER, AND OTHERS     55
-
-
-                               CHAPTER V
-
- WALES MONTH BY MONTH                                                99
-
-
-                                APPENDIX
-
- A NOTE ON MR. FOWLER'S LANDSCAPES, BY ALEXANDER J. FINBERG         201
-
-
-
-
-                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-  1. The Stack, Holyhead                                  _Frontispiece_
-
-                                                             FACING PAGE
-
-  2. Summer Evening, Anglesey Coast                                    2
-
-  3. Yachts, Anglesey Coast                                            4
-
-  4. Beaumaris—Moonlight                                               6
-
-  5. The Beach, Beaumaris                                              8
-
-  6. The Trout Stream                                                 12
-
-  7. Near Menai Straits                                               14
-
-  8. Near Bangor                                                      18
-
-  9. A Footpath on the Great Orme                                     20
-
- 10. A View from the Great Orme's Head                                24
-
- 11. Old Cottage and Ruins of Abbey, Great Orme's Head                26
-
- 12. Breezy Morning, Llandudno Bay                                    28
-
- 13. Country Lane                                                     30
-
- 14. A Nocturne, Llandudno Bay                                        32
-
- 15. Conway from Benarth—Early Morning                                36
-
- 16. Near Colwyn Bay                                                  38
-
- 17. Distant View of Penmaenmawr—Early Morning Light                  42
-
- 18. Silvery Light, Conway Shore                                      44
-
- 19. A Mountain Pass—Noon                                             48
-
- 20. Conway Castle and Quay—Noon                                      50
-
- 21. Conway Valley                                                    54
-
- 22. Carnarvon, from Anglesey                                         56
-
- 23. Boddnant Hall, Conway Valley                                     60
-
- 24. Carnarvon Castle                                                 62
-
- 25. Distant View of Carnarvon Bay                                    66
-
- 26. On the River Seiont, Carnarvonshire—Evening Glow                 68
-
- 27. Bridge, Cwm-y-Glo—Evening                                        72
-
- 28. Field Path, near Llanrug                                         74
-
- 29. Windy Day, near Llanrug                                          78
-
- 30. Morning Mists, near Trefriw                                      80
-
- 31. Distant View of Bettws-y-Coed                                    82
-
- 32. The Old Bridge, Bettws-y-Coed                                    84
-
- 33. Swallow Falls, Bettws-y-Coed                                     86
-
- 34. Fairy Glen, Bettws-y-Coed                                        90
-
- 35. Church Pool, Bettws-y-Coed                                       92
-
- 36. Miner's Bridge on River Llugwy                                   96
-
- 37. Sunny Field, near Llanberis                                     100
-
- 38. Welsh Farm, near Llanberis                                      104
-
- 39. Snowdon from Cwm-y-Glo                                          106
-
- 40. Snowdon from Llanberis Lake                                     108
-
- 41. Snowdon from Traeth Mawr                                        110
-
- 42. Snowdon from Capel Curig Lake—Summer Evening                    114
-
- 43. In the Lledr Valley                                             116
-
- 44. Duffws Mountain                                                 120
-
- 45. Duffws Mountain in Mist                                         122
-
- 46. Coming Night, near Beddgelert                                   126
-
- 47. Aberglaslyn                                                     128
-
- 48. View of Moelwyn                                                 132
-
- 49. A Hayfield near Portmadoc                                       134
-
- 50. Valle Crucis Abbey                                              136
-
- 51. View of Llangollen                                              138
-
- 52. A Lonely Shore near Penrhyn Deudraeth                           140
-
- 53. The Shore near Harlech—Afternoon                                142
-
- 54. In the Woods, Farchynys, Barmouth Estuary                       146
-
- 55. Incoming Tide, near Barmouth                                    148
-
- 56. Barmouth Bridge                                                 152
-
- 57. Misty Morning, near Barmouth                                    154
-
- 58. A Lonely Shore, Barmouth Estuary                                156
-
- 59. View from Bontddu, Dolgelly                                     158
-
- 60. Thundery Weather, near Dolgelly                                 160
-
- 61. Near Penmaen Pool—Noon                                          162
-
- 62. View of Cader Idris                                             164
-
- 63. Mist on Cader Idris                                             168
-
- 64. In the Woods, Berwyn                                            170
-
- 65. Aberdovey                                                       172
-
- 66. Sunny Afternoon, Cardigan Bay                                   176
-
- 67. A Sudden Squall, Cardigan Bay                                   178
-
- 68. St. David's—Bishop's Palace                                     180
-
- 69. The Stacks, near Tenby                                          182
-
- 70. St. Catherine's Rock, Tenby                                     186
-
- 71. Old Roman Bridge, near Swansea                                  188
-
- 72. View near Mumbles, Swansea                                      192
-
- 73. Pennard Castle, Glamorganshire                                  194
-
- 74. Old Castle Keep, Cardiff                                        198
-
-  _The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed in
-                                England
-                     by Hentschel Colourtype, Ltd._
-
-
-                                 WALES
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER I
-        PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON MEN, AUTHORS, AND THINGS IN WALES
-
-
-Among friends and acquaintances and authors, I have met many men who
-have seen and read more of Wales than I can ever do. But I am somewhat
-less fearful in writing about the country, inasmuch as few of them seem
-to know the things which I know, and fewer still in the same way. When I
-read their books or hear them speak, I am interested, pleased, amazed,
-but seldom am I quite sure that we mean the same thing by Wales;
-sometimes I am sure that we do not. One man writes of the country as the
-home of legends, whose irresponsibility puzzles him, whose naïveté
-shocks him. Another, and his name is legion, regards it as littered with
-dead men's bones, among which a few shepherds and miners pick their way
-without caring for the lover of bones. Another, of the same venerable
-and numerous family as the last, has admired the silver lake of
-Llanberis or blue Plynlimmon; has been pestered by the pronunciation of
-Machynlleth, and has carried away a low opinion of the whole language
-because his own attempts at uttering it are unmelodious and even
-disgusting; has fallen entirely in love with the fragrant Welsh ham,
-preferring it, in fact, to the curer and the cook. Others, who have not,
-as a rule, gone the length of visiting the persons they condemn, call
-the Welshmen thieving, lying, religious, and rebellious knaves. Others
-would repeat with fervour the verse which Evan sings in Ben Jonson's
-masque, _For the Honour of Wales_:
-
-                And once but taste o' the Welsh mutton,
-                Your English seep's not worth a button:
-
-and so they would conclude, admitting that the trout are good when
-caught. Some think, and are not afraid of saying, that Wales will be
-quite a good place (in the season) when it has been chastened a little
-by English enterprise: and I should not be surprised were they to begin
-by introducing English sheep, though I hardly see what would be done
-with them, should they be cut up and exposed for sale. The great
-disadvantage of Wales seems to be that it is not England, and the only
-solution is for the malcontents to divide their bodies, and, leaving one
-part in their native land, to have the rest sent to Wales, as they used
-to send Welsh princes to enjoy the air of two, three, and even four
-English towns, at the same time and in an elevated position.
-
-[Illustration: SUMMER EVENING, ANGLESEY COAST]
-
-Then also there are the benevolent writers of books, who have for a
-century repeated, sometimes not unmusically, the words of a fellow who
-wrote in 1798, that the beauty of Llangollen "has been universally
-allowed by gentlemen of distinguished taste," and that, in short, many
-parts of Wales "have excited the applause of tourists and poets." Would
-that many of them had been provided with pens like those at the
-catalogue desks of the British Museum! Admirable pens! that may be put
-to so many uses and should be put into so many hands to-day and
-to-morrow. Admirable pens! and yet no one has praised them before.
-Admirable pens that will not write; and, by the way, how unlike those
-which wrote this:—
-
-"Caldecot Castle, a grand and spacious edifice of high antiquity, occurs
-to arrest the observation of the passing stranger about two miles beyond
-the new passage; appearing at no great distance across the meadows that
-lie to the left of the Newport road. The shattered remnants of this
-curious example of early military architecture are still so far
-considerable as to be much more interesting than we could possibly have
-been at first aware, and amply repaid the trouble of a visit we bestowed
-upon it, in our return through Monmouthshire by the way of Caldecot
-village. In the distance truly it does not fail to impress the mind with
-some idea of its ancient splendour, for it assumes an aspect of no
-common dignity: a friendly mantling of luxuriant ivy improves, in an
-eminent degree, the picturesque effect of its venerable mouldering
-turrets; and, upon the whole, the ruin altogether would appear
-unquestionably to great advantage, were it, fortunately for the admirers
-of artless beauty, stationed in a more conspicuous situation, like the
-greater number of edifices of a similar nature in other parts of the
-country."
-
-The decency, the dignity, the gentlemanliness (_circa_ 1778), the
-fatuity of it, whether they tickle or affront, are more fascinating than
-many better but less portentous things. There was, too, a Fellow of the
-Royal Society who said in the last century that, in the Middle Ages, St.
-Winifred's Well and Chapel, and the river, and Basingwerk, must have
-been "worthy of a photograph."
-
-[Illustration: YACHTS, ANGLESEY COAST]
-
-Yet there are two others who might make any crowd respectable—the
-lively, the keen-eyed, the versatile Mr. A. G. Bradley, and George
-Borrow, whose very name has by this time absorbed and come to imply more
-epithets than I have room to give. From the former, a contemporary, it
-would be effrontery to quote. From the latter I allow myself the
-pleasure of quoting at least this, and with the more readiness because
-hereafter it cannot justly be said that this book does not contain a
-fine thing about Wales. Borrow had just been sitting (bareheaded) in the
-outdoor chair of Huw Morus, whose songs he had read "in the most distant
-part of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy"; and on his way back to
-Llangollen, he had gone into a little inn, where the Tarw joins the
-Ceiriog brook. "'We have been to Pont-y-Meibion,' said Jones, 'to see
-the chair of Huw Morus,' adding, that the Gwr Boneddig was a great
-admirer of the songs of the Eos Ceiriog. He had no sooner said these
-words than the intoxicated militiaman started up, and, striking the
-table with his fist, said: 'I am a poor stone-cutter—this is a rainy day
-and I have come here to pass it in the best way I can. I am somewhat
-drunk, but though I am a poor stone-mason, a private in the militia, and
-not so sober as I should be, I can repeat more of the songs of the Eos
-than any man alive, however great a gentleman, however sober—more than
-Sir Watkin, more than Colonel Biddulph himself.'
-
-"He then began to repeat what appeared to be poetry, for I could
-distinguish the rhymes occasionally, though owing to his broken
-utterance it was impossible for me to make out the sense of the words.
-Feeling a great desire to know what verses of Huw Morus the intoxicated
-youth would repeat, I took out my pocket-book and requested Jones, who
-was much better acquainted with Welsh pronunciation, under any
-circumstances, than myself, to endeavour to write down from the mouth of
-the young fellow any verses uppermost in his mind. Jones took the
-pocket-book and pencil and went to the window, followed by the young
-man, scarcely able to support himself. Here a curious scene took place,
-the drinker hiccuping up verses, and Jones dotting them down, in the
-best manner he could, though he had evidently great difficulty to
-distinguish what was said to him. At last methought the young man said,
-'There they are, the verses of the Nightingale (Eos), on his
-deathbed....'
-
-[Illustration: BEAUMARIS—MOONLIGHT]
-
-"... A scene in a public-house, yes! but in a Welsh public-house. Only
-think of a Suffolk toper repeating the deathbed verses of a poet; surely
-there is a considerable difference between the Celt and the Saxon?"
-
-But the number is so great of sensible, educated men who have written on
-Wales, or would have written if business or pleasure or indolence or
-dislike of fame had not prevented them, that either I find it impossible
-to visit the famous places (and if I visit them, my predecessors fetter
-my capacity and actually put in abeyance the powers of the places), or,
-very rarely, I see that they were imperfect tellers of the truth, and
-yet feel myself unwilling to say an unpleasant new thing of village or
-mountain because it will not be believed, and a pleasant one because it
-puts so many excellent people in the wrong. Of Wales, therefore, as a
-place consisting of Llandudno, Llangammarch, Llanwrtyd, Builth,
-Barmouth, Penmaenmawr, Llanberis, Tenby, ... and the adjacent streams
-and mountains, I cannot speak. At ——, indeed, I ate poached salmon and
-found it better than any preserver of rivers would admit; it was dressed
-and served by an Eluned (Lynette), with a complexion so like a rose that
-I missed the fragrance, and movements like those of a fountain when the
-south wind blows; and all the evening they sang, or when they did not
-sing, their delicate voices made "llech" and "llawr" lovely words: but I
-remember nothing else. At —— I heard some one playing _La ci darem la
-mano_: and I remember nothing else. Then, too, there was ——, with its
-castle and cross and the memory of the anger of a king: and I remember
-that the rain outside my door was the only real thing in the world
-except the book in my hand; for the trees were as the dreams of one who
-does not care for dreams; the mountains were as things on a map; and the
-men and women passing were but as words unspoken and without melody. All
-I remember of —— is that, as I drew near to it on a glorious wet Sunday
-in winter, on the stony roads, the soles began to leave my boots. I knew
-no one there; I was to reach a place twelve miles ahead among the
-mountains; I was assured that nobody in the town would cobble on Sunday:
-and I began to doubt whether, after all, I had been wise in steadily
-preferring football boots to good-looking things at four times the
-price; when, finally, I had the honour of meeting a Baptist—a
-Christian—a man—who, for threepence, fixed my soles so firmly that he
-assured me they would last until I reached the fiery place to which he
-believed I was travelling, and serve me well there. I distrusted his
-theology, and have yet to try them on "burning marl," but they have
-taken me some hundreds of miles on earth since then.
-
-[Illustration: THE BEACH, BEAUMARIS]
-
-It would be an impertinence to tell the reader what Llangollen is like,
-especially as he probably knows and I do not. Also, I confess that its
-very notoriety stupefies me, and I see it through a cloud of newspapers
-and books, and amid a din of applausive voices, above which towers a
-tremendous female form "like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved," which I
-suppose to be Lady Eleanor Butler.
-
-Nevertheless, I will please myself and the discerning reader by
-repeating the names of a few of the places to which I have never been,
-or of which I will not speak, namely, Llangollen, Aberglaslyn,
-Bettws-y-Coed, the Fairy Glen, Capel Curig, Colwyn, Tintern, Bethesda,
-Llanfairfechan, Llanrhaiadr, Llanynys, Tenby (a beautiful flower with a
-beetle in it), Mostyn, Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr, Penmaenmawr,
-Pen-y-Gader, Pen-y-Gwryd, Prestatyn, Tremadoc, the Swallow Falls, the
-Devil's Bridge, the Mumbles, Harlech, Portmadoc, Towyn, and Aberdovey
-(with its song and still a poet there). I have read many lyrics worse
-than that inventory.
-
-                  *       *       *       *       *
-
-But there is another kind of human being—to use a comprehensive
-term—of which I stand in almost as much awe as of authors and those
-who know the famous things of Wales. I mean the lovers of the Celt.
-They do not, of course, confine their love—which in its extent and its
-tenuity reminds one of a very great personage indeed—to the Celt; but
-more perhaps than the Japanese or the Chinese or the Sandwich Islander
-the Celt has their hearts; and I know of one who not only learned to
-speak Welsh badly, but had the courage to rise at a public meeting and
-exhort the (Welsh-speaking) audience to learn their "grand mother
-tongue." Their aim and ideal is to go about the world in a state of
-self-satisfied dejection, interrupted, and perhaps sustained, by days
-when they consume strange mixed liquors to the tune of all the fine
-old Celtic songs which are fashionable. If you can discover a possible
-Celtic great-grandmother, you are at once among the chosen. I cannot
-avoid the opinion that to boast of the Celtic spirit is to confess you
-have it not. But, however that may be, and speaking as one who is
-afraid of definitions, I should be inclined to call these lovers of
-the Celt a class of "decadents," not unrelated to Mallarmé, and of
-æsthetes, not unrelated to Postlethwaite. They are sophisticated,
-neurotic—the fine flower of sounding cities—often producing exquisite
-verse and prose; preferring _crême de menthe_ and _opal hush_ to
-metheglin or stout, and Kensington to Eryri and Connemara; and
-perplexed in the extreme by the Demetian with his taste in wall-papers
-quite untrained. Probably it all came from Macpherson's words, "They
-went forth to battle and they always fell"; just as much of their
-writing is to be traced to the vague, unobservant things in Ossian, or
-in the proud, anonymous Irishman who wrote _Fingal_ in six cantos in
-1813. The latter is excellent in this vein. "Let none then despise,"
-he writes, "the endeavour, however humble, now made, even by the aid
-of fiction, to throw light upon the former manners and customs of _one
-of the oldest and noblest nations of the earth_. That _once we were_,
-is all we have left to boast of; that _once we were_, we have record
-upon record.... We yet can show the stately pharos where waved the
-chieftain's banner, and the wide ruin where the palace stood—the
-palace once the pride of ages and the theme of song—once _Emuin a luin
-Aras Ullah_." The reader feels that it is a baseness to exist. Mr.
-John Davidson, who, of course, is as far removed from the professional
-Celt as a battle-axe from a toothpick, has put something like the
-fashionable view majestically into the mouth of his "Prime Minister":
-
-             ... That offscouring of the Eastern world,
-             The melancholy Celt, whom Latin, Greek,
-             And Teuton drove through Europe to the rocks,
-             The utmost isles and precincts of the sea;
-             Who fight for fighting's sake, and understand
-             No meaning in defeat, having no cause
-             At heart, no depth of purpose, no profound
-             Desire, no inspiration, no belief;—
-             A twilight people living in a dream,
-             A withered dream they never had themselves,
-             A faded heirloom that their fathers dreamt:
-             How much more happy these had they destroyed
-             The spell of life at once, and so escaped
-             An unregarded martyrdom, the consciousness
-             Of inefficience and the world's contempt.
-
-[Illustration: THE TROUT STREAM]
-
-                        "An Earth-born coolness
-                        Coloured with the sky."
-
-But it is probably true that when one has said that the typical Celt is
-seldom an Imperialist, a great landowner, a brewer, a cabinet minister,
-or (in Wales, at least) a member of the Salvation Army, one has
-exhausted the list of his weaknesses; and that not greatly wanting to be
-one of these things, he has endeared himself to those to-day who have
-set their hearts on gold and applause and have not gained them, and
-those few others who never sought them. I heard of a pathetic, plausible
-stockbroker's clerk the other day, who, having spent his wife's money
-and been at last discovered by his tailor, took comfort in studying his
-pedigree, which included a possibly Welsh Lewis high upon the extreme
-right. He was sufficiently advanced in philology to find traces of an
-Ap' in his name, which was Piper, and he could repeat some of Ossian by
-heart with great emotion and less effect. I prefer the kind of Celt whom
-I met in Wales one August night. It was a roaring wet night, and I
-stepped into the shelter of a bridge to light a pipe. As I paused to see
-if it was dawn yet, I heard a noise which I supposed to be the breathing
-of a cow. My fishing-rod struck the bridge; the noise ceased, and I
-heard something move in the darkness close by. I confess that my pipe
-went out when, without warning, a joyous, fighting baritone voice rose
-and shook the bridge with the words.
-
-                Through all the changing scenes of life,
-                  In trouble and in joy,
-                The praises of my God shall still
-                  My heart and tongue employ.
-
-The voice sang all the verses of the hymn, and then laughed loudly, yet
-with a wonderful serenity. Then a man stood up heavily with a sound like
-a flock of starlings suddenly taking flight. I lit a match and held it
-to his face and looked at him, and saw a fair-skinned, high-cheek-boned
-face, wizened like a walnut, with much black hair about it, that yet did
-not conceal the flat, straight, eloquent mouth. He lit a match and held
-it to my face, and looked at me and laughed again. Finding that I could
-pronounce Bwlch-y-Rhiw, he was willing to talk and to share the beer in
-my satchel. And he told me that he had played many parts—he was always
-playing—before he took to the road: he had been a booking-office clerk,
-a soldier, a policeman, a gamekeeper, and put down what he called his
-variability to "the feminine gender." He would not confess where he had
-been to school, and his one touch of melancholy came when, to show that
-he had once known Latin, he began to repeat, in vaguely divided
-hexameters, the passage in the _Aeneid_ which begins _Est in conspectu
-Tenedos_. For he could not go on after _At Capys_ and was angry with
-himself. But he recalled being caned for the same inability, and laughed
-once more. Every other incident remembered only fed his cheerfulness.
-Everything human had his praise,—General Buller in particular. I cannot
-say the same of his attitude towards the divine. His conversation raised
-my spirits, and I suppose that the bleared and dripping dawn can have
-peered on few less melancholy men than we. "Life," said he, "is a
-plaguey thing: only I don't often remember it." And as he left me, he
-remarked, apologetically, that he "always had been a cheerful ——, and
-couldn't be miserable," and did me the honour of supposing that in this
-he resembled me.
-
-[Illustration: NEAR MENAI STRAITS]
-
-He went off singing, in Welsh, something not in the least like a hymn to
-a fine victorious hymn tune, but had changed, before I was out of
-hearing, to the plaintive, adoring "Ar hyd y nos." And I remembered the
-proverbial saying of the Welsh, that "the three strong ones of the
-world" are "a lord, a headstrong man, and a pauper."
-
-                  *       *       *       *       *
-
-Having heard and read the aforesaid authors, tourists, higher
-philatelists, and lovers of the Celt, I need hardly say, firstly, that I
-have come under their influence; secondly, that I have tried to avoid
-it; and thirdly, that I am not equal to the task of apportioning the
-blame between them and myself for what I write.
-
-And, first, let me ease my memory and pamper my eyes, and possibly make
-a reader's brain reverberate with the sound of them, by giving the names
-of some of the streams and lakes and villages I have known in Wales. And
-among the rivers, there are Ebbw and Usk, that cut across my childhood
-with silver bars, and cloud it with their apple flowers and their
-mountain-ash trees, and make it musical with the curlew's despair and
-the sound of the blackbird singing in Eden still; and Towy and Teivy and
-Cothi and Ystwyth; and, shyer streams, the old, deserted, perhaps
-deserted, pathways of the early gods, the Dulais and Marlais and Gwili
-and Aman and Cenen and Gwenlais and Gwendraeth Fawr and Sawdde and
-Sawdde Fechan and Twrch and Garw; and those nameless but not
-unremembered ones (and yet surely no river in Wales but has a name if
-one could only know it well enough) that crossed the road like welcomed
-lingerers from some happier day, flashing and snake-like, and ever about
-to vanish and never vanishing, and vocal all in reed or pebble or sedge,
-some deep enough for a sewin, others too shallow to wash the dust from
-the little pea-like toes of the barefooted child that learns from them
-how Nile and Ganges flow, and why Abana and Pharpar were dear, and why
-these are more sweet; and there is Llwchwr, whose voice is bright in
-constant shadow; and Wye; and the little river in a stony valley of
-Gower which at first reminded me, and always reminds me, of the
-adventure of Sir Marhaus, Sir Gawaine, and Sir Uwaine.
-
-"And so they rode, and came into a deep valley full of stones, and
-thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was the head of
-the stream a fair fountain, and three damosels sitting thereby. And then
-they rode to them, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a
-garland of gold about her head, and she was threescore winter of age or
-more, and her hair was white under the garland. The second damosel was
-of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. The
-third damosel was but fifteen year of age, and a garland of flowers
-about her head. When the knights had so beheld them, they asked them the
-cause why they sat at that fountain? 'We be here,' said the damosels,
-'for this cause: if we may see any errant knights, to teach them unto
-strange adventures; and ye be three knights that seeken adventures, and
-we be three damosels, and therefore each one of you must choose one of
-us; and when ye have done so we will lead you unto three highways, and
-there each of you shall choose a way and his damosel with him. And this
-day twelvemonth ye must meet here again, and God send you your lives,
-and thereto ye must plight your troth.' 'This is well said,' said Sir
-Marhaus." And no other than a Welsh story-teller could have made that
-clear picture of the three damosels.
-
-And there is Severn in its wild and unnoted childhood, its lovely and
-gallant youth, its noble and romantic prime, as it leaves Wales and
-passes Shrewsbury, the pattern of all famous streams—
-
-               Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros;
-
-and its solemn, grey, and mighty and worldly-wise old age, listening to
-its latest daughter the Wye, where it has
-
-              A cry from the sea, a cry from the mountain;
-
-and Clwyd and Conway and Ceiriog and Aled and Dovey, streams that
-remember princes and bards; and the little waters flowing from Cwellyn
-Lake, of which a story is told.
-
-[Illustration: NEAR BANGOR]
-
-Near the river which falls from Cwellyn Lake, they say that the fairies
-used to dance in a meadow on fair moonlit nights. One evening the heir
-to the farm of Ystrad, to which the meadow belonged, hid himself in a
-thicket near the meadow. And while the fairies were dancing, he ran out
-and carried off one of the fairy women. The others at once disappeared.
-She resisted and cried, but he led her to his home, where he was tender
-to her, so that she was willing to remain as his maid-servant. But she
-would not tell him her name. Some time afterward he again saw the
-fairies in the meadow and overheard one of them saying, "The last time
-we met here, our sister Penelope was snatched away from us by one of the
-mortals." So he returned and offered to marry her, because she was
-hard-working and beautiful. For a long time she would not consent; but
-at last she gave way, on the condition "that if ever he should strike
-her with iron, she would leave him and never return to him again." They
-were happy together for many years; and she bore him a son and a
-daughter; and so wise and active was she, that he became one of the
-richest men of that country, and besides the farm of Ystrad, he farmed
-all the lands on the north side of Nant-y-Bettws to the top of Snowdon,
-and all Cwm Brwynog in Llanberis, or about five thousand acres. But one
-day Penelope went with him into a field to catch a horse; and as the
-horse ran away from him, he was angry and threw the bridle at him, but
-struck Penelope instead. She disappeared. He never saw her again, but
-one night afterward he heard her voice at his window, asking him to take
-care of the children, in these words:
-
-                Oh, lest my son should suffer cold,
-                Him in his father's coat enfold:
-                Lest cold should seize my darling fair,
-                For her, her mother's robe prepare.
-
-These children and their descendants were called the Pellings, says the
-teller of the tale; and "there are," he adds, "still living several
-opulent and respectable persons who are known to have sprung from the
-_Pellings_. The best blood in my own veins is this fairy's."
-
-[Illustration: A FOOTPATH ON THE GREAT ORME]
-
-And of lakes, I have known Llyn-y-Fan Fach, the lonely, deep, gentle
-lake on the Caermarthen Fan, two thousand feet high, where, if the dawn
-would but last a few moments longer, or could one swim but just once
-more across, or sink but a little lower in its loving icy depths, one
-would have such dreams that the legend of the shepherd and the lady whom
-he loved and gained and lost upon the edge of it would fade away: and
-Llyn Llech Owen, and have wondered that only one legend should be
-remembered of those that have been born of all the gloom and the golden
-lilies and the plover that glories in its loneliness; for I stand in
-need of a legend when I come down to it through rolling heathery land,
-through bogs, among blanched and lichened crags, and the deep sea of
-heather, with a few flowers and many withered ones, of red and purple
-whin, of gorse and gorse-flower, and (amongst the gorse) a grey curling
-dead grass, which all together make the desolate colour of a "black
-mountain"; and when I see the water for ever waved except among the
-weeds in the centre, and see the waterlily leaves lifted and resembling
-a flock of wild-fowl, I cannot always be content to see it so remote, so
-entirely inhuman, and like a thing a poet might make to show a fool what
-solitude was, and as it remains with its one poor legend of a man who
-watered his horse at a well, and forgot to cover it with the stone, and
-riding away, saw the water swelling over the land from the well, and
-galloped back to stop it, and saw the lake thus created and bounded by
-the track of his horse's hooves; and thus it is a thing from the
-beginning of the world that has never exchanged a word with men, and now
-never will, since we have forgotten the language, though on some days
-the lake seems not to have forgotten it. And I have known the sombre
-Cenfig water among the sands, where I found the wild goose feather with
-which I write.
-
-And I have seen other waters; but least of them all can I forget the
-little unnecessary pool that waited alongside a quiet road and near a
-grim, black village. Reed and rush and moss guarded one side of it, near
-the road; a few hazels overhung the other side; and in their
-discontented writhing roots there was always an empty moorhen's nest,
-and sometimes I heard the bird hoot unseen (a sound by which the pool
-complained, as clearly as the uprooted trees over the grave of Polydorus
-complained), and sometimes in the unkind grey haze of winter dawns, I
-saw her swimming as if vainly she would disentangle herself from the two
-golden chains of ripples behind her. In the summer, the surface was a
-lawn of duckweed on which the gloom from the hazels found something to
-please itself with, in a slow meditative way, by showing how green could
-grow from a pure emerald, at the edge of the shadow, into a brooding
-vapourish hue in the last recesses of the hazels. The smell of it made
-one shudder at it, as at poison. An artist would hardly dare to sit near
-enough to mark all the greens, like a family of snaky essences, from the
-ancient and mysterious one within to the happy one in the sun. When the
-duckweed had dissolved in December, the pool did but whisper that of all
-things in that season, when
-
-             Blue is the mist and hollow the corn parsnep,
-
-it alone rejoiced. It was in sight of the smoke and the toy-like
-chimney-stacks of the village, of new houses all around, and of the
-mountains. It had no possible use—nothing would drink of it. It did not
-serve as a sink, like the blithe stream below. It produced neither a
-legend nor a brook. It was a whole half-acre given up to a moorhen and
-innumerable frogs. It was not even beautiful. And yet, there was the
-divinity of the place, embodied, though there was no need for that, in
-the few broken brown reeds that stood all the winter, each like a
-capital Greek _lambda_, out of the water. When the pool harboured the
-image of the moon for an hour in a winter night, it seemed to be
-comforted. But when the image had gone, the loss of that lovely captive
-was more eloquent than the little romantic hour. And I think that, after
-all, the pool means the beauty of a pure negation, the sweetness of
-utter and resolved despair, the greatness of Death itself.
-
-And I have been to Abertillery, Pontypool, Caerleon, infernal Landore,
-Gower, Pontardulais, Dafen, Llanedi, Llanon (where only the little Gwili
-runs, but good children are told that they shall go to Llanon docks),
-Pen-y-Groes, Capel Hendre, Maesy-bont, Nantgaredig, Bolgoed, Pentre
-Bach, Bettws, Amanford, Llandebie, Pentre Gwenlais, Derwydd, Ffairfach,
-Llandeilo, Tal-y-Llychau, Brynamman, Gwynfe, Llanddeusant, Myddfai,
-Cil-y-Cwm, Rhandir Mwyn, and the farms beyond,—Maes Llwyn Fyddau,
-Bwlch-y-Rhiw, Garthynty, Nant-yr-ast, Blaen Cothi, Blaen
-Twrch,—Llanddewi Brefi, Tregaron, Pont Llanio, Llanelltyd, Bettws
-Garmon, Bala, Aber Dusoch.... And I have crossed many "black" mountains,
-and Gareg Lwyd, Gareg Las, the Banau Sir Gaer, Crugian Ladies, Caeo,
-Bryn Ceilogiau, Craig Twrch, and Craig-y-Ddinas....
-
-[Illustration: A VIEW FROM THE GREAT ORME'S HEAD]
-
-The chapels and churches, Siloh, Ebenezer, Llanedi, Llandefan,
-Abergwesyn, Llanddeusant, ... but I dare not name them lest I should
-disturb some one's dreams, or invite some one to disturb my own. They
-are all in the admirable guide-books, which say nothing of the calm and
-the nettles and the shining lizards and the sleepy luxurious Welsh
-reading of the lessons at ——; and the wet headstones at ——, where you
-may lean on any Sunday in the rain and hear the hymn take heaven by
-storm, and quarrel melodiously upon the heights, and cease and leave the
-soul wandering in the rain as far from heaven as Paolo and Francesca in
-their drifts of flame; and ——, white and swept and garnished, and always
-empty, and always lighted by a twilight four hundred years old, the door
-being open and ready to receive some god or goddess that delays; and
-Soar at ——, so blank, lacking in beauty and even in ugliness,—so blank
-that when one enters, the striving spirit will not be content, and
-perforce takes flight and finds an adventure not unlike that of the man
-who was once returning from Beddgelert fair by a gloomy road, and saw a
-great and splendid house conspicuously full of gaiety in a place where
-no such house had seemed to stand before; and supposing that he had lost
-his way, he asked and was given a lodging, and found the chambers bright
-and sounding with young men and women and children, and slept deeply in
-a fine room, on a soft white bed, and on waking and studying his
-neighbourhood, saw but a bare swamp and a tuft of rushes beneath his
-head.
-
-And there is Siloh at ——, standing bravely,—at night, it often seems
-perilously,—at the end of a road, beyond which rise immense mountains
-and impassable, and, in my memory, always the night and a little, high,
-lonely moon, haunted for ever by a pale grey circle, looking like a
-frail creature which one of the peaks had made to sail for his pleasure
-across the terrible deeps of the sky. But Siloh stands firm, and
-ventures once a week to send up a thin music that avails nothing against
-the wind; although close to it, threatening it, laughing at it, able to
-overwhelm it, should the laugh become cruel, is a company of elder
-trees, which, seen at twilight, are sentinels embossed upon the
-sky—sentinels of the invisible, patient, unconquerable powers: or (if
-one is lighter-hearted) they seem the empty homes of what the mines and
-chapels think they have routed; and at midnight they are not empty, and
-they love the mountain rain, and at times they summon it and talk with
-it, while the preacher thunders and the windows of the chapel gleam.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  OLD COTTAGE AND RUINS OF ABBEY, GREAT ORME'S HEAD
-]
-
-And there is ——, where an ancient, unwrinkled child used to talk in
-gentle, melancholy accents about hell to an assembly of ancient men who
-sometimes muttered "Felly, felly," as men who had heard it so often that
-they longed to be there and to taste and to see; where the young men and
-maidens sang so lustily and well that I wondered the minister never
-heard them, or, hearing, understood them. To the children, when they
-listened, his mild ferocity did but put an edge on the bird's-nesting of
-the day before and the day after. When they did not listen, some of them
-looked through the windows and saw heaven as fresh and gaudy, in the
-flowers of a steep garden close by, as in the coloured pictures of
-apostles and lambs on their bedroom walls; but chiefly in the company of
-delicate lime trees that stood above the garden, on a grassy breast of
-land. The fair, untrodden turf below them shone even when the sun was
-not with it. The foliage of all the limes, in autumn, ripened together
-to the same hue of gold. It burned and was cool. It flamed and yet had
-something in it of the dusk. It was the same as when, many years ago,
-two children saw in it some fellowship with the coloured windows at
-Llandaff, and with the air of an old library that had "golden silence
-and golden speech" over the door. And the trees seemed to be a council
-of blessed creatures devising exquisite enjoyments and plotting to
-outwit the preacher. They might be not ill-chosen deputies of leisure,
-health, and contemplation, and all that fair and reverend family. In the
-cool gloom at the centre of the foliage sat also Mystery, with palms
-linked before her eyelids, unlinking them but seldom, lest seeing might
-shut out visions.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER II
-                             ENTERING WALES
-
-
-The best way into Wales is the way you choose, provided that you care.
-Some may like the sudden modern way of going to sleep at London in a
-train and remaining asleep on a mountain-side, which has the advantage
-of being the most expensive and the least surprising way. Some may like
-to go softly into the land along the Severn, on foot, and going through
-sheath after sheath of the country, to reach at last the heart of it at
-peaty Tregaron, or the soul of it on Plynlimmon itself. Or you may go by
-train at night; and at dawn, on foot, follow a little stream at its own
-pace and live its fortnight's life from mountain to sea.
-
-[Illustration: BREEZY MORNING, LLANDUDNO BAY]
-
-Or you may cross the Severn and then the lower Wye, and taking Tredegar
-and Caerleon alternately, or Rhigws and Landore, or Cardiff and Lantwit,
-or the Rhondda Valley and the Vale of Neath, and thus sharpening the
-spirit, as an epicure may sharpen his palate, by opposites, find true
-Wales everywhere, whether the rivers be ochre and purple with
-corruption, or still as silver as the fountain dew on the mountain's
-beard; whether the complexions of the people be pure as those of the
-young cockle-women of Penclawdd, or as heavily superscribed as those of
-tin-platers preparing to wash. Or you may get no harm by treading in the
-footsteps of that warm-blooded antiquarian, Pennant, who wrote at the
-beginning of his tours in Wales: "With obdurate valour we sustained our
-independency ... against the power of a kingdom more than twelve times
-larger than Wales: and at length had the glory of falling, when a
-divided country, beneath the arms of the most wise and most warlike of
-the English monarchs." That "we" may have saved the soul even of an
-antiquarian.
-
-But the entry I best remember and most love was made by a child whom I
-used to know better than I have known anyone else. He disappeared, after
-a slow process of evanishment, several years ago: and I will use what I
-know as if it were my own, since the first person singular will help me
-to write as if I should never be subjected to the dignity of print,—as
-if I were addressing, not the general reader, but some one who cared.
-
-At a very early age, I (that is to say, he, _bien entendu_) often sat in
-a room in outer London, where I now see that it was probably good to be.
-It was always October there, and the yellow poplar leaves were always
-falling. And so also there was always a fire—a casket in which emeralds
-and sapphires contended with darker spirits continually. Where are the
-poplars now? Where the leaves which loved the frost that spoiled them at
-last? Where the emeralds and sapphires—and the child? There were late
-October twilights that seemed so mighty in their gentleness and so
-terrible in their silence that they alarmed the child with fear of
-desolation, until the spell was suspended by lighted lamps and drawn
-curtains and fearless voices of elder persons, though one could draw the
-curtains and see the thing still, and oneself, and the very fire,
-outside in its embrace. And still
-
-            The jealous ear of night eave-dropped our talk.
-
-[Illustration: COUNTRY LANE]
-
-I think those twilights have overwhelmed all at last, and they have
-their way with child and trees and fire. But they have spared one thing,
-which even in those days was more puissant than the fire, though they
-have left their marks upon it, and now it seems a less mighty thing if
-one goes to it soberly too critically, or even too cheerfully. For a
-picture hung in the room, and the last October sunlight used to fall
-upon it when the silence set in. The picture meant Wales.
-
-In the foreground, a stream shone with ripples in the midst, and glowed
-with foam among the roots of alders at the edge. Branches with white
-berries overhung the stream; and there were hornbeams and writhen oaks;
-and beyond them, a sky with a shaggy and ancient storm in it, and
-wrestling with that, and rising into it, the ruins of an Early English
-chancel. The strength and anger and tenderness and majesty of it were
-one great thought. I still think that could deeds spring panoplied from
-thoughts, and could great thoughts of themselves do anything but flush
-the cheek, such a simply curving landscape as this would be at the
-bidding of one of those great thoughts that empty all the brain....
-Under one of the columns by the chancel, the artist meant to have drawn
-vaguely a pile of masonry and a muscular ivy stem. And that was the
-point of the picture, because it seemed to be a kneeling knight, with
-one forearm on an oval shield and the other buried in his beard, and his
-head bent. I suppose that the thought that it was a knight, and that the
-knight was Launcelot, first came as I looked at the picture once,
-straight from a book where I had been reading:
-
-"Then Sir Launcelot departed, and when he came to the Chapel Perilous,
-he alighted, and tied his horse to a little gate. And as soon as he was
-within the churchyard he saw on the front of the Chapel many fair, rich
-shields turned upside down; and many of the shields Sir Launcelot had
-seen knights have before; with that he saw standing by him thirty great
-knights, more by a yard than any man that he had ever seen, and all
-these grinned and gnashed at Sir Launcelot; and when he saw their
-countenances he dreaded them sore, and so put his shield afore him, and
-took his sword in his hand ready to do battle; and they were all armed
-in black harness, ready with their shields and swords drawn. And when
-Sir Launcelot would have gone through them they scattered on every side
-of him, and gave him the way to pass; and therewith he waxed all bold,
-and entered into the Chapel, and there he saw no light but a dim lamp
-burning, and then he was aware of a corse covered with a cloth of silk.
-And as Sir Launcelot stooped down and cut a piece of the cloth away, the
-earth quaked, and he was afraid...."
-
-[Illustration: A NOCTURNE, LLANDUDNO BAY]
-
-And the picture was a picture of the Chapel Perilous; and thus out of a
-poor story-book and a dear picture and the dim poplars in the dim
-street, I made a Launcelot who was not merely an incredible mediæval
-knight of flesh and armour, but a strange immortal figure that lived and
-was desirable and friendly in the grey rain of a suburb in the
-nineteenth century.
-
-                  *       *       *       *       *
-
-This was the beginning of the creation of Wales. Or shall I say that it
-was the beginning of the discovery? Let the reader decide, with the help
-of the explanation, that I use the words as I should use them of a play
-of Shakespeare's, or a picture of Titian's, or any other living thing
-which grows and changes and is born again, in age after age, as
-certainly and as elusively as the substance of a waterfall is changed;
-even in one moment these things are never the same to any two observers,
-backward or advanced, egotistical or servile, blind or keen....
-
-Looking back, the artistry of time makes it appear that soon after I had
-become certain that the painter had somehow caught Launcelot kneeling at
-the foot of the column, I reached Wales.
-
-There I saw one of the Round Tables of Arthur, but also a porpoise hunt
-in the river close by; and the porpoise threshed the water so that the
-shining spray now hides the Round Table from my view. And I heard the
-national anthem of Wales: and at first I cowered beneath the resolved
-and terrible despair of it, forgetting that—
-
-              In every dirge there sleeps a battle-march;
-
-so that I seemed to look out from the folds of a fantastic purple
-curtain of heavily embroidered fabric upon a fair landscape and an awful
-sky; and I know not whether the landscape or the sky was the more
-fascinating in its mournfulness.
-
-            And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,
-              And trumpets blown for wars,—
-
-and it was of Arthur's last battle that I dreamed. But the sky cleared,
-and I seemed to let go of the folds of the curtain and to see a red
-dragon triumphing and the shielded Sir Launcelot again; and next, it was
-only a tournament that I saw, and there were careless ladies on high
-among the golden dust. And, at last, I could once more think happily of
-the little white house where I lived, and the largest and reddest apples
-in all the world that grew upon the wizened orchard, and the smoked
-salmon and the hams that perfumed the long kitchen, and all the shining
-candlesticks, and the wavy, crisp, thin leaves of oaten bread that were
-eaten there with buttermilk: and the great fire shook his rustling sheaf
-of flames and laughed at the wind and rain that stung the window-panes;
-and sometimes a sense of triumph arose from the glory of the fire and
-the vanity of the wind, and sometimes a sense of fear lest the fire
-should be conspiring with the storm. That also was Wales—a meandering
-village street, the house with the orchard, and a white river in sight
-of it, and the great music of the national anthem hovering over it and
-giving the whole a strange solemnity.
-
-Just beyond the village, but not under the same solemn sky, I see an
-island of apple trees in spring, which in fact belongs to a somewhat
-later year. It was reached by a mile of winding lane that passed the
-slender outmost branches of the village, and lastly, a shining cottage,
-with streaked and mossy thatch, and two little six-paned windows,
-half-filled with many-coloured sweets, and boasting one pane of
-bottle-glass. Outside sat an old woman; her moist, grey, hempen curls
-framing a cruel face which had been made by three or four swift strokes
-of a hatchet; her magnificent brown eyes seeming to ponder heavenly
-things and really looking for half-pence. A picture would have made
-her—wringing her hands slowly as if she were perpetually washing, or
-sitting bolt upright and pleased with her white apron—a type of resigned
-and reverend and beautiful old age. On the opposite side of the road was
-a white and thatched piggery, half the size of the house; and alongside
-of it, a neat, moulded pile of coal-dust, clay, and lime, mixed, for her
-ever-burning fire. The pigs grunted; the old woman, who would herself
-watch the slaughtering, sat and was pleased, and said, "Good morning,"
-and "Good afternoon," and "Good evening" as the day went by, except when
-the children were due to pass to and from school, with half-pence to
-spend.
-
-Just beyond this dragon and its house, an important road crossed the
-lane, which then narrowed and allowed the hedgerow hazels to arch over
-it and let in only the wannest light to the steep, stony hedge-bank of
-whin and grass and fern and violets. Little streams ran this way and
-that, under and over and alongside the lane, and at length a larger one
-was honoured by a bridge, the parapet covered with flat, dense, even
-turf. The bridge made way for a wide view, and to invite the eye a
-magpie flew away from the grassy parapet with wavy flight to a mountain
-side.
-
-[Illustration: CONWAY FROM BENARTH—EARLY MORNING]
-
-Between the bridge and the mountain, and in fact surrounded by streams
-which were heard although unseen, was an island of apple trees.
-
-There were murmurs of bees. There was a gush and fall and gurgle of
-streams, which could be traced by their bowing irises. There was a
-poignant glow and fragrance of flowers in an air so moist and cold and
-still that at dawn the earliest bee left a thin line of scent upon it.
-Beyond, the mountain, grim, without trees, lofty and dark, was clearly
-upholding the low blue sky full of slow clouds of the colour of the
-mountain lambs or of melting snow. This mountain and this sky, for that
-first hour, shut out, and not only shut out but destroyed, and not only
-destroyed but made as if it had never been, the world of the old woman,
-the coal-pits, the schools, and the grown-up persons. And the magic of
-Wales, or of Spring, or of childhood made the island of apple trees more
-than an orchard in flower. For as some women seem at first to be but
-rich eyes in a mist of complexion and sweet voice, so the orchard was
-but an invisible soul playing with scent and colour as symbols. Nor did
-this wonder vanish when I walked among the trees and looked up at the
-blossoms in the sky. For in that island of apple trees there was not one
-tree but was curved and jagged and twisted and splintered by great age,
-by the west wind, or by the weight of fruit in many autumns. In colour
-they were stony. They were scarred with knots like mouths. Some of their
-branches were bent sharply like lightning flashes. Some rose up like
-bony, sunburnt, imprecating arms of furious prophets. One stiff, gaunt
-bole that was half hid in flower might have been Ares' sword in the
-hands of the Cupids. Others were like ribs of submerged ships, or the
-horns of an ox emerging from a skeleton deep in the sand of a lonely
-coast. And the blossom of them all was the same, so that they seemed to
-be Winter with the frail Spring in his arms. Nor was I surprised when
-the first cuckoo sang therein, since the blossom made it for its need.
-And when a curlew called from the mountain hopelessly, I laughed at it.
-
-[Illustration: NEAR COLWYN BAY]
-
-When I came again and saw the apple trees in flower, the island was very
-far away, and the unseen cuckoo sang behind a veil and not so suitably
-as the curlew. There was something of the dawn in the light over it,
-though it was mid-day; and I could hardly understand, and was inclined
-to melancholy, until chance brought into my head the poem of the old
-princely warrior poet Llywarch Hên, and out of his melancholy and mine
-was born a mild and lasting joy. He sang:
-
-        Sitting high upon a hill, to battle is inclined
-        My mind, but it does not impel me onward.
-        Short is my journey, my tenement is laid waste.
-
-        Sharp is the gale, it is bare punishment to live.
-        When the trees array themselves in gay colours
-        Of Summer, extremely ill am I this day.
-
-        I am no hunter, I keep no animal of the chase,
-        I cannot move about:
-        As long as it pleases the cuckoo, let her sing.
-
-        The loud-voiced cuckoo sings with the dawn,
-        Her melodious notes in the dales of Cuawg:
-        Better than the miser is the lavish man.
-
-        At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing,
-        On the blossom-covered branches;
-        Woe to the sick that hears their contented notes.
-
-        At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing.
-        The recollection is in my mind,
-        There are that hear them that will not hear them again.
-
-        Have I not listened to the cuckoo on the ivied tree?
-        Did not my shield hang down?
-        What I loved is but vexation; what I loved is no more.
-
-And I thought that perhaps it is even true, as Taliesin sang, that "A
-man is wont to be oldest when born, and younger all the time," and that
-the apple flowers did but remind me of old capacities laid waste.
-
-                  *       *       *       *       *
-
-These little things are the opening cadences of a great music which I
-have heard, and which is Wales. But I have forgotten the whole, and have
-echoes of it only, when I hear an old Welsh song, when I am trying to
-catch a trout, or am eating bread and butter and white cheese, and
-drinking pale tea, in a mountain farm.... One echo of it I had strangely
-in Oxford, when, entertaining an old wise gipsy, and asking him of his
-travels, and whether he had been in Wales, he meditated for a long time,
-and then sang in an emotionless and moving tone the "Hen wlad fy
-nhadau," up there among the books, the towers, and the stars. I have had
-a vision of a rose. But my memory possesses only the doubtful and
-withered dustiness of a petal or two.
-
-
-
-
-                              CHAPTER III
-       A FARMHOUSE UNDER A MOUNTAIN, A FIRE, AND SOME FIRESIDERS
-
-
-Having passed the ruined abbey and the orchard, I came to a long, low
-farmhouse kitchen, smelling of bacon and herbs and burning sycamore and
-ash. A gun, a blunderbuss, a pair of silver spurs, and a golden spray of
-last year's corn hung over the high mantelpiece and its many brass
-candlesticks; and beneath was an open fireplace and a perpetual red
-fire, and two teapots warming, for they had tea for breakfast, tea for
-dinner, tea for tea, tea for supper, and tea between. The floor was of
-sanded slate flags, and on them a long many-legged table, an oak settle,
-a table piano, and some Chippendale chairs. There were also two tall
-clocks; and they were the most human clocks I ever met, for they ticked
-with effort and uneasiness: they seemed to think and sorrow over time,
-as if they caused it, and did not go on thoughtlessly or impudently like
-most clocks, which are insufferable; they found the hours troublesome
-and did not twitter mechanically over them; and at midnight the twelve
-strokes always nearly ruined them, so great was the effort. On the wall
-were a large portrait of Spurgeon, several sets of verses printed and
-framed in memory of dead members of the family, an allegorical tree
-watered by the devil, and photographs of a bard and of Mr. Lloyd George.
-There were about fifty well-used books near the fire, and two or three
-men smoking, and one man reading some serious book aloud, by the only
-lamp; and a white girl was carrying out the week's baking, of large
-loaves, flat fruit tarts of blackberry, apple, and whinberry, plain
-golden cakes, large soft currant biscuits, and curled oat cakes. And
-outside, the noises of a west wind and a flooded stream, the whimper of
-an otter, and the long, slow laugh of an owl; and always silent, but
-never forgotten, the restless, towering outline of a mountain.
-
-The fire was—is—of wood, dry oak-twigs of last spring, stout ash sticks
-cut this morning, and brawny oak butts grubbed from the copse years
-after the tree was felled. And I remember how we built it up one autumn,
-when the heat and business of the day had almost let it die.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DISTANT VIEW OF PENMAENMAWR—EARLY MORNING LIGHT
-]
-
-We had been out all day, cutting and binding the late corn. At one
-moment we admired the wheat straightening in the sun after drooping in
-rain, with grey heads all bent one way over the luminous amber stalks,
-and at last leaning and quivering like runners about to start or like a
-wind made visible. At another moment we admired the gracious groups of
-sheaves in pyramids made by our own hands, as we sat and drank our
-buttermilk or ale, and ate bread and cheese or chwippod (the harvesters'
-stiff pudding of raisins, rice, bread, and fresh milk) among the furze
-mixed with bramble and fern at the edge of the field. Behind us was a
-place given over to blue scabious flowers, haunted much by blue
-butterflies of the same hue; to cross-leaved heath and its clusters of
-close, pensile ovals, of a perfect white that blushed towards the sun;
-to a dainty embroidery of tormentil shining with unvaried gold; and to
-tall, purple loosestrife, with bees at it, dispensing a thin perfume of
-the kind that all fair living things, plants or children, breathe.
-
-What a thing it is to reap the wheat with your own hands, to thresh it
-with the oaken flail in the misty barn, to ride with it to the mill and
-take your last trout while it is ground, and then to eat it with no
-decoration of butter, straight from the oven! There is nothing better,
-unless it be to eat your trout with the virgin appetite which you have
-won in catching it. But in the field, we should have been pleased with
-the plainest meal a hungry man can have, which is, I suppose, barley
-bread and a pale "double Caermarthen" cheese, which you cut with a
-hatchet after casting it on the floor and making it bounce, to be sure
-that it is a double Caermarthen. And yet I do not know. For even a Welsh
-hymnist of the eighteenth century, in translating "the increase of the
-fields," wrote avidly of "wheaten bread," so serious was his distaste
-for barley bread. But it was to a meal of wheaten bread and oat cake,
-and cheese and onions and cucumber, that we came in, while the trembling
-splendours of the first stars shone, as if they also were dewy like the
-furze. Nothing is to be compared with the pleasure of seeing the stars
-thus in the east, when most eyes are watching the west, except perhaps
-to read a fresh modern poet, straight from the press, before any one has
-praised it, and to know that it is good.
-
-[Illustration: SILVERY LIGHT, CONWAY SHORE]
-
-As we sat, some were singing the song "Morwynion Sir Gaerfyrdd-in." Some
-were looking out at the old hay waggon before the gate.
-
-Fine grass was already growing in corners of the wrecked hay waggon. Two
-months before, it travelled many times a day between the rick and the
-fields. Swallow was in the shafts while it carried all the village
-children to the field, as it had done some sixty years ago, when the
-village wheelwright helped God to make it. The waggoner lifted them out
-in clusters; the haymakers loaded silently; the waggon moved along the
-roads between the swathes; and, followed by children who expected
-another ride, and drawn by Swallow and Darling, it reached the rick that
-began to rise, like an early church, beside the elms. But hardly had it
-set out for another load than Swallow shied; an axle splintered and tore
-and broke in two, near the hub of one wheel, which subsided so that a
-corner of the waggon fell askew into the tussocks, and the suspended
-horse-shoe dropped from its place. There the mare left it, and switched
-her black tail from side to side of her lucent, nut-brown haunches, as
-she went.
-
-All day the waggon was now the children's own. They climbed and slid and
-made believe that they were sailors, on its thin, polished timbers. The
-grass had grown up to it, under its protection. Before it fell, the
-massive wheels and delicate curved sides had been so fair and strong
-that no one thought of its end. Now, the exposed decay raised a smile at
-its so recent death. No one gave it a thought, except, perhaps, as now,
-when the September evening began, and one saw it on this side of the
-serious, dark elms, when the flooded ruts were gleaming, and a cold
-light fell over it from a tempestuous sky, and the motionless air was
-full of the shining of moist quinces and yellow fallen apples in long
-herbage; and, far off, the cowman let a gate shut noisily; the late
-swallows and early bats mingled in flight; and, under an oak, a tramp
-was kindling his fire....
-
-Suddenly in came the dog, one of those thievish, lean, swift
-demi-wolves, that appear so fearful of meeting a stranger, but when he
-has passed, turn and follow him. He shook himself, stepped into the
-hearth and out and in again. With him was one whose red face and shining
-eyes and crisped hair were the decoration with which the wind invests
-his true lovers. A north wind had risen and given the word, and he
-repeated it: let us have a fire.
-
-So one brought hay and twigs, another branches and knotted logs, and
-another the bellows. We made an edifice worthy of fire and kneeled with
-the dog to watch light changing into heat, as the spirals of sparks
-arose. The pyre was not more beautiful which turned to roses round the
-innocent maiden for whom it was lit; nor that more wonderful round
-which, night after night in the west, the clouds are solemnly ranged,
-waiting for the command that will tell them whither they are bound in
-the dark blue night. We became as the logs, that now and then settled
-down (as if they wished to be comfortable) and sent out, as we did
-words, some bristling sparks of satisfaction. And hardly did we envy
-then the man who lit the first fire and saw his own stupendous shadow in
-cave or wood and called it a god. As we kneeled, and our sight grew
-pleasantly dim, were we looking at fire-born recollections of our own
-childhood, wondering that such a childhood and youth as ours could ever
-have been; or at a golden age that never was?... The light spelt the
-titles of the books for a moment, and the bard read Spenser aloud, as if
-forsooth a man can read poetry in company round such a fire. So we
-pelted him with tales and songs....
-
-And one of the songs was "The Maid of Landybie," by the bard, Watcyn
-Wyn. Here follows the air, and a translation which was made by an
-English poet. The naïveté of the original has troubled him, and the
-Welsh stanza form has driven him to the use of rhymeless feminine
-endings; but I think that his version will, with the air, render not too
-faintly the song I heard.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  THE MAID OF LANDYBIE
-
-  _Air_: Y Ferch o Blwyf Penderyn.
-]
-
-    'Rwy'n car - u merch o Lan - dy - bi - e, Ac y mae hith-e'n fy
-    nghar - u i O bob merch i - fanc yn Sir Gaer - fyrdd-in,
-    'Does neb o hon - yn' mor hardd a hi, Ar ei grudd-iau mae rhos-
-    - yn - au, Cym - ysg liw - iau coch a gwyn: Y hi y'wr un - ig
-    ferch a fyn - af, A hith - e — dim ond y fi - ne fyn.
-
-               I love a maid of Landybie
-               And it is she who loves me too.
-               Of all the women of Caermarthen
-               None is so fair as she, I know.
-               White and red are her cheeks' young roses,
-               The tints all blended mistily;
-               She is the only maid I long for,
-               And she will have no lad but me.
-
-               I love one maid of Landybie.
-               And she too loves but one, but one;
-               The tender girl remains my faithful,
-               Pure of heart, a bird in tone.
-               Her beauty and her comely bearing
-               Have won my love and life and care,
-               For there is none in all the kingdoms
-               Like her, so blushing, kind, and fair.
-
-               While there is lime in Craig-y-Ddinas;
-               While there is water in Pant-y-Llyn;
-               And while the waves of shining Loughor
-               Walk between these hills and sing;
-               While there's a belfry in the village
-               Whose bells delight the country nigh,
-               The dearest maid of Landybie
-               Shall have her name held sweet and high.
-
-[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PASS—NOON]
-
-When we are by this fire, we can do what we like with Time, making a
-strange solitude within these four walls, as if they were cut off in
-time as in space from the great world by something more powerful than
-the night; so that, whether Llewelyn the Great, or Llewelyn the Last, or
-Arthur, or Kilhwch, or Owen Glyndwr, or the most recent prophet be the
-subject of our talk, nothing intrudes that can prevent us for the time
-from being utterly at one with them. They sing or jest or make puns;
-they talk of hero and poet as if they had met them on the hills; and as
-the poet has said, "Folly would it be to say that Arthur has a grave."
-
-In such a room are legends made, if made at all. In fact, I lately saw a
-pretty proof of it.
-
-The valley in which the farmhouse lies is not so fortified that some
-foreign things of one kind and another cannot enter. And a miner or a
-youth on holiday from London brought a song of Bill Bailey to the ears
-of one of the children of the house, a happy, melancholy boy named
-Merfyn. The elders caught it for a day or two, and though the song does
-not recommend itself to those who are heirs to "Sospan bach" and "Ar hyd
-y nos," the name of the hero stuck. The child asked who he was, and
-could get no answer. When anything happened about the farm that could
-not easily be explained, it was jestingly said that Bill Bailey was at
-the bottom of it. The child seriously caught up the name and the
-mystery, and applied it with amusing and strange effect. Thus, when he
-had asked who made the mushrooms in the dawn, and was not satisfied, he
-himself decided, and with pride and joy announced, that they were Bill
-Bailey's work. Looking into the fire one night, and seeing faces that he
-could not recognise among the throbbing heat, he saw Bill Bailey, as he
-surmised. Thus is a new solar hero being bred. The last news is that he
-made Cader Idris and Orion and the Pleiades, and that the owls cry so
-sadly because he is afoot in the woods.
-
-[Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE AND QUAY—NOON]
-
-And yet, if we are so unwise as to draw back the curtain from the window
-at night, the illusion of timelessness is broken for that evening, and
-in the flower-faced owl by the pane, in the great hill scarred with
-precipices, and ribbed with white and crying streams, with here and
-there a black tree disturbed and a very far-off light, I can see nothing
-but the past as a magnificent presence besieging the house. At such
-times the legends that I remember most are those of the buried and
-unforgotten lands. What I see becomes but a symbol of what is now
-invisible. And sometimes I dream of something hidden out there and
-elaborating some omnipotent alcahest for the world's delight or the
-world's bane; sometimes, as when I passed Llanddeusant and Myddfai, I
-could see nothing that was there, because I was thinking of what had
-been long ago. There is still a tradition on the coast that Cardigan Bay
-now covers a country that was once populous and fair and rich. The son
-of a prince of South Wales is said to have had charge of the floodgates
-on the protecting embankment, and one night the floodgates were left
-open at high tide, while he slept with wine, and the sea was over the
-corn. "Seithenyn the Drunkard let in the sea over Cantre-'r-Gwaelod, so
-that all the houses and lands contained in it were lost. And before that
-time there were in it sixteen fortified towns superior to all the towns
-and cities in Wales, except Caerlleon on the Usk. And Cantre-'r-Gwaelod
-was the dominion of Gwyddno, King of Cardigan, and this event happened
-in the time of Ambrosius. And the people who escaped from that
-inundation came and landed in Ardudwy, the country of Arvon, the Snowdon
-mountains, and other places not before inhabited...." The sands in some
-places uncover the roots of an old forest. According to one tradition
-the flood took place during a feast. The harper suddenly foresaw what
-was to happen and warned the guests; but he alone escaped. There is also
-a tradition that Bala Lake covers old palaces. It is said that they have
-been seen on clear moonlit nights, when the air is one sapphire, and
-that a voice is heard saying, "Vengeance will come"; and another voice,
-"When will it come?" and again the first voice saying, "In the third
-generation." For a prince once had a palace where the lake is. He was
-cruel and persisted in his cruelty, despite a voice that sometimes cried
-to him, "Vengeance will come." One night there was a bright festival in
-the palace, and there were many ladies and many lords among the guests,
-for an heir had just been born to the prince. The wine shone and was
-continually renewed. The dancers were merry and never tired. And a voice
-cried, "Vengeance." But only the harper heard; and he saw a bird
-beckoning him out of the palace. He followed, and if he stopped, the
-bird called, "Vengeance." So they travelled a long way, and at last he
-stopped and rested, and the bird was silent. Then the harper upbraided
-himself, and turned, and would have gone back to the palace. But he lost
-his way, for it was night. And in the morning he saw one calm large lake
-where the palace had been; and on the lake floated the harper's harp....
-
-                  *       *       *       *       *
-
-This fire, in my memory, gathers round it many books which I have read
-and many men that I have spoken with among the mountains—gathers them
-from coal-pits and tin-works and schools and chapels and farmhouses and
-hideous cottages, beside rivers, among woods; and I have drawn a thin
-line round their shadows and have called the forms that came of it men,
-and their "characters" follow.
-
-[Illustration: CONWAY VALLEY]
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER IV
-    TWO MINISTERS, A BARD, A SCHOOLMASTER, AN INNKEEPER, AND OTHERS
-
-
-                        MR. JONES, THE MINISTER
-
-Jones is a little, thin, long-skulled, black-haired, pale Congregational
-minister, with a stammer and a squint. He has a book-shelf containing
-nothing but sermons and theology, which he has read, and the novels of
-Sir Walter Scott, which he hopes to read. I suppose he believes in
-metempsychosis. He is accustomed to say that everything is
-theology—which is fine; and that theology is everything—which is hard.
-He tries to love man as well as God, and succeeds in convincing every
-one of his honesty, generosity, and industry. In the care of souls he
-fears no disease or squalor or shape of death. But there is a
-condescension about his ways with men. He calls them the worldliest of
-God's creatures. But with the Divine he is happy and at ease, and in his
-pulpit seems to sit on the right hand. Then his Biblical criticism is
-absent as if it had never been, and he sees the holy things at once as
-clearly as Quarles and as mystically as Herbert or Crashaw. He speaks of
-them with the enthusiasm of a collector or of a man of science dealing
-with a bone or a gas. Like them, he sees nothing but the subjects of the
-moment. He loves them as passionately and yet with a sense of
-possession. He gives to them the adoration which he seems wilfully to
-have withheld from women, pageantry, gardens, palaces—which his speech
-would have adorned. He lavishes upon them his whole ingenious heart, so
-that, to those used to the false rhetoric and dull compliment of
-ordinary worshippers, there is in his sermons something fantastical,
-far-fetched, or smelling of the lamp. If he has to describe something
-naked or severe, he must needs give them a kind of voluptuousness by
-painting the things which they lack, and the lack of which makes them
-what they are. With Herbert, he might repeat:
-
-[Illustration: CARNARVON, FROM ANGLESEY]
-
-          My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,
-          Wherewith whole shoals of Martyrs once did burn,
-            Besides their other flames? doth Poetry
-          Wear Venus' livery? only serve her turn?
-          Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and lays
-            Upon thine altar burnt? Cannot thy love
-            Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise
-          As well as she? Cannot thy Dove
-          Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight?
-            Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,
-            Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?
-          Why doth the fire which by thy power and might
-            Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose
-            Than that, which one day worms may chance refuse?
-          Sure, Lord, there is enough in thee to dry
-            Oceans of ink; for as the Deluge did
-            Cover the Earth, so does thy Majesty;
-          Each cloud distils thy praise, and doth forbid
-          Poets to turn it to another use.
-            Roses and lilies speak thee: and to make
-            A pair of cheeks of them, is thy abuse.
-          Why should I women's eyes for crystal take?
-          Such poor invention burns in their low mind
-            Whose fire is wild, and does not upward go
-            To praise, and on thee, Lord, some note bestow.
-          Open the bones, and you shall nothing find
-            In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in thee
-            Thy beauty lies in the discovery.
-
-It is no matter to him that to the uninspired audience his holy persons
-appear only exquisite marionettes. His sermons are all of his love for
-them. Could one leave out the names of prophet and evangelist, they
-might seem to be addressed to earthly beauties. No eyebrow ever awakened
-more glowing praise. He takes religion, as he does his severe morality,
-like a sensuous delight. One might think from his epithets that he was
-an æsthete, except that he is so abandoned.
-
-When he ventures to speak of men, their very virtues and vices are all
-handled in such a way that they seem to be his own imaginations. Thus,
-his drunkard is as unreal and as terrible as a chimera. The words are
-those of a man who has conceived a drunkard in his own brain, and then,
-seeing the real thing, has preferred his own conception, and shunned the
-poor human imitation. Still, he speaks of religious things, of incidents
-in the life of David or Christ or the Maries, as if he had seen, for
-example, the Holy Family in some misty barn among his own hills. I have
-even heard him introduce a farmer whittling a flail of hazel sticks and
-binding it with willow thongs, in a picture of that scene. This
-quaintness and clearness are perhaps the result of his not quite healthy
-asceticism. But even by the farmhouse fire he makes use of them, and
-will speak of the red or brown hair of scriptural characters, and even
-of the grey hair and shining eyes of Charity. In hunger or weariness or
-pain, common people sometimes see things thus: he never sees them
-otherwise. In the chapel they delight the older labourers, and yet fail
-because they vanish in the cold night air and "leave not a rack behind."
-Some hearers, on the other hand, sicken at them, when the blood is noisy
-in the breast and the brain is warm, as they sicken at drugs.
-
-It is not, therefore, surprising that at one time he had gorgeous
-earthly dreams. But with an oddity of which nothing will cure him, he is
-much troubled by this pomp which he desires not to see save in celestial
-things. And now he allows sleep nightly but a brief victory over him.
-
-
-                    THE LANDLORD OF THE "CROSS INN"
-
-A very pretty companion for Jones was Owen, the innkeeper, a robust man
-of words, who called himself the preacher's best customer, because he
-needed so much of his charity.
-
-He was a perfect Celt, according to the English superstition. For never
-was there such a failure who was also such a swaggerer as he. He had
-fair hair, blue eyes, and a small, elegant beard, which
-
-            Business could not make dull, nor passion wild.
-
-He was bullied by a contemptuous wife; he was ridiculed by all his
-regular customers, rallied by the rest. But the beard was always neat
-and fair, a symbol of his unconquerable mind. No matter how he was
-trodden down, he smelt sweet. He had humour, for he could laugh at
-himself, though he lacked the common gift of being able to laugh at
-others, and had no repartee. The more lusty the Saturday night thrusts
-at him, the more vivid was his reply, and it was commonly a piece of
-egoism and self-exposure, which, if not so long and so wonderfully
-draped, would have called for a repetition of the very blow he was
-parrying. Once when he had been sold up and had little more than a wife
-and a walking-stick in the world, and his position attracted some
-trifling compliments and condolences from his old harriers, he stood up,
-and, wielding his stick and motioning to his wife to be silent, gave an
-inventory of the things he had lost with such decoration as would have
-abashed an auctioneer. There is a Welsh proverb, "A Welshman keeps
-nothing until he has lost it"; and the now invisible and inaccessible
-furniture called up such a tumult of admiration that he cared not that
-it was no longer his. How rich he looked! As the words flowed on and it
-was time for his hearers to be going, it was clear that if he had
-forgotten anything, he had invented more; but though he ended in no
-better company than that of his wife, who picked something from his coat
-and held it between the tips of two fingers for his humiliation, he but
-wiped his forehead and cursed because he had forgotten the ancient
-horse-trappings of brass that used to hang over the mantelpiece at the
-—— Arms.
-
-[Illustration: BODDNANT HALL, CONWAY VALLEY]
-
-His voice, whether he sang or spoke, was of wide range and exquisite
-adjustment, and he spoke with care and gusto, as if he loved his native
-tongue. Under its influence, he respected nobody of any importance.
-Thus, he was once pretty justly thrashed; when, having tired his
-chastiser by his patience, he remarked at great length that he supposed
-the other did not know who he was, and the splendour of his manner
-overcame his heated companion. No sooner had he got home than he gave a
-rapturous description of how one had given another a thrashing down the
-road. He did it so well that he was asked whether he was the beater.
-"No," said he bravely, "it happened that I was beat."
-
-Had he lost by a bargain, had he taken a bad coin unawares, had he been
-worsted in argument, he could so rant that he moved every one, and
-himself obviously first of all, and made the worse appear the better. He
-kept a genealogical tree in constant use by pruning and watering, and
-though there was not only a prince but a poet in it, I think he gloried
-less in the old splendour of his family than in the length of its fall,
-as who should say he had once been so high that he was "from morn to
-dewy eve" in falling.
-
-When first I saw him, he had just come into the "Cross Inn." It was
-mid-day; the weather was cold and wet; and since he never liked to see a
-man drinking by himself, and the shepherds coming down from the
-mountains to market had called pretty often, he was not sober. He told
-me that his was a fine house—the finest in the village, and therefore in
-the county; and that it had not paid the former tenant well, who had, in
-fact, sold but eighteen gallons of beer in a month. He was going to do
-better than that, he said; to make a beginning, he was going to drink
-that quantity himself. I asked for brandy. He had not a drop, and
-explained that he had a weakness for it himself—took a drop very often;
-and that therefore, to get out of temptation, he had finished his stock
-on the night before. "But," said he, "I have upstairs such a bed as
-you—pardon me—never slept in yet."
-
-"I have no doubt," said I, and sat down.
-
-[Illustration: CARNARVON CASTLE]
-
-But when he heard that I was walking across Wales, and had therefore
-tried many beds, he insisted that I should see the thing. It was the
-finest in the village—in the county—in Wales—"I don't see why I should
-not say in the whole world." Truly it was a noble bed, in a great,
-empty, raftered, uncarpeted room; the wood all darkened oak, with a
-dusky gleam; the hangings ample and of a rich crimson stuff; the purity
-of the linen splendid. If a royal person or a poet had not slept in it,
-"that was their misfortune." He stood by, awed and reverent, beholding
-the bed. I was not his equal in eloquence, and he echoed my praise with
-an elaborate "of course": and for the sake of hearing some of the words
-he loved, he finally invited me to spend a night in the bed, "as his
-guest," so he magnificently said.
-
-All his family were of the same temper. His father and mother had gone
-to London years ago, and, at seventy years of age, to the infirmary of a
-workhouse....
-
-The aged paupers sat in a long, grey, motionless, and silent row—like a
-sculptured frieze, or like persons expecting to be photographed—under
-the wall of a church. Before them was a strip of grass, one emerald half
-of which shone so that it seemed of an element like flame; for it was
-pure, insubstantial colour; and into this, as the paupers saw, the tide
-of the shadow of the church gradually ate. Beyond the grass was the
-infirmary, and alongside it a yellow road, and on that a hearse.
-Watching this and the paupers, a crowd of persons, with uninterested,
-inquisitive eyes and bowler hats, stuck their noses through the railings
-which ran between the busy street and the infirmary. Motor cars brayed,
-hooves clattered.
-
-Presently three men carried out a coffin, containing the remains of Mrs.
-Owen, and shoved it into the hearse. "God love me, what a coffin!" said
-one of the crowd. But the frieze of paupers were silent and motionless
-in the long grey row—all but the husband of the corpse. He, like the
-others, seemed to stare at the hearse with fixed gaze, and in a loud
-voice he remembered what a bonny woman the corpse had been, and in
-particular how, while a travelling musician played in the village
-street, when she was past fifty years of age, she had locked herself
-into the kitchen and danced, having spread a mat to deaden the clicking
-of her merry clogs; and he had watched her, unobserved. The story and
-his uncontrolled, bleating voice raised a laugh under the bowler hats;
-and the old men lifted their heads and straightened themselves and
-laughed; and most loudly and grimly of all laughed Owen, while he
-remembered the cottage in sight of the beacons of Breconshire; and the
-hearse rolled out and the crowd removed.
-
-
-                       MR. ROWLANDS, THE MINISTER
-
-Rowlands, another minister, is six feet and two inches in height,
-seventeen stone in weight, and has a voice which is in proportion. When
-he stands up, one supposes that he can never sit down; when he sits
-down, one supposes that he can never stand up. Every one of his
-attitudes seems to be final. Only when he is moving is his ponderosity a
-little less than divine; for he moves with an odd briskness, so that,
-from behind, he is like a large schoolboy on some urgent business. His
-mind is subject to similar changes of aspect. In domestic life no one is
-less awful than he; and were he not good-tempered, cheerful, frolicsome,
-and humorous as well, he would be one of the most mirth-provoking of
-mankind. On children he leaves no impression but that of weight, and in
-spite of his black clothes, he once reminded a child (with a shrill
-voice) of Atlas upholding the world.
-
-In his everyday life he is a learned, happy child. His curiosity is
-matched by his credulity. He is the victim not only of tradesmen,
-but of beggars. He cannot keep his coat clean, and that he sews on
-his own buttons is apparent from the fact that he seldom has more
-than one or two of those decorations. He knows every one in his
-neighbourhood—miners, farmers, parsons, and the resident
-Englishmen—and knows and loves them so well that he never condemned
-any one except for cruelty. For he seems to have started life with
-such a strong belief in the sinfulness of men, that he has ever
-since been pleased and surprised by this one's goodness and the
-amiability of that one's badness. He might, in truth, have spoken of
-himself in something like the words of that fine, possibly Welsh
-poet of the seventeenth century, Thomas Traherne:
-
-        A learned and a happy ignorance
-                Divided me
-            From all the vanity,
-        From all the sloth, care, pain, and sorrow that advance
-            The madness and the misery
-        Of men. No error, no distraction I
-        Saw soil the earth or overcloud the sky.
-
-        I knew not that there was a serpent's sting
-                Whose poison shed,
-            On men, did overspread
-        The world; nor did I dream of such a thing
-            As sin, in which mankind lay dead.
-        They were all brisk and living wights to me,
-        Yea, pure and full of immortality.
-
-        Joy, pleasure, beauty, kindness, glory, love,
-                Sleep, day, life, light,
-            Peace, melody, my sight,
-        My ears and heart did fill and freely move.
-            All that I saw did me delight.
-        The universe was then a world of treasure,
-        To me an universal world of pleasure....
-
-[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF CARNARVON BAY]
-
-His own verses, by the way, are not so good, for, like all Welsh
-ministers, he writes a hundred lines of verse every day, perhaps to
-avoid being thought singular.
-
-He makes a fine figure of Charity in his old age, with his preoccupied
-blue eyes under a brow that is marked only by three lines like three
-beams thrown upward by a sun. He has a large, joyous, curving mouth,
-side-whiskers, careless beard, large feet.
-
-He has but one touch of sentiment. Nearly half a century ago he fell in
-love with a pretty woman, and unsuccessfully; yet, though she is known
-to be married and still alive, he has come to have for her memory a
-grandfatherly tenderness, regarding her as a white and careless girl, in
-spite of time. For the rest, so warm and radiant is he, that I remember
-the peculiarity of Kai. "When it rained hardest, whatever he carried
-remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand,
-and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which
-to light their fire."
-
-But in the pulpit—whether it is a whim or an atonement or merely a
-recollection of his years at a theological college—he always makes an
-attempt to dust the wrinkles of his waistcoat. In every other way he
-makes his week-day self incredible to a stranger. He justifies and makes
-use of his size more than any man I ever saw. Seeing him in the pulpit,
-it seems fitting that he should live there day and night, so necessary a
-pillar is he to the dull, small chapel, though, when holding out his
-arms, as often he does, he threatens to demolish the little arches and
-poor windows and to create something more splendid in their place. Going
-there once in his absence, a visitor remarked to a deacon that they had
-made some changes in the building; and asking what had gone from there,
-he was told, "Oh, only Mr. Rowlands."
-
-Standing there, he undertakes to speak on behalf of the Deity, whose
-ways he explains, and by a magnificent self-conceit supposes that his
-own stature and voice are fitting symbols to mortals incapable of
-apprehending things more august. For a time, indeed, during the singing
-of the hymns, there is a geniality as of lightning about his face. He
-smiles; he tosses his head with the joy of the song, and may even be
-supposed to feel, not without sympathy, that the mighty music says
-things which were not dreamed of by prophets or apostles.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  ON THE RIVER SEIONT, CARNARVONSHIRE—EVENING GLOW
-]
-
-When he reads a lesson, it is plain to see that above all other Gods he
-loves "the Lord that smiteth." He opens his mouth and rejoices in the
-rich and massy Welsh. He makes no attempt at mere clear reading, which
-would be of no use to an imaginative audience, that is familiar with the
-Bible; but, raising and lowering his voice, now hurrying as if to a
-precipice where all will be overthrown, now creeping as if he feared
-what is to come, he makes the chapter anew, creating it as if he were
-sculptor or musician. I suppose he uses nearly as many musical notes as
-if he sang; but the result differs from singing, as prose from poetry;
-and so noble is the prose that it suggests only one possible answer to
-the question which, like a school-man, he once asked, Whether the music
-of the spheres be verse or prose? Yet, if the note of the lesson is
-melancholy, full of the dreariness of moving over the void and creating,
-the note of the sermon is triumphant, or if not triumphant it is
-minatory, or if not minatory it is scornful, and at times a listener
-expects to see him wrapped in a cloud and carried away from an
-undeserving and purblind race.
-
-The medium of what English people would call his rhetoric is the "hwyl,"
-an exuberant, impassioned, musical modulation of the voice, and, to
-compare great things with small, comparable to the very finest intoning
-to which has been added (if we can suppose it) a lyrical, egotistical
-indulgence in all moods of pity, scorn, tenderness, anger, sorrow, joy,
-anxiety and hope. It can be familiar or lofty. It is as powerful as harp
-and song together; and the force of it often arises from the fact that
-what is heard is rather the musical accompaniment of the man's thought
-than the thought itself. Hence its terrible and lovely purposes, and the
-many sentiments with which it is shot, and the dubiousness of the
-loftier passages, as in the verses which the bards recited before Arthur
-and only one man understood them, except that they were in Arthur's
-praise.
-
-I have seen him so thunder that I thought of the Llewelyns and Glyndwr,
-and forgot that the castles fester no longer with Englishmen, and
-
-                                       aerea ramis
-             dependet galea et prato gravia arma quiescunt,
-
-and for the moment, thought he was a man. No actor ever stormed and
-swelled so, because no actor yet played the part which he played. It was
-a chant; yet it was too uncontrollable for a chant. If you call it
-declamation, you must admit that to declaim a man shall first go to
-Medea, that she
-
-         Having drawn that weakness from his limbs
-         Which torpid now and chilly there abode,
-         Through every vacant artery may force
-         The green and joyous sap of thriving plants,—
-         Juice of crushed stalks mixed with their ropy gums,
-         And purpled bright with strength from berry and grape,
-         Full of a stinging, swift, and masterful
-         Vivacity.
-
-For the blood of a declaimer of seventy does not travel so by ordinary
-ways. Nor can a declaimer, as he does, build up for the imagination an
-earth, with sky and mountains, within a little chapel, for the sake of
-showing how the lightning vaults and impales the unjust man. At other
-times his words rise up and circle and make fantastic architecture, as
-real as dreams, for the terror of the soul that for the time is forced
-to dwell therein. And though the substance of his sermon is but
-anecdote, biblical reference, exhortation, warning, picturesque logic
-built upon some simple religious theme, men and women weep under this
-divine bullying. A man, listening outside the chapel, put his hand to
-his head to make sure that his hat was on, so stiffly his hair stood up.
-
-"Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills
-moved and were shaken, because he was wroth....
-
-"He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his
-feet.
-
-"And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings
-of the wind.
-
-"He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were
-dark waters and thick clouds of the skies...."
-
-Once he paused long, towards the end of a sermon, while the thunder
-withdrew with a terrible solemnity which he envied; and he did not
-hesitate to follow the thunder with the words, "It has been said," and
-so to end.
-
-
-                              THE POACHER
-
-One who used to come in late, years ago, was Gwilym Pritchard, the
-poacher.
-
-[Illustration: BRIDGE, CWM-Y-GLO—EVENING]
-
-I wish to make a nice distinction between poachers and poachers. The man
-who is nothing but a poacher I regard as one only in the strict literal
-sense. Such a man is rare to-day. Formerly he went to the woods as
-another man went to the Bar. He lived like a gentleman upon other men's
-venison, and was beneath the pleasure of salt-pork broth. He would
-swagger about the hamlet with a deer on his back. The deer was but a
-carcass at sixpence the pound to him. He has lately stooped to dictate
-his autobiography, which may be bought over the counter. A less
-majestical note was never sounded. He turned gamekeeper, and no doubt
-touched his cap for half-a-sovereign, and stared at his palm for a
-crown. He is, in short, "one of God's creatures." But the nobler one I
-have in mind seemed to bear high office in the scheme of the natural
-world. A mighty man, capable of killing anything and of sparing anything
-too, he was a true scholar in his kind. The pedants who peep and
-botanise and cry "allium" or "cnicus" to one another in the awful woods,
-and the sublime enthusiasts who cannot see the earth for the flowers,
-were equally beneath him. He would give twelve hours a day at least to
-the open air, as a scholar to his books. Thus he had acquired a large
-erudition which would probably have exhausted a whole field of inquiry
-if written down. It is fortunate that faultless observers like this hand
-down nothing to posterity, since it leaves us in these latter days free
-to feel ourselves discoverers when we come upon what hundreds have known
-during the last thousand years. In the case of this man, the knowledge
-came out not so much in speech—of which he was economical—as in infinite
-tact,
-
-                              Wearing all that weight
-                  Of learning lightly like a flower.
-
-It was shown in the way he stepped in the woods, in the way he laid his
-ear to the bare ground (not the grass) to ascertain a distant noise of
-footsteps. I have seen him lose a wood-pigeon by an interrupted aim,
-and, standing without sound or motion, shoot the bird, that returned to
-its branch, enchanted by the absence of hostile sounds; for his very
-clothes were more the work of nature than the tailor, and matched the
-trees like a hawk or a November moth. His belief in the earth as a
-living thing was almost a superstition. I shall not forget how he took
-me to a hilltop one autumn day, when the quiet gave birth to sound after
-sound as we listened and let our silence grow. By a process of
-elimination he set aside the wind, the birds, the falling leaves, the
-water, and tried to capture for my sake the low hum which was the earth
-making music to itself. And what I heard I can no more describe than the
-magic of an excellent voice when once it is silent. "Depend upon it,
-that means something," he said. "And now——" there was a sharp report and
-a hare that I had not noticed bounded as if it had fallen from a great
-height, and lay dead.
-
-[Illustration: FIELD PATH, NEAR LLANRUG]
-
-Having been caught once, I remarked that his captor must have been a
-clever man. "A fool," he replied—"a fool. He'd been after me a hundred
-times, and I had fooled him all but once." It was at one time his
-practice to deliver a tithe of his poached game at the cottages of the
-sick, infirm, or poor, _as a present from the Squire_, a notoriously
-ungenerous man. His occupation had made him indifferent to the future or
-the past. None ever chattered less about past happiness and future pain.
-He seemed to owe a duty to the present moment of which he partook as if
-he were eating ripe fruit. Even a piece of drudgery or a keen sorrow
-never drove his intelligence backward or forward; pain he took as some
-take medicine, on trust. Thus he was a small, though not a poor, talker.
-Venturing once to greet him pleasantly with the long beginning of a
-story, when I found him seated without any visible occupation, and
-noticing his irritation, I said that I had supposed he was not doing
-anything; to which he answered "Yes, nothing!" and continued. At one
-time of his life he heard that a considerable sum of money had been left
-to him. A year later, the foundering of a ship left his fortunes
-unchanged; and on the afternoon of the news, he shot every pigeon at
-which he raised his gun. Birds of prey he would never shoot, even to
-show his skill. Jackdaws were always spared; he used to say that there
-was "a bit of God" in that bird. It was noticeable, too, that here and
-there he spared game birds, though he despised the race. I have seen him
-raise his gun and drop it again, not without a sigh as the bird flew
-off, observing that there was "something in the bird" which stayed his
-hand. In men, as in birds and beasts, he was anxious to see
-individuality, and loved the creature that possessed and used it. The
-only time I ever saw him use contempt was towards a beggar who had
-soiled his calling by theft. A good beggar, a good thief, anything
-beyond which "the force of nature could no further go," he reverenced.
-And he was a good poacher, glorying in the name. He died polishing the
-white steel on his gun.
-
-
-                          LLEWELLYN, THE BARD
-
-Of Llewelyn, the bard, I cannot decide whether he most loves man or men.
-He is for ever building castles in the air and filling them with
-splendid creatures, whom he calls men. Then he laments that he cannot
-find any like them on hill or in valley: when, straightway, he will meet
-some human being, old friend or passing stranger, on the road or in a
-shop, and away go the phantoms of his castles, and he is wild in
-adoration of the new thing he has found. His grandmother, by the way,
-was called a fairy's child, though the truth seems to have been that her
-mother was a gipsy girl. Perhaps that is why he has no creed but many
-creeds, and was looked upon with great favour by the Calvinists until
-they found that he liked the Church as well. Yet I think that he likes
-men truly because they remind him of something he has read or dreamed,
-or because they make him dream; herein somewhat resembling the fellow
-who paid much court to another because he reminded him of the late Duke
-of ——, and he was a lover of dukes. Or he is like some that have seen
-processions of phantoms and say that sometimes the phantoms are simply
-fairies speaking an unknown tongue, but that sometimes several have the
-faces and voices of some among the dead whom they used to know. Why he
-is so glad to be among us at the farmhouse I have not discovered, but I
-suppose we remind him of Hebrew prophets or Greekish kings, for of our
-established merits he takes no thought.
-
-I think he wastes so much pity for Annie of Lochroyan that other maids
-find him passionless, and he grows tender over Burd Ellen and Cynisca as
-their lovers never did. Arthur and Gwalchmai and Gwenhwyvar, the most
-unreal and unliving of all the persons of literature, please him most.
-In a world where all things are passing, he loves best those things
-which, having past and having left a ghost of fame behind, can live for
-ever in minds like his. In London he saw but a place where marsh and
-river and woods had been and might be again; or where
-
-              Sometimes a lily petal floated down
-              From dear, remote pools to the dreary town;
-
-where the gulls flew over in the mournful January light; where a few
-friends had fires and lamps and books—their light faintly flickering in
-tremendous gloom and making one faint reality in the place; where wind
-and rain sometimes brought the past again; for the very touch of rain
-and wind beckoned to him, as it is fabled that the foam driven from
-waters that cover old towns will draw the unwary whom it touches into
-the deeps.
-
-[Illustration: WINDY DAY, NEAR LLANRUG]
-
-He himself professes to care only for his own childhood and youth; only
-he is aware, as not every one is, that the childhood began in Eden, and
-is ages old, so that, after all, the few years that make middle age do
-not count for much. His life and his way of looking at it remind me of a
-story of a young Eastern prince. Every day, from his early childhood, a
-story-teller had told him a tale. But, soon after he was sixteen, the
-story-teller came to him, and, falling on his knees, told him that he
-had no more stories to tell. The young prince fell into a rage and swore
-that he would kill the man if, in a week, he had no new story ready. And
-the story-teller, who was very old and unwilling to die, went into the
-desert and neither ate nor drank, and made a plan by which to save his
-life. So he returned to the young prince, who asked if he had a new
-story, and he said that he had. And the prince bade him tell the story;
-and he began to speak, and told the prince the story which he had told
-him first, when he was a small child; and the prince was pleased. And
-until the old man died, he never told a story which he had not told
-before; and the prince was always pleased.
-
-His poetry, if it could be understood, might be counted great, and
-perhaps it is so in a world where trees and animals are reverenced in a
-way which is hardly dawning here. He is a kind of mad Blake. He sees the
-world from among the stars, and those who see it from an elevation of
-five or six feet, and think that they see it as it really is, are not
-satisfied. He would make human the stars and seasons; he would make
-starry the flowers and the grass. He would have it that the world is but
-a shadow of Blake's "Real and Eternal world": that we who are shadows
-cling to the superstition that we are not, and have but prejudiced and
-fearful ears for his prophecies. He sees the world as a commonwealth of
-angels and men and beasts and herbs; and in it, horrible discords that
-we others scarcely hear seem to him to strike the stars.
-
-                   Each outcry of the hunted hare
-                   A fibre from the brain doth tear;
-                   A skylark wounded on the wing
-                   Doth make a cherub cease to sing.
-
-After all, in matters of the spirit, men are all engaged in colloquies
-with themselves. Some of them are overheard, and they are the poets. It
-is his fortune that he is not overheard, at least by men.
-
-[Illustration: MORNING MISTS, NEAR TREFRIW]
-
-Yet how much would he sacrifice could he but write a few verses in the
-old Welsh manner,—but a few verses like those he repeats as lovingly as
-others would their own. First, there is the elegy on Gwenhwyvar by
-Griffith ap Meredith ap Davydd:
-
-    The wearer of white and green, of red and blue,
-    Is now in the painful fold of death.
-    The Church conceals her—she whom velvet so adorned.
-    Wearer of velvet,
-    We mourn with tears now that the flush of her beauty has faded,
-    Now that the wearer of velvet and red is no more.
-
-That he praises for its clear-eyed simplicity, its mournfulness direct
-as the cry of a child, as the bravery of this is as direct as the
-laughter of a child (it is by a poet who was also a prince):
-
-    I love the time of summer, when the charger
-    Of the exulting chief prances in the presence of a gallant lord,
-    When the nimbly moving wave is covered with foam,
-    When the apple tree is in flower,
-    And the white shield is borne on my shoulder to battle.
-
-This, also, for its simple pride:
-
-   The men who went to Cattraeth were men of name:
-   Wine and mead out of gold was their drink:
-   Three men, and threescore, and three hundred, with golden torques.
-
-How often will he repeat "with golden torques"!
-
-But (and here some will reconsider their opinion that he is a fool, or
-one "not wise" as the pleasant Welsh phrase goes) there is no one that
-can laugh more loudly than he; or sing a song more happily; or join more
-lustily than he in hunting on foot, over the craggy hills, some fox
-which the farmer can never shoot when he comes for the turkeys in
-November; and in the heat of the run he will curse the hounds for
-gaining on the fox, and the fox for running no faster, saying that the
-worst of fox-hunting is that it is so one-sided, since the fox is not
-allowed to rejoice at the end with hounds and men.
-
-And here is one of his imitative songs, reduced to its lowest terms by a
-translator:
-
-     She is dead, Eluned,
-     Whom the young men and the old men
-     And the old women and even the young women
-     Came to the gates in the village
-     To see, because she walked as beautifully as a heifer.
-
-     She is dead, Eluned,
-     Who sang the new songs
-     And the old; and made the new
-     Seem old, and the old
-     As if they were just born and she had christened them.
-
-     She is dead, Eluned,
-     Whom I admired and loved,
-     When she was gathering red apples,
-     When she was making bread and cakes,
-     When she was smiling to herself alone and not thinking of me.
-
-     She is dead, Eluned,
-     Who was part of Spring,
-     And of blue Summer and red Autumn,
-     And made the Winter beloved;
-     She is dead, and these things come not again.
-
-[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF BETTWS-Y-COED]
-
-
-                           AZARIAH JOHN PUGH
-
-One of the most inspiriting of our fire-siders at the farmhouse is a
-young schoolmaster named Azariah John Pugh, and called, in the Welsh
-fashion, almost invariably, Azariah John.
-
-He is mainly English and partly Spanish; he was born in England, but
-having a Welsh name, he boasts much of his country, as he has elected to
-call Wales. But in truth he belongs to no time or place. He cares
-nothing for the house he lives in, for the village, or for any place he
-ever saw. Yet are we never tired of hearing his rich sentiments about
-them all. If only he be far away from it, there is no place known to him
-which he will not magnify with words which others do not easily use even
-for their true loves. Probably he would like to like them; but that very
-liking seems to be due to his feverish wide reading in books that are
-full of sentiments he admires and would borrow, if he could. Thus, of
-old cities, rivers flowing past famous places, mountains of beauty or
-story, the white cliffs of the south, the whin-red moorland of Wales,
-old gardens, solemn woods, all solitudes, fading races, sunsets, fallen
-greatness in men and things, old books, old beer, poverty, childhood ...
-of all these he will talk as if he had discovered them to the world,
-though it may be doubted whether he knows them at all. Yet is he a
-magnificent echo of the genuine lovers of these things, and he is so
-sorrowfully anxious to be believed that to some of us he has seemed to
-be the true heir, though defrauded of his inheritance, of all beauty and
-all antiquity. He is for ever speaking of "remembering afresh and with
-pleasure ancient matters," though he knows that even he cannot remember
-them with pleasure, and that no experienced man ever does so. He is so
-young that he has nothing to forget. But in his own esteem he is old
-now, and shakes his head over the light-heartedness of old men, saying,
-"If they were as old as I am——"
-
-He speaks so suavely that the plain man wonders that he has never felt
-as deeply himself. Before his patriotism, the patriot is abashed. The
-lover of the quiet life, in his presence, is persuaded that himself can
-hardly be said to love it. No lover repeats more fondly—
-
-[Illustration: THE OLD BRIDGE, BETTWS-Y-COED]
-
-             And I would send tales of forgotten love
-             Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs
-             Of maids deserted in the olden time.
-
-He thus deceives every one but himself, and that one exception is the
-real cause of his unhappiness. He cannot avoid his affectations. He only
-finds them out when they are full-grown and most noisily and hungrily
-abroad in every man's ears, and then he has to maintain them, wearily
-but with an apparent gaiety. Pity even will not hurt him. It is his
-genial air: he rejoices in it as a pigeon, leaning and raising her wing
-to expose her tender side, rejoices in summer rain, and as languidly;
-and then again he is furious at it, and cultivates brutality, drinks
-much beer, and uses many oaths, of which he wearies and comes again to
-the old tap.
-
-The ghosts of the subtle emotions which we say make up modernity have
-come into his brain, and they are so many that he has become, if not a
-theatre, at least a mortuary, of modernity. But the nervous strain of
-any real passion in his neighbourhood obliges him to be rude or to run
-away. Real passion was always scandalously ill done: he would have no
-lover die less romantically than Romeo.
-
-And as his thoughts, so are his acts, except that they are few. He has
-been to Rome, the Bay of Spezzia, Windermere; he has walked along the
-Pilgrim's Road to Canterbury. He has learned to work badly in metal and
-wood. He has had whims and drugs enough to win an appreciation from Mr.
-Arthur Symons. He has written poems under the influence of something in
-his stomach; but either he cannot read them, or they are not fit to be
-read. He wrote one, I remember, about a girl who worked a story in
-tapestry while her lover played on a harp the melody which told the same
-story. He wrote a sermon on the death of John Jones because a hundred
-persons of that name die every day, and he wished to praise the average
-man, out of a whimsical distaste for his late less fantastic likings. He
-has had friends and has been left by them; or, as he says, after the
-Welsh poet,
-
- The brave, the magnanimous, the amiable, the generous, and the energetic
- Are as stepping-stones to the bard.
-
-He has made love, and he has been scorned; the sad tunes of
-
-                       Old unhappy far off-things
-                       And battles long ago
-
-[Illustration: SWALLOW FALLS, BETTWS-Y-COED]
-
-are accordingly most dear to him, and in his gayest moments he will
-murmur some sad melody like "The Marsh of Rhuddlan" or "My Johnny was a
-shoemaker." I have heard him repeat this strange poem of Taliesin's as
-if he were a reincarnation of the bard:
-
-       Primary chief bard am I to Elphin,
-       And my original country is the region of the summer stars;
-       Idno and Heinin called me Merddin,
-       At length every King will call me Taliesin.
-       I was with my Lord in the highest sphere,
-       On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell;
-       I have borne a banner before Alexander;
-       I know the names of the stars from north to south....
-       I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass;
-       I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan;
-       I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene;
-       I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Ceridwen;
-       I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin;
-       I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn;
-       For a day and a year in stocks and fetters,
-       I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin.
-       I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,
-       I have been teacher to all intelligences,
-       I am able to instruct the whole universe,
-       I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth:
-       And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish....
-
-And it falls strangely from this wandering voice that calls itself a
-man. It is comic and it is terrible. He alone seems to feel the true
-sadness of them: flatterers and low comic persons tell him that he is
-but a vessel come into the world to be filled with all the sorrows that
-have been. Truly, all that has passed, is.
-
-Nevertheless, we love him for his gross natural self, for so we think
-his only convincing affectation, the only one which he displays with
-some consistency by the fireside; and we know, as the world does not
-know, how costly and passionate affectations are.
-
-
-                         MORGAN RHYS AND OTHERS
-
-I should like to win some charity for Morgan Rhys, the descendant of a
-prince, a bard and a tin-plater. Charity it must be; for, in truth, he
-is something of a Celt in the bad, fashionable sense of that strange
-word, and is somewhat ridiculous beside the landlord of the "Cross Inn."
-An orphan, he lived as the only child in the large house of a distant
-relative, reading everything, playing half-heartedly at games, yet now
-and then entering into them with such enthusiasm that he did what he
-liked and won a singular reputation. He went seldom to a chapel, and
-when he went, did something more than escape boredom, by the marvellous
-gift of inattention which enabled him to continue his own chain of
-thought or fancy from beginning to end of the service. He was quite
-unhindered by hymn, prayer, or sermon, and accepted what he heard, as
-elderly persons accept fairies, without even curiosity. The death of
-others made him helpless for a time, but he did not reason about the
-fact: his own death he at all times contemplated without fear; what he
-feared, if anything, was the fear of death.
-
-These things would not be remarkable, if he had not been at the same
-time an impressionable, submissive child, incapable of listening to
-argument, indeed, but of an unsatisfied sentimentality that might have
-been made much use of by a priest. His abstraction from things to which
-he was indifferent was wonderful. He was delighted and fascinated by
-abstraction itself, and finding a thing uninteresting, he could at once
-withdraw into a sweet, vaporous, empty cave. Thus, he was praised at
-school for his calmness during punishment, which, he says, on many
-occasions he never felt at all.
-
-When a child of five he had been left alone for half a day in a remote
-chamber of a great house, and at nightfall was found sitting at a window
-that commanded an orchard and a lawn, and when he did not rise to greet
-his friends, and was questioned, merely said "Look!" Nobody could see
-anything, or rather, they saw everything as usual: nor could he explain.
-He always remembered the incident, and could not explain it. There was
-no fairy, no peculiar light or gloom. Yet he admitted that he was
-intoxicated by the mere trees and the green lawn. In the same way he was
-often found listening to silence. He did not pretend to hear strange
-music. It was the voluptuousness of sheer silence. At home, in the
-fields, at school, he would cry: "There!" So far as any one could see,
-there was nothing. To shut his eyes was not to see amply and clearly,
-but to see infinite purple darkness, which he vastly loved. He would ask
-friends whether they remembered this place or that on a certain day, and
-if they did, could never have them share his pleasure at the
-recollection; and for this whim he was scolded and ridiculed.
-
-[Illustration: FAIRY GLEN, BETTWS-Y-COED]
-
-But at the age of sixteen or seventeen, poetry gave him a second world
-in which he thenceforward moved with a rapture which I do not often
-observe in the religious, while in religious matters he remains so pure
-a sceptic that he has never yet learned that there is anything about
-which to be sceptical. This so-called matter-of-factness in combination
-with a rich imaginativeness is perhaps a Welsh characteristic. I
-remember a farmer in Cardiganshire, with the blood of a lamb on his
-wrist, singing a fine hymn very nobly; and though I cannot like such a
-mystic, I admire him. In the same way will Rhys turn from ribaldry to a
-poem by Mr. Yeats. But he valued poetry not so much because it was full
-of music for ear and spirit, though that he loved; not so much because
-it was the first discoverer of Nature and Man, though that he well knew,
-as because it revealed to him the possibility of a state of mind and
-spirit in which alone all things could be fully known at their highest
-power, and that state was his most cherished aim, and poetry helped him
-to achieve it. Along with love of poetry went a curious study of
-appearances and illusions. He was never tired of considering them; of
-trying to elucidate the impressionism of the eyes and the other senses;
-of trying to know what there was in tree or face or flower which many
-measurements, scientific descriptions, photographs, and even pictures
-did not exhaust. So many trees he saw were scarcely more than nothing,
-though close by and in clear air: what were they, he asked. He had never
-any answer. "If only we could think like that!" he said once, pointing
-to a fair, straight hawthorn that stood, with few branches and without
-leaves, on the mountain side. And he came to hope for a state in which
-he and the trees and the great estuary near his house, the flowers, the
-distant white cottages, should become all happily arranged in as perfect
-a pattern as that made with iron dust by a magnet—all filling their
-places, all integral parts of a whole, and important because they were.
-
-[Illustration: CHURCH POOL, BETTWS-Y-COED]
-
-One evening he came into the farmhouse in deep excitement because (as he
-said) he had been part of the music of the spheres. He had walked
-through village after village, over the mountains and along the rivers,
-under great motionless white clouds. The air had been so clear that
-every straw of the thatch gleamed separately. He had passed through the
-lonely places with a sense of passing through a crowd because the rich
-spring air had been so much a presence. The men labouring or idling in
-the fields had seemed to be seraphic and majestic beings; the women
-smiling or talking by the gates were solemn and splendid. When at last
-he descended into this valley, he saw the wood smoke rising gently and
-blue from all the houses, as if they had been a peaceful company smoking
-pipes together. He had looked at the sky, the flushed mountain sheep,
-the little stony lanes that led steeply up to farmyard and farm, the
-jackdaw making suitable music high up in the cold bright air, the
-buzzard swirling amidst the young bracken, and he had approved, and had
-been approved, in ecstasy. And on that day the mazes of human activity
-had been woven into a rich pattern with the clouds and the hills and the
-waters for the pleasure of the gods, and were certainly for once fitted
-to the beauty and harmony of the universe. Thus he spoke in
-ejaculations, to our great joy, though not without giving us a fear that
-he would spoil it by something inapposite. But merely remarking that he
-had seen the parson feeding his boar and that the harmony between them
-also was complete, he became silent, and for a time the whole world
-shimmered and darkened as if it had been some tapestry which Rhys had
-made. The most pious member of the party, a Christian if ever there was
-one, remarked that he "wished he had felt like that sometimes." To which
-Rhys replied that he could not possibly wish that, as he would then be
-damned like himself: and the other agreed.
-
-On days like this, he stepped over the edge of the world and saw the
-gods leaning from the stars among the clouds, and perhaps the loneliness
-that followed appalled him. For these days flew fast. And so he tried to
-fortify himself by mingling warmly with the life of every day in the
-village, where his reputation was for generosity, hard drinking, and
-perfect latitude of speech. He stimulated the trade-unionist, the
-parson, the minister, the bard. But he could not live both lives. The
-worldly one was the more difficult and he gave it up, and only made
-spasmodic and gross attempts to return to it. He began to shrink not
-only from all men but from all outward experience, and to live, as only
-too easily he could, upon his own fantasy. He was "surprised" when he
-saw men in the street. A million people, all different and their
-differences so much the more difficult because they were not
-acknowledged, frightened him. So his advocacy of certain humane measures
-and his support of some enthusiasms sounded as if they came from an
-angel, a fiend, or a corpse. As will happen with men who love life too
-passionately, he was often in love with death. He found enjoyment in
-silence, in darkness, in refraining from deeds, and he longed even to
-embrace the absolute blank or death, if only he could be just conscious
-of it; and he envied the solitary tree on a bare plain high up among the
-hills, under a night sky in winter where the only touch of life and
-pleasure was the rain. And now, with his fantastic belief that the
-corpse is life's handiwork and its utmost end, he is humanised only by a
-dread of the blank to which he is going:
-
-                     When we shall hear
-             The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
-             In that our pinching cave, shall we discourse
-             The freezing hours away?
-
-He has made a heaven and he fears it.
-
-Once there came to him and to the farmhouse a ghost from the north. He
-was a tall, black-haired, white-faced man, with high curved brow,
-straight fleshy nose, perfect firm lips, and bony chin. Was he soldier
-or scholar or priest? asked one and another. His face was vigilant, of
-childlike freedom of expression, and yet of boundless mystery in repose.
-When he spoke, he had fire, dignity, rapidity, ease, fertility of ideas,
-and everything of the orator except that his speech was simple. He could
-move a Welsh multitude with politics as a wind moves the corn, yet he
-did so but once, because "it was a blackguard game." Distinguished from
-the rest only by his white tie, in the pulpit he looked a Loyola and was
-a Chrysostom; yet he stood there but once or twice, to bury a noble man.
-He was master of an English style that was like Newman's in simplicity,
-music, and weight, yet published but one pamphlet that was wrung from
-him by a needy cause in a week, and never did anything to disabuse a
-public that praised him for it. His handwriting, in any haste, was that
-of a leisured and proud monk. His deep voice had a kind of flame-like
-hum of passion in it; he always used it in the service of the beautiful
-and the true. I heard him laugh only once, and then the depth which he
-discovered for a moment disturbed me so that I distrusted all laughter
-afterwards: it was like a nymph emerging from a deep cave. In scorn, in
-ignorance, in mere contentedness, he never uttered a word. He is content
-to be the light and the rest of a few scholars and a hundred miners, and
-to be the faithful, unhonoured Levite of the mighty dead, of whom not
-one, or prince or bard, had a virtue which he has not, except it were a
-strong right arm and the will to make a war in which to use it for the
-service of the liberty and integrity of Wales, for these alone of mortal
-things he passionately loves.
-
-[Illustration: MINER'S BRIDGE ON RIVER LLUGWY]
-
-Lastly, there is at the farmhouse still a memory of that poet, great
-discoverer of manuscripts and splendid human being—Iolo Morganwg—also
-herbalist, lover of liberty and of the Revolution in France, a mighty
-walker, who would ride in no man's coach, and having been given a horse,
-drove it before him for a long way, and complained that a horse was
-wearisome. He learned his alphabet from the tombstones which his father
-made. In his youth, in the middle of the eighteenth century, he thought
-of going to America to search for the Welsh colony left five hundred
-years before by Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd, whom Southey strove to sing. He
-was stone-mason, bookseller, land-surveyor and (in slave-owning days)
-seller of sugar "uncontaminated by human gore." Eighty years ago he was
-to be seen "on the highways and byways of Glamorgan—an elderly
-pedestrian of rather low stature, wearing his long grey hair flowing
-over his high coat-collar, which by constant antagonism had pushed up
-his hat brim into a quaint angle of elevation behind. His countenance
-was marked by a combination of quiet intelligence and quick
-sensitiveness; the features angular, the lines deep, and the grey eye
-benevolent but highly excitable. He was clad in rustic garb: the coat
-blue, with goodly brass buttons, and the nether integument good homely
-corduroy. He wore buckles in his shoes, and a pair of remarkably stout
-well-set legs were vouchers for the great peripatetic powers he was well
-known to possess. A pair of canvas wallets were slung over his
-shoulders, one depending in front, the other behind. These contained a
-change of linen and a few books and papers connected with his favourite
-pursuits" (the study and collection of old Welsh manuscriptions for the
-illustration of Welsh history). "He generally read as he walked, 'with
-spectacles on nose,' and a pencil in his hand serving him to make notes
-as they suggested themselves. A tall staff, which he grasped at about
-the level of his ear, completed his travelling equipment." And in this
-chair, they say, he spent a night, sleeping and reading alternately.
-
-Outside, by the window, is the village idiot, with a smile like the
-sound of bells ascending from a city buried in the sea.
-
-
-
-
-                               CHAPTER V
-                          WALES MONTH BY MONTH
-
-
-                               _January_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-The road ran for ten miles between mountains on which the woods of oak
-and fir moaned, though there was little wind. A raven croaked with a fat
-voice. I could hear a score of streams. But the valley would not speak
-with me. The sole joy in it was that of walking fast and of seeing the
-summits of the hills continually writing a wild legend on the cloudy
-sky. The road curved and let in the poor sunlight from the south-west;
-and there were interminable oak woods ahead,—one moan and one dull
-cloud.
-
-But, suddenly, a space of the south-west sky was silver white. The sun
-was almost visible, and, suddenly, a company of oak trees caught the
-light and shone, and became warm and glorious, but misty and
-impenetrable with light. They dreamed of summers to come and summers
-past. For one moment they were as fine and strange and chosen from all
-the rest, as things discovered by a lantern on a country road at night.
-Not only were they impenetrable to the sight, but it was impossible to
-suppose oneself amongst them. They were holding festival, but not for
-me. They were populous, but not with men. They were warm and welcoming,
-and something was happy there. They were as a large, distant, and
-luminous house seen in a cold and windy night by some one hungry, poor,
-timid, and old, upon a lonely road, envying it with an insatiable envy
-that never dreams of satisfying itself.
-
-But, in a moment, a mist arose from the grass between the oaks and me:
-the glory departed: and the little, draughty farmhouse was far more to
-be desired than they, where a soft-voiced motherly girl of twenty gave
-me cheese and bread and milk, and smiled gently at the folly of walking
-on such a day.
-
-[Illustration: SUNNY FIELD, NEAR LLANBERIS]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-All day I wandered over an immense, bare, snowy mountain which had
-looked as round as a white summer cloud, but was truly so pitted and
-scarred and shattered by beds of streams and valleys full of rotten oak
-trees, that my course wound like a river's or like a mouse's in a dense
-hedge. The streams were small, and, partly frozen, partly covered up by
-snow, they made no noise. Nothing made any noise. There was a
-chimney-stack clearly visible ten miles away, and I wished that I could
-hear the factory hiss and groan. No wind stirred among the trees. Once a
-kite flew over among the clouds of the colour of young swan's plumage,
-but silently, silently. I passed the remains of twelve ancient oaks,
-like the litter of some uncouth, vast monster pasturing, but without a
-sound.
-
-The ruins of a farm lay at the edge of one valley: snow choked the
-chimney and protected the hearth, which was black with flames long dead,
-and as cold as a cinerary urn of the bronze age. I stumbled over
-something snowy near by, and exposed the brown fragments of a plough,
-and farther on, a heavy wheel standing askew on its crumbling axle.
-
-The trees below were naked on one side of their boles, but above was the
-snow, like a stiff upright mane on every branch, which seemed to have
-forced them into their wild and painful curves. All the fallen rotten
-wood broke under my foot without a sound, and the green things disclosed
-were as some stupid, cheerful thing in a house of tremendous woe.
-
-It was impossible to think of the inn to which I was going, and hardly
-of the one which I had left. How could their fires have survived the
-all-pervading silent snow? When one is comfortable, near a fire or
-within reach of one, and in company, winter is thought of as a time of
-activity, of glowing faces, of elements despised, and even a poetry book
-brings back the spring: one will run, or eat chestnuts, or read a book,
-or look at a picture to-morrow, and so the winter flies. But on the
-mountain there was no activity; it was impertinent: there was the snow.
-When I could remember anything it was these verses, which were the one
-survival from the world I had known before I began to cross this
-immense, bare, snowy mountain:
-
-                The beams flash on
-          And make appear the melancholy ruins
-          Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
-          Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms and spears,
-          And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
-          Of scythéd chariots, and the emblazonry
-          Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
-          Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
-          Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
-          The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
-          Whose population which the earth grew over
-          Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
-          Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
-          Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
-          Huddled in grey annihilation, split,
-          Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
-          The anatomies of unknown winged things,
-          And fishes which were isles of living scale,
-          And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
-          The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
-          To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
-          Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
-          The jagged alligator, and the might
-          Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
-          Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
-          And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
-          Increased and multiplied like summer worms
-          On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
-          Wrapped deluge round it like a cloke, and they
-          Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
-          Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried
-          Be not!
-
-They lay beneath; the snow was over them. It was hard to walk while all
-things had thus, in Asiatic phrase, perfected their repose. When the
-distant chimney appeared again, it was as incredible as a thing seen in
-a dream when one knows that it is a dream. It interrupted the perfection
-of the whole, as I did, but only as the smell of a mouse may spoil the
-beauty of an old room which has been left for a dead man alone, for some
-time after the funeral. The farther I went, the more immense became the
-extent of hills ahead and around. Their whiteness made the sky gloomy,
-as if with coming night. The furthest were grey with distance. In the
-cold that overtook my swiftest walking I could not put by the
-imagination that I could see myself travelling over more endless white
-hills, lost, to my own knowledge, and yet beyond my own power to save.
-And, again, I thought of all the hills beyond those I saw, until even
-the immensity before me became more awful, because it suggested the
-whole, as the light of one candle by the organist suggests the whole
-cathedral at midnight.
-
-And then, though I did not know it, a change began, and dimly, not
-hopefully, as when one thinks one hears the double click of a latch in a
-house which strangers inhabit now, I saw that the sun began to set, and
-it was red. I knew that red: it belonged to the old world: it was the
-colour of the oast houses in Kent. A window, two miles off, caught the
-light and blazed. A bell told the hour in a church, and shook some of
-the snow from the belfry in a mist. I warmed myself in the breath of a
-flock of sheep. I knew that I heard the voice of a stream which had been
-with me for a long way. Borrow, I remembered, knew the stream. Borrow! I
-was at home again.
-
-[Illustration: WELSH FARM, NEAR LLANBERIS]
-
-Slowly the fire and the ale constructed the world again, and though I
-could still see the snow from the hearth of the inn, it was as impotent
-as the frail moon which was convoyed down among the moorlands by dark
-and angry clouds, while I read—as now my reader does—this passage from
-_Wild Wales_:—
-
-"'I suppose you follow some pursuit besides bardism?' said I; 'I suppose
-you farm?'
-
-"'I do not farm,' said the man in grey. 'I keep an inn.'
-
-"'Keep an inn?' said I.
-
-"'Yes,' said the man in grey. 'The —— Arms at L——.'
-
-"'Sure,' said I, 'inn-keeping and bardism are not very cognate
-pursuits?'
-
-"'You are wrong,' said the man in grey; 'I believe the _awen_, or
-inspiration, is quite as much at home at the bar as in the barn, perhaps
-more. It is that belief which makes me tolerably satisfied with my
-position and prevents me from asking Sir Richard to give me a farm
-instead of an inn.'
-
-"'I suppose,' said I, 'that Sir Richard is your landlord?'
-
-"'He is,' said the man in grey, 'and a right noble landlord too.'
-
-"'I suppose,' said I, 'that he is right proud of his tenant?'
-
-"'He is,' said the man in grey, 'and I am right proud of my landlord,
-and will here drink his health. I have often said that if I were not
-what I am, I should wish to be Sir Richard.'
-
-"'You consider yourself his superior?' said I.
-
-[Illustration: SNOWDON FROM CWM-Y-GLO]
-
-"'Of course,' said the man in grey; 'a baronet is a baronet, but a bard
-is a bard, you know. I never forget what I am, and the respect due to my
-sublime calling. About a month ago I was seated in an upper apartment,
-in a fit of rapture; there was a pen in my hand and paper before me on
-the table, and likewise a jug of good ale, for I always find that the
-_awen_ is most prodigal of her favours when a jug of good ale is before
-me. All of a sudden my wife came running up and told me that Sir Richard
-was below, and wanted to speak to me. "Tell him to walk up," said I.
-"Are you mad?" said my wife. "Do you know who Sir Richard is?" "I do,"
-said I; "a baronet is a baronet, but a bard is a bard. Tell him to walk
-up." Well, my wife went and told Sir Richard that I was writing and
-could not come down, and that she hoped he would not object to walk up.
-"Certainly not, certainly not," said Sir Richard. "I shall be only too
-happy to ascend to a genius on his hill. You may be proud of such a
-husband, Mrs. W." And here it will be as well to tell you that my name
-is W.—J. W. of ——. Sir Richard then came up, and I received him with
-gravity and politeness. I did not rise, of course, for I never forget
-myself a moment, but I told him to sit down, and added, that after I had
-finished the _pennill_ (song for the harp) I was engaged upon, I would
-speak to him. Well, Sir Richard smiled and sat down, and begged me not
-to hurry myself, for that he could wait. So I finished the _pennill_,
-deliberately, mind you, for I did not forget who I was, and then turning
-to Sir Richard, entered upon business with him.'
-
-"'I suppose Sir Richard is a very good-tempered man?' said I.
-
-"'I don't know,' said the man in grey. 'I have seen Sir Richard in a
-devil of a passion, but never with me. No, no! trust Sir Richard for not
-riding the high horse with me. A baronet is a baronet, but a bard is a
-bard, and that Sir Richard knows.'"
-
-The which Borrovianism should as much delight my hard-working reader as
-it did me, on that January night: may it console him also.
-
-
-                               _February_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-I passed through a village where I found that the old-fashioned bidding
-marriage was not dead. For a printed sheet with this announcement (in
-Welsh) fell into my hands:
-
-                     A BIDDING TO A MARRIAGE
-
-                 Inasmuch as we intend entering the
-                 state of wedlock on ——, we invite
-                 wedding gifts, which will be repaid
-                 with thanks on a like occasion.
-                           T. Williams.
-                           Elizabeth Jones.
-                 It is expected that gifts due to them,
-                 and to their parents and brothers,
-                 will be paid on the wedding day.
-
-[Illustration: SNOWDON FROM LLANBERIS LAKE]
-
-The custom was old; the village was new, and it stood on the edge of a
-strange new land. Having passed it, the road dipped among sublime black
-hills of refuse from furnace and pit. The streams were rich with yellow
-water, purple water. Here and there were dim, shining, poisonous heaps
-of green and blue, like precious stones. There were railway lines
-everywhere, and on them trucks, full of scraps of metal, like sheaves of
-scimitars and other cruel weapons—still cruel, but hacked, often rusty,
-and expressing something more horrible than mere sharpness and ferocity.
-There were furnaces, crimson and gold; and beyond all, a white-clouded
-sky which said that it was over the sea.
-
-In the early afternoon a grey mist invested all things, so that even
-when I was close to them, they seemed about to pass away, and I was
-tempted to walk regardless and straight ahead as the harper did in the
-tale.
-
-It is told that a harper was asked to play and sing at a wedding. It was
-a fine day, and on his way he sometimes played over the melodies he most
-liked; and as he went, the fairies followed him, their little feet going
-fast and sharp like drumsticks. When he reached the house, the fairies
-were still behind him. They followed him in, and presently, since he
-again tuned his harp, the company began to dance, and the fairies with
-them; the house, which was a little one, did not impede them; and in no
-long time they all went dancing out of the house. The fairies, it is
-said, were not to be distinguished from the bridal party. They went on
-across well-known country, regardless and straight ahead, through a barn
-where men were threshing, through a hall where men were dining. Coming
-at last to a place he did not know, the harper ceased and became
-separated from the rest, and slept. When he awoke, he found himself in a
-pleasant place among very little people, and all that was asked of him
-was that he should play on the harp every night. Then one day he got
-leave to go out of the land of the fairies; but he left his harp there
-and could never get back again. He found that the others had returned.
-He could say nothing of the wedding day, except that he had never before
-harped so well.
-
-And well did the mist harp. It was the one real credible thing among
-those furnaces, which were but as gaps in it, or as landscapes seen
-rapidly from small windows in a lofty house upon a hill.
-
-[Illustration: SNOWDON FROM TRAETH MAWR]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-Next day I crossed the river. At first, the water seemed as calm and
-still as ice. The boats at anchor, and doubled by shadow, were as if by
-miracle suspended in the water. No ripple was to be seen, though now and
-then one emitted a sudden transitory flame, reflected from the sun,
-which dreamed half-way up the sky in a cocoon of cloud. No motion of the
-tide was visible, though the shadows of the bridge that cleared the
-river in three long leaps, trembled and were ever about to pass away.
-The end of the last leap was unseen, for the further shore was lost in
-mist, and a solitary gull spoke for the mist. A sombre, satanic family
-of what had yesterday been the chimneys of factories rose out of the
-mist,—belonging to a remote, unexplored, inaccessible country over
-there, which seemed to threaten the river-side where I stood. But the
-tide was rising, and the thin long wavering line of water grew up over
-the mud, and died, and grew up again, curved like the grain of a
-chestnut or mother-of-pearl, and fascinating, persuasive. And sometimes
-the line of water resembled a lip, quivering with speech, and yet
-silent, unheard. Two swans glimmered at the edge; and beneath them, in
-the water, and beside them, on the polished mud, their white reflections
-glimmered.
-
-Suddenly the tantara of a trumpet stung me like an enormous invisible
-wasp, and I looked down and saw a grey, drowned dog at my feet. His legs
-lay in pairs; his head curved towards his fore-legs, his tail towards
-his hind-legs. He was of the colour of the mud. But his very quietness
-and powerlessness and abjectness, without any consideration of all the
-play and strife and exercise that once led him step by step towards
-death,—without a thought of the crimson tongue that once flickered,
-after hunting or fighting, like a flame of pure abandoned vitality,—gave
-me a strange suggestion of power and restraint, just as the misty land
-over the water, without any consideration of all the men and machinery
-that were visible there yesterday, suggested a life without those
-things. The beast became a puissant part of the host of all the dead or
-motionless or dreaming things, of statuary and trees and dead or
-inefficient men, and was, with them, about to convince me of a state
-quite other than ours, and not worse, when once again the trumpet
-disturbed me and turned me to the thought that I was the supreme
-life-giver to these things, that I gave them of myself, and that without
-me they were nothing; and I feared that this fancied state was but
-suggested by my envy of calm things, and that, though dreams may put the
-uttermost parts of the earth into our possession, without the dream the
-dreamer is nothing more than naught.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-Thence I went to an irregular, squalid, hideous, ashen town,—a large
-village, but noisy and without character, neither English nor Welsh. The
-street songs were but a week or two behind those of London, and they
-were not mixed with anything but an occasional Welsh hymn tune or
-"Sospan bach." But there used to be an old house there that spoke of old
-Wales, and I went to see it.
-
-When I came to the edge of its garden I heard a blackbird sing, and in
-the busy street how old and far away it sounded! as if it were true that
-"thrice the age of a man is that of a stag, and thrice that of a stag is
-that of the melodious blackbird."
-
-Pretentious, unpicturesque, fatigued, and silent, the women walked to
-and fro, between the shops. Now and then an unmarried girl laughed; the
-others had no such energy.
-
-It was more pleasant to be among the men, who were on the other side of
-the road, many of them standing still, packed close in a half-moon
-figure that swelled out over the pavement, and watching something. There
-was nothing gorgeous or adventurous or even elegant in their scrupulous
-dress; in the old faces either alcoholic or parched, in the waxen faces
-of the younger; in the voices which seemed to have been copied from the
-gramophone, their favourite instrument. I liked them for the complete
-lack of self-consciousness which allowed them to expose quite fearlessly
-their angular figures, their uninteresting clothes, their heartless,
-rigid faces that retained smiles for an incredibly short time. They were
-the equals, in everything but ease, of the labourers whom they were
-watching. But when I saw at last what they were watching, I thought that
-I could have rejoiced to have seen them, looking passionate for once, in
-flames.
-
-For, under the direction of a foreman, whose snub nose, bow legs, and
-double collar made him a sublime and monstrous priest or chief of what
-was most horrible among the men and women of the street, a band of
-labourers, without pity, without even ferocity, but mechanically, was
-demolishing "Quebec," a dignified mid-eighteenth-century house, where
-for five generations a decent, stable professional family had lived,
-loved beauty according to its lights, and been graceful in its leisure.
-The very house had seemed to say, amid its troubled neighbours, as
-Marlowe's Edward said,
-
-                   This life contemplative is heaven.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  SNOWDON FROM CAPEL CURIG LAKE—SUMMER EVENING
-]
-
-Now it was falling in thunders and clouds of ruin; and I wondered that
-the people did not fall upon the enormous, red-haired, passionless men
-who wielded the pickaxes.
-
-For twenty years I had known "Quebec" and had watched the streets
-creeping upon it, until the house and great garden were surrounded and
-spied upon by houses on all sides but one. That one side had been
-protected by a lofty and massive wall, and through that the enemy had
-now broken an entrance.
-
-Behind that wall, the two Alderneys had grazed on three acres of meadow,
-in the midst of which had been an old orchard, and in the midst of that
-the gardens and the house. Once I had seen a girl with the delicate
-Kentish rake gathering a little hay there. In one corner, too, had been
-a tangle of elder and bramble, which (so we used to fancy) might
-possibly have—by pure and unbroken descent, miraculously escaping all
-change—the sap of Eden in their veins.
-
-But the Alderneys were gone, and the meadow was slashed with ruts; the
-trees were down; the air was foul with dust of mortar and brick and
-plaster; and, mocking at the disembowelled house, new bricks,
-scaffolding, and iron pillars and girders lay round about, among the
-fallen clouds of ivy, which were torn and dead. Oh, Westminster,
-Tintern, Godstow, Kidwelly, you have immortality, not indeed in your
-forms, but in the hearts of men; but "Quebec" dies with me! So I thought
-and wondered.
-
-Hastily broken up, without a grave, without ceremonial, without a
-becoming interval of desolation in which to spend its tears, and have at
-least the pleasure of regret, the house, I knew, could not but send
-forth piteous ghosts to wander up and down,—_inops, inhumataque
-turba_,—and round their heads garlands of branches with those terrible
-buds that were never to be leaves,—until their sorrows and ours were
-smoothed by time or consumed by death. I met them afterwards in spring,
-when the purple of the brambles should have been at last overcome by
-green, and they seemed the sole inhabitants of the brand-new, crowded
-streets, beneath which "Quebec" is buried.
-
-[Illustration: IN THE LLEDR VALLEY]
-
-Suddenly I met Philaster, who had years ago rung the great bell of the
-house and become the angry coachman's willing captive, so that he might
-see the house quite close, and the flowers and the grass. Between us we
-made the power of the breaker and builder as naught. For a little while,
-indeed, we asked, What would other children do who lived in that suburb,
-and had no "Quebec" to provide a home for all their fancies,—to lend its
-lawns for bright ladies and brave knights to walk upon,—its borders and
-bowers to complete the scenery of Hans Andersen,—its grey walls to hide
-beauty and cruelty, misers and witches, and children crying because of
-wicked stepmothers? We had set out, as children, to live as if for
-eternity. Now we would live as if for annihilation to-morrow. We would
-no longer set our hearts upon anything which the world can destroy. We
-would set our hearts upon things of the imagination—like "Quebec."
-
-So we went up into an attic, and drew the curtains, and lit the fire,
-and took draughts of long oblivion, and made our sorrows pompous by
-reading Villon and Catullus and Du Bellay, and the close of _Paradise
-Lost_, and the thirteenth book of the _Morte Darthur_, and Goethe's "Now
-comes first love and friendship's company," and other things that
-reminded us of decay and beauty; and not one of them but drew a long
-echo from the hoary walls of "Quebec" (now safe within our brains). Yet
-not one of these things, however splendid or tumultuous or tender, was
-then too splendid or tumultuous or tender for our mood. Nor could one of
-them stir us so potently as the picture that came often that evening to
-our minds. Here was the gaudy, dismal, roaring street, its roar
-sometimes settling into a kind of silence through which the heart longs
-for voice of woman or bird to penetrate; and there, seen over the high
-wall, was the old man who owned "Quebec," playing bowls with several
-happy children in the twilight, and half-hidden by the dense border of
-hollyhock, red-hot poker, blush roses, nasturtium, and sunflower; and
-the house itself, looking more distant than it was, in that sweet light,
-seemed to possess those calm, impregnable high places of the wise, than
-which, says Lucretius, there is no possession more desirable.
-
-
-                                _March_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-Just before dawn, I came to a cleft high in the hills, so that I could
-only see a little copse of oak and hazel, and in the dying moonlight a
-thousand white islands of cloud and mountain
-
-             Totus conlucens veste atque insignibus albis.
-
-The night had gone, and the day had not come; and the little copse had
-the serious, brooding air which all things have at that hour, and
-especially when the land is tender with the first hope of spring and in
-that reverie—
-
-                              Cette rêverie
-                          Que ne pense à rien.
-
-For what I saw seemed but the fragments of something which night had
-built for its own delight, and as they became clearer and clearer they
-had more and more the appearance of being unbuilt and dissolved. But,
-gradually, the birds were let out and they sang. Their songs, on the
-wintry hill, which I had last visited in summer, broke upon the silence
-as in summer they never do, like the opening of the door of a room that
-is empty but has once been gay with fire and books and men; and sweet
-though the blackbird was, and shrill the missel-thrush, their songs were
-awful, and said that "a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto
-us." The grass, which had truly been of no colour, though my urgent
-memory persuaded me that it was green, began to awake to colour, and,
-while in the shadow of the copse the dusk was impenetrable, the light
-reached a knoll where there was dead bracken still. "Colour," said
-Novalis, "is an effort of matter to become light," and for one moment
-the grass upon that knoll ceased to strive and was light. A plover that
-wheeled close by disappeared and was but a glow.
-
-I went on, and on a lower slope the ploughman was beginning to plough in
-the shadow. Grim and worthless looked the work, until I looked round and
-saw the dawn that was being prepared. But I watched too carefully, for I
-saw it all. Ever, as it grew, statelier and richer, I said to myself,
-that in a little while it would be perfected: yet still I watched and I
-began to think of those who saw it, as I had seen it before, from
-windows of towns, as they rose for work, or as they douted the candles
-and put away cards or books, and paused for perhaps a minute, and gazed
-as they never gazed at human beauty, because, though they revered it,
-they feared it also, and though they feared it they were fascinated. I
-thought of those that leapt up at it; those that mourned because they
-had seen it pass so often before into a common day; those that, on
-inhospitable roads, saw it and neglected it, or cursed it after a night
-in which they had drunk their last poor earnings altogether. If it would
-but last ... I had been looking at it and had not seen it, and when I
-dropped these thoughts I knew that it was gone, the slowly prepared and
-solemn dawn which made the splendid spring of that year.
-
-[Illustration: DUFFWS MOUNTAIN]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-Then I took a path which led out of sight of the white crested mountain
-and down among larches and oaks.
-
-The wind was changing the grass from green to silver, and back again,
-rhythmically. In the pallid herbage at the edge of the wood it produced
-many little sounds, the combination of them barely louder than the sound
-which fancy makes among tombs; and yet that little concert passed into
-the ear and heart, giving a sympathy with the thousand minute sorrows of
-the inanimate world and a feeling that is part of the melancholy so
-importunately intruding on a spring day. But there, too, was trefoil,
-delicatest herbage of the early year, with its trick of globing and
-preserving rain upon its foliage, so that it is more delicate still in
-the grey dawn. One stalk with all its leaf singularly fine and small had
-grown out of a scar in a teazel stem.
-
-So I came into a valley, and there was one white house in it, with a
-green, glowing, and humming garden, and at the door a woman who might
-have been the Old Year. It was one of those white houses so fair that in
-the old time a poet compared a girl's complexion with them, as with
-lilies and foam. It held all the sun, so that suddenly I knew that in
-another valley, farther south and farther east, the rooks were making
-the lanes sleepy with their busy talk; the kingfishers were in pairs on
-the brooks, whose gentle water was waving and combing the hair of the
-river moss; the gold of the willow catkin was darkened by bees; over an
-old root of dock was a heaving colony of gleaming ants; perhaps the
-chiffchaff had come to the larches and the little green moschatel was in
-flower with large primroses among the ash stoles in wet woods; and in
-the splendid moments of the day the poplars seemed to come into the
-world, suddenly, all purple....
-
-Yet here there was no rich high-hedged lane, no poplar, no noise of
-rooks, but only a desolate brown moorland crossed by deep swift brooks
-through which the one footpath ran, and this white house, like a flower
-on a grave, recalling these memories of other valleys; so that I forgot
-that near by the birches stood each in a basin of foam from the dripping
-of mist and rain, and that I had not yet seen a thrush's nest in any
-hawthorn on those hills. Therefore, I counted that house as lucky for me
-as the Welshman's hazel-stick in the tale that is told in Iolo
-Morganwg's life.
-
-[Illustration: DUFFWS MOUNTAIN IN MIST]
-
-This is the tale.
-
-A Welshman, with a fine hazel-stick in his hand, was once stopped on
-London Bridge by an Englishman, who asked whence he came. "From my own
-country," said the Welshman churlishly. "Do not take it amiss," said the
-Englishman; "and if you will tell me what I ask, and take my advice, it
-will be much for your good. Under the roots of the tree from which came
-your stick, there are great treasures of gold and silver; if you can
-remember the place, and will take me to it, I will make the treasure
-yours."
-
-Now knowing that the fellow was a magician, the Welshman, though at
-first unwilling to be a party in this strange thing, at length agreed,
-and went with him to Craig-y-Dinas and showed him the hazel-tree. They
-dug out the root and found a broad flat stone underneath, which covered
-the entrance to a cave. They went in, the magician warning the Welshman
-lest he should touch a bell that hung in the middle of their path. At
-the spacious further end of the cave, they saw many warriors lying
-asleep in a circle, with bright armour on, and weapons ready at hand.
-One of the warriors, refulgent above all the rest, had a jewelled and
-golden crown along with the shield and battle-axe at his side.
-
-At the feet of the warriors, in the middle of the circle, they saw two
-immense heaps, the one of gold, the other of silver, and the magician
-told the Welshman that he might take away as much as he could carry from
-either of the heaps. So he took much gold. The magician took nothing. On
-their way out of the cave he again warned the Welshman lest he should
-touch the bell. But should he touch it, said the magician, some of the
-warriors would surely awake and ask "if it was yet day": to which he
-must at once answer: "No, sleep thou on," whereupon the warriors would
-sleep again. And this the Welshman found to be truth when he staggered
-under his gold and grazed the bell; but remembering the other's words,
-he said: "Sleep thou on" when the warriors asked if it were day; and
-they slept.
-
-When they had left the cave, and closed the entrance, the magician told
-the Welshman that he might return to the cave whenever he wished; that
-the warriors were the knights of King Arthur, and the warrior with the
-jewelled and golden crown was King Arthur; that they were awaiting the
-day when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle should go to war; for on
-that day the trembling earth would toll the bell, and at that sound the
-king and the knights of the king would awake, take their weapons,
-overthrow the Saxon, recover the island of Britain, and again establish
-their king at Caerlleon, in justice and in peace and for ever. But the
-Welshman spent his gold. He went again to the cave; he overloaded his
-back with gold; he stumbled and the bell rang; he forgot the password.
-And the knights rose and leaned upon their elbows, and one of them stood
-up and took away his gold and beat him and thrust him out and closed the
-mouth of the cave; and though he and many others made all the hill sore
-with their digging, the cave was not found again.
-
-
-                                _April_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-For half a day there was now a world of snow, a myriad flakes falling, a
-myriad rising, and nothing more save the sound of rivers; and now a
-world of green undulating hills that smiled in the lap of the grey
-mountains, over which moved large clouds, sometimes tumultuous and grey,
-sometimes white and slow, but always fringed with fire. When the snow
-came, the mountains dissolved and were not. When the mountains were born
-again out of the snow, the snow seemed but to have polished the grass,
-and put a sharper sweetness in the song of the thrush and the call of
-the curlew, and left the thinnest of cirrus clouds upon the bare field,
-where it clung only to the weeds. So, in this dialogue of mountain and
-snow, nothing was easily remembered or even credible, until I came to
-the foot of a hill which hazels and oak trees crowned. The snow was
-disappearing and the light came precipitately through it and struck the
-hill. All the olive and silver and leaden stems of oak and hazel glowed
-together and made a warm haze and changed the hill into an early sunset
-cloud out of which came the cooing of wood-pigeons. The mountains lay
-round, grey, faint, unimportant, about to pass away; the country that
-lay between them and the hill was still in mist. So the hill rose up
-crowned and garlanded like a statue in a great hall of some fair woman
-of whom one wonders what art can persuade her to stay on that cold
-pedestal for ever. The wood-pigeons cooed continually; and there was the
-hill, using all the sunlight, as a chrysanthemum will do in a London
-street. It lived; it appealed to all the sense and brain together; it
-was splendid; it was Spring's, and I do not know of anything else that
-mattered or was, for the time. Very sweet it was to see the world as but
-a shining green hill and a shining brown wood, with a wood-pigeon for a
-voice, while all other things that had been were gone like the snow.
-That there was also a wind I knew only because it brought with it the
-scent of a farmyard behind: for it had motion but no sound. Something in
-me was content to see the hill as a monument of Spring that might endure
-for ever, that the wood-pigeons might coo their song; and saw that it
-made possible the sound of bells in an evening landscape, of wheat in
-sheaves, and quiet beeches and doves among them. Yet I climbed to the
-wood, and saw that last year's leaves were too thick yet for a flower to
-pierce them; and that same wind had found a brittle, dead ash-tree in
-which to sing a cold November song; and the pigeons clapped their wings
-and flew away. And that cold November song made me remember against
-myself the old legend of the child who played with fairies, but came
-once with her mother and saw them no more.
-
-[Illustration: COMING NIGHT, NEAR BEDDGELERT]
-
-There were, says the story, at a small harbour belonging to Nefyn, some
-houses in which several families formerly lived; the houses are there
-still, but nobody lives in them now. There was one family there to which
-a little girl belonged; they used to lose her for hours every day; so
-her mother was very angry with her for being so much away. "I must
-know," said she, "where you go for your play." The girl answered that it
-was to Pin-y-Wig, "The Wig point," which means a place to the west of
-the Nefyn headland; it was there, she said, she played with many
-children. "They are very nice children,—much nicer," said the child,
-"than I am." "I must know whose children they are," was the reply; and
-one day the mother went with her little girl to see the children. It was
-a distance of about a quarter of a mile to Pin-y-Wig, and after climbing
-the slope and walking a little along the top they came in sight of the
-Pin. It is from this Pin that the people of Pen-yr-Allt got water, and
-it is from there they get it still. Now after coming near the Pin the
-little girl raised her hands with joy at the sight of the children. "Oh,
-mother," said she, "their father is with them to-day; he is not with
-them always; it is only sometimes that he is." The mother asked the
-child where she saw them. "There they are, mother, running down to the
-Pin, with their father sitting down." "I see nobody, my child," was the
-reply, and great fear came upon the mother; she took hold of the child's
-hand in terror, and it came to her mind at once that they were the
-_Tylwyth Teg_. Never afterwards was the little girl allowed to go to
-Pin-y-Wig: the mother had heard that the Tylwyth Teg exchanged people's
-children with their own.
-
-[Illustration: ABERGLASLYN]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-Yesterday, the flower of the wood-sorrel and the song of the willow-wren
-came together into the oak woods, and higher up on the mountain, though
-they were still grey, the larches were misty and it was clearly known
-that soon they would be green. The air was full of the bleating of
-lambs, and though there was a corpse here and there, so fresh and
-blameless was it that it hardly spoiled the day. The night was one of
-calm and breathing darkness; nor was there any moon; and therefore the
-sorrowful darkness and angularity of early spring valleys by moonlight,
-when they have no masses of foliage to make use of the beams, did not
-exist. It was dark and warm, and from the invisible orchard, where snow
-yet lay under the stone wall, came a fragrance which, though it was not
-May, brought into our minds the song that was made for May in another
-orchard high among hills:
-
-        Have you ne'er waked in the grey of the day-dawn
-        Whitely to stand at the window scarce seen,
-        Over the garden to peer in the May-dawn
-        Past to the fruit-close whose pale boughs not green
-        Slowly reveal a fresh faintness a-flutter
-        White to the young grass and pink to the sky?
-        O, then a low call to waking we utter:
-        "Bluth, lasses, apple-bluth spirts low and high."
-
-        Out, lasses, out, to the apple-garth hasten—
-        Nay, never tarry to net your glad hair—
-        Here are no lovers your kissed shoes to fasten
-        (O, for the days when girls' feet may go bare).
-        O'er the dim lawn the may-rime yet lingers,
-        Pallid and dark as the down of the dawn—
-        Gather your skirts in your delicate fingers,
-        Stoop as you run o'er the almond-hung lawn.
-
-        Look through the trees ere dawn's twilight is over—
-        Lo, how the light boughs seem lost in the stars;
-        Everywhere bluth the grey sky seems to cover
-        Quivering and scented, new spring's kisses' scars.
-        Wet are the blossoms to wash your faint faces—
-        Bury your faces cheek-deep in their chill;
-        Press the flushed petals and open your dresses—
-        So—let them trickle your young breasts to thrill.
-
-        Winter has wronged us of sunlight and sweetness,
-        We who so soon must be hid from the sun;
-        Winter is on us as summer's completeness
-        Faint-hearted drops down a tired world undone;
-        Brief is the bloom-time as sleepy maids' laughter
-        Who know not one bed-time 'tis summer's last day.
-        Though from the heart of the rose they have quaffed her.
-        Come, lasses, come, ere our rose world falls grey.
-
-We had talked long into the night, and then as sleep came, out of this
-darkness peered the early timorous warble of a blackbird, and gradually
-all the birds in orchard, hedge, and wood made a thick mist or curtain
-of innumerable and indistinguishable notes through which still crept the
-bolder note of that same nearest blackbird. As the night lost its
-heaviness, though not its stillness, the continuous mist of songs grew
-thicker and seemed to produce or to be one with the faint darkness which
-so soon was to be light. It seemed also to be making the landscape which
-I saw being made, when I looked out. There, was the side of the hill;
-there the larches, the dark hedges, and the lingering snow and the
-orchard: they were what I had seen before, but changed and increased;
-and very subtle, plaintive, menacing, vast, was the work, though when
-the light had fully come, once more the larches, the hedges, and the
-orchard were as if they had never been sung to a new order of beauty by
-the mist of songs, and yet not the same, any more than a full coffin is
-the same as the lips and eyes and hands and hair, of which it contains
-all that we did not love. And still there were many songs; but you could
-tell who sung each of them, if you wished.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-At the end of the month, when already the cuckoo had come and the
-blackthorn flowers among hawthorn branches were deceiving those who
-desired May, I went again to the hill where the wood-pigeons had cooed.
-I sat in a room in sight of it, during a cloud-gathering sunset. The
-white houses, which had earlier been like remnants of winter snow, were
-now like flowers. They and the misty larches and the birches gave a
-nuptial splendour to the old hills. Once more the land stood in
-preparation, as it stands year after year, so that one might think it
-expected a new dynasty of gods to come on May day, as often happened in
-the old time. And in the oaks and hazels the wood-pigeons cooed again.
-But when the sunset was perfect, they ceased as if they also feared and
-loved the white and green lines of cloud that lay over the hills—of a
-white and green which I had only seen together before in a crimpled,
-tender cabbage cut in two and lying half in bright water for the cook.
-Then the silence grew and grew, exciting and paining and pleasing and
-never satisfying the ear; so that I knew not whether the silence or the
-speech that preceded it was the more mysterious. For him that has ears
-there is nothing more expressive than speech; but it is never
-unequivocal as silence is. The two are perhaps handmaidens to one
-another and inseparable parts in the universal harmony, although
-Maeterlinck says that a silent child is wiser than Plato eloquent.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW OF MOELWYN]
-
-A cuckoo had been singing, but now I heard it not; no longer did the
-yellow-ammer insist, the thrush gossip, the blackbird muse; the sounds
-of the house were dead: and I saw a hundred cows, some lying down, some
-moving so lazily—like sailing ships on a wide sea—that I could not see
-the changing of their pattern on the grass, and I was entangled in the
-unfathomable dream of the unending hills and the unending valleys.
-
-In the room hung a landscape of savage hills, cloven by dark shadows and
-bright streams, and the glass reflected the calm grass and the hill and
-the oak and hazel woods which thus mingled with the picture at times and
-made a strange palimpsest of winter and spring. Now one and now the
-other predominated, until some one came in, as three cuckoos flew crying
-overhead, and sang this song, which gave the victory to spring:—
-
-[Illustration: THE MAIDS OF CAERMARTHENSHIRE]
-
-   1st verse.
-
-     Mo-li merch-ed Cym-ru lân A fyn y gân a'r de - lyn
-     Nid oes de-styn yn un man Mor anwyl gan y bech-gyn,
-     Ac nid oes ferch-ed yn y tir Fel merch-ed Sir Gaer-fyrdd-in.
-
-   2nd verse.
-
-     Mae eu gruddiau glân i gyd Yn ca-rio gwrid y rho-syn,
-     Ac mae lliw y li-li gun Ar wedd pob un o ho-nyn';
-     Mae rhos a li - li hardd-a'r tir Ar rudd-iau Sir Gaer-fyrdd-in.
-
-And something like these were the Welsh words, which were by Watcyn Wyn:
-
-              Song and the harp desire to raise
-              To sweet Wales praise for its women;
-              Lads and their hearts have not one theme
-              So dear, no dream so clinging;
-              There are no maidens in the land
-              Like the maiden band of Caermarthen....
-
-              Of modest looks and nimble feet,
-              They are just as fleet as the wind's wings;
-              Dearly and lovesomely each floats
-              Red petticoats out farther;
-              They dance it swiftly through the earth,
-              The maids who had birth in Caermarthen....
-
-              When men would love they desire the way
-              Of these; for, I say it in earnest,
-              One is worth two or even three
-              Of the usual free brave women.
-              If I take a wife I shall kiss the braids
-              Of one of the maids of Caermarthen.
-
-[Illustration: A HAYFIELD NEAR PORTMADOC]
-
-
-                                 _May_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-All the morning I had walked among the mountains, and snow had fallen;
-but gradually I descended, and found a hawthorn standing all white and
-alone; and, at first, the delicacy of the country had an air of
-unreality, as if it were but a fancy provoked by the grim, steep, cold
-heights. Nor, at first, were the small farmhouses quite so real as the
-crags I remembered. As I approached them, I seemed to be revisiting
-lands that belonged to a fictitious golden past; but as I came up to
-them, I was not undeceived, as I should have expected to be. How sweet
-and grave were the young larches! The brooks were not running as I had
-heard them up among the hills, but as brooks would run if I read of them
-at home and at ease in the verses of some tender poet, or as they will
-when I remember them many years hence. The sound of the world was heard
-only as the laughter of youthful voices by the trout pools, or again as
-the pealing of bells that presently grew and swelled and bubbled until
-the valley in which they pealed overflowed with the sound, and the
-moment of their ceasing was not marked. So at last I gave up some of the
-pleasure of sight and hearing and smell under the influence of those
-very senses. For a fancy came of a kind that is not easily avoided when
-spring and our readiness for it come together. And the fancy was that I
-was coming into a land whither had fled the transient desirable things
-of childhood and early youth. Especially was it the land to which had
-fled the acquaintances of that time, who were known, perhaps, only for
-one day—one spring—with whom intimacy began to flower, and then death or
-some less perfect destroyer intervened and "slit the thin-spun life" and
-gave an unwithered rose into our keeping—the memory of a laugh, a
-revelation, a catch of fish. We did not know them long enough to have
-doubts, self-questionings, the egotistical indulgences in letters and
-conversations of which we sometimes drink so deep that we taste the lees
-and know futility. Or they passed away as childish games do: we made an
-appointment and never kept it, and so we never knuckled the marble or
-saw the child again. We knew them once, golden-haired, and with laughter
-which no sigh followed, with clear voices in anger or love. These grow
-not old! And with them are some of those who were once as they, the
-friends who were once acquaintances: for who does not pleasantly (or
-bitterly) remember the first fresh moments when, like a first glass, our
-friends, with all their best qualities perhaps unknown, were tasted
-carelessly, the palate quite unsoiled and in no need of the olives of
-charity; or the moments when, with tastes and aims not yet mutually
-discovered, we were yet dimly conscious of the end, seeing the whole
-future under vague light? Some of these we can—and I did—recall as if
-the happy voices had not died, but had simply made way for harsher or
-sadder tones, and had fled here to keep an immortality. I heard them on
-the fresh warm air. And with them hovered those I saw but once—in a
-crowd, at a wayside inn—and desired; and at my evening inn some empty
-chairs were not wholly in vain. Thus did the shadow of the mountain fall
-far over the soft lands below.
-
-[Illustration: VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-All sign of snow had left the hills, when long before sunrise, but not
-before the east had begun to grow serious with thoughts of dawn, I came
-upon a rough meadow, where a solitary thorn was white with flower—or of
-that colour which white is in the dusk. It reminded me of snow, but
-prettily defying the mountains, it meant all May. And it happened that
-the day then being born was perfect May. The east opened, and the
-close-packed, dwarfed hills were driven out of it like sheep, into the
-gradual light. From that moment until the day passed in a drift of
-purple and dim cloud, all things were marvellously clear. In the hedges,
-on the rough meadows, and in the steep wastes under the cliffs, there
-were hundreds of hawthorns flowering, and yet they were not hundreds,
-but one and one and one.... They were as a crowd of which we know all
-the faces, and therefore no crowd at all; and one by one these were to
-be saluted. Not only the white thorns, but the oaks in the large fields,
-and even the ashes and alders by the brooks were each distinct. If I had
-raised my head, I should have seen, indeed, that the mountains were in
-haze, and that what I had just passed was in haze. But I never saw, or
-wished to see, for more than a quarter of a mile, and within that
-distance all things were clear and separate, like books which oneself
-has handled and known, every one. Even the daffodils under a hazel hedge
-never became a patch. The women, at gateways or among the cows, stood
-out like one or two statues in a large vacant hall. One field had in it
-twelve isolated oak trees, and that they were twelve I saw clearly, and
-wondered and admired, and never dreamed of thinking of them as just a
-number of oaks. One by one the footpaths, to left or right, went up to
-one of the oaks or thorns, and, untrodden, disappeared suddenly. And I
-could not but recall the lovely clear pictures in old Welsh poetry and
-story which had on winter nights reminded me of May. And chiefly this,
-from the _Mabinogion_, was in my mind.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW OF LLANGOLLEN]
-
-"'I was,' said Kynon, 'the only son of my mother and father, and I was
-exceedingly aspiring, and my daring was very great. I thought there was
-no enterprise in the world too mighty for me, and after I had achieved
-all the adventures that were in my own country, I equipped myself and
-set forth through deserts and distant regions. And at length it chanced
-that I came to the fairest valley in the world, wherein were trees of
-equal growth; and a river ran through the valley, and a path was by the
-side of the river. And I followed the path until mid-day, and continued
-my journey along the remainder of the valley until the evening; and at
-the extremity of an plai I came to a large and lustrous castle, at the
-foot of which was a torrent. And I approached the castle, and there I
-beheld two youths with yellow curling hair, each with a frontlet of gold
-upon his head, and clad in a garment of yellow satin, and they had gold
-clasps upon their insteps. In the hand of each of them was an ivory bow,
-strung with the sinews of the stag; and their arrows had shafts of the
-bone of the whale, and were winged with peacock's feathers; the shafts
-also had golden heads. And they had daggers with blades of gold, and
-with hilts of the bone of the whale. And they were shooting their
-daggers.
-
-[Illustration: A LONELY SHORE NEAR PENRHYN DEUDRAETH]
-
-"'And a little way from them I saw a man in the prime of life, with his
-beard newly shorn, clad in a robe and a mantle of yellow satin; and
-round the top of his mantle was a band of gold lace. On his feet were
-shoes of variegated leather, fastened by two bosses of gold. When I saw
-him, I went towards him and saluted him, and such was his courtesy that
-he no sooner received my greeting than he returned it. And he went with
-me towards the castle. Now there were no dwellers in the castle except
-those who were in one hall. And there I saw four-and-twenty damsels,
-embroidering satin at a window. And this I tell thee, Kai, that the
-least fair of them was fairer than the fairest maid thou hast ever
-beheld in the Island of Britain, and the least lovely of them was more
-lovely than Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, when she has appeared
-loveliest at the Offering, or on the day of the Nativity, or at the
-feast of Easter. They rose up at my coming, and six of them took my
-horse, and divested me of my armour; and six others took my arms, and
-washed them in a vessel until they were perfectly bright. And the third
-six spread cloths upon the tables and prepared meat. And the fourth six
-took off my soiled garments, and placed others upon me; namely, an under
-vest and a doublet of fine linen, and a robe, and a surcoat, and a
-mantle of yellow satin with a broad gold band upon the mantle. And they
-placed cushions both beneath and around me, with coverings of red linen;
-and I sat down. Now the six maidens who had taken my horse unharnessed
-him, as well as if they had been the best squires in the Island of
-Britain. Then, behold, they brought bowls of silver wherein was water to
-wash, and towels of linen, some green and some white; and I washed. And
-in a little while the man sat down to the table. And I sat next to him,
-and below me sat all the maidens, except those who waited on us. And the
-table was of silver, and the cloths upon the table were of linen; and no
-vessel was served upon the table that was not either of gold or of
-silver or of buffalo horn. And our meat was brought to us. And, verily,
-Kai, I saw there every sort of meat and every sort of liquor that I have
-ever seen elsewhere; but the meat and the liquor were better served
-there than I have ever seen them in any other place....'"
-
-Only the brain of the man who saw things thus could describe that clear
-day in May.
-
-
-                                 _June_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-It was a country of deep, calm pastures and slow streams that might have
-been in England, except that smiling women at the last farm I had passed
-were talking in Welsh and calling one another Mary Margaret, or Blodwen,
-or Olwen; and that far off, like a dim thought or a half-forgotten
-dream, a mountain conversed with the most distant clouds.
-
-[Illustration: THE SHORE NEAR HARLECH—AFTERNOON]
-
-Along my path there had been many oaks and doves among their leaves; and
-deep hedges that sent bragging stems of briers far out over the
-footpath, and hid delicate single coils of black bryony in their
-shadows; and little bridges of ferny stone, and beneath them quiet
-streams that held flower and tree and cloud in their depth, as if in
-memory; and great fields where there was nothing, or perhaps a merry,
-childlike, scampering stoat that pursued a staring, trotting rabbit. I
-had walked for ten miles and had not seen a man. But it would be more
-just to ignore such measurements, since the number of milestones was
-unimportant; so also were the hours. For the country had given me the
-freedom of time. Dreams of brains that had long been dead became
-stronger than the strong right hand of to-day and of yesterday. And
-without asking, these verses sang themselves in my head:—
-
-                 Midways of a walled garden,
-                   In the happy poplar land,
-                   Did an ancient castle stand,
-                 With an old knight for a warden....
-
-                 Across the moat the fresh west wind
-                   In very little ripples went;
-                   The way the heavy aspens bent
-                 Towards it, was a thing to mind.
-
-                 The painted drawbridge over it
-                   Went up and down with gilded chains;
-                   'Twas pleasant in the summer rains
-                 Within the bridge-house there to sit.
-
-              There were five swans that ne'er did eat
-                The water weeds, for ladies came
-                Each day, and young knights did the same,
-              And gave them cakes and bread for meat.
-
-I remembered them with a curious sense of being uncontrolled, or, if you
-will, of being controlled as one is in sleep, and not by friends,
-railways, clothes, and meals, as one usually is. I had entered that
-golden age that is always with us, where there are no wars except in the
-_Iliad_ and _Paradise Lost_. At one stile, I saw Aeneas,—in mediæval
-mail,—revealing a blue-eyed, confident face, with a slippery mouth set
-firm by his destiny.
-
-The country was without obvious character. An artist could have made
-nothing of it. Nothing in the arrangement of meadow and corn-land, wood
-and reedy water, made a clear impression on the mind: they might,
-perhaps, have been rearranged without attracting attention. So the
-landscape occupied the eyes little and the mind not at all. Wandering
-over it with no emotion but rest, I made of it what I would. In
-different moods I might have met there Proserpina, or Camilla, or
-Imogen. But chiefly I met there the vague persons of poetry, like
-Shelley's Ione, which are but as large eyes or eloquent lips discerned
-in fleeting darkness. And I was too deeply lost to be at once rescued by
-the sight of a dignified, untenanted house, whose shrubberies I wandered
-into, along a rabbit run as deep as a footpath in the short, hawk-weedy
-grass. Docks and milk-thistles had not yet overpowered lupin and phlox
-in the deep borders that still had a tinge of race in their order and
-luxuriance. The martins of the eaves had added to the pompous portico of
-the house, so that it had the look of wild rock. The roses had sent up
-enormous talons from their roots and tyrannised everywhere. There were
-no flowers in the garden more delicate than the enchanter's nightshade
-and nipplewort of the shrubbery, and the short wild poppies that could
-just flower in the old gravel of the paths. For this one moment the wild
-and the cultivated were at peace together, and the harmony gave the
-place an unreality,—so that even at the time I had a dim belief that I
-was in a garden out of a book,—which made it a fit haven for my mood.
-Then, in a corner, among ruined, ivy-covered elms, I found a stupid,
-mournful grotto of wildly-shaped stones wildly accumulated: at the
-threshold lay a penny doll that played a part between comedy and tragedy
-very well. Going near, I saw, not quite so clearly as I see it now, a
-long-bearded, miserable man, reclining, with fair, unwrinkled brow and
-closed eyes and shining teeth. On his long sloping forehead a
-high-mounted spider dreamed; yet he did not stir. A snake, in a fold of
-his coat beneath his beard, disregarded the heaving of his chest. His
-breath filled the grotto as a cow's would have done, and it was sweet.
-And I turned away suddenly, put to shame by what my soul, rather than my
-eyes, had recognised as Pan. For I ought to have been prepared and I was
-not.
-
-And as I walked home in an embowered lane, some floating, clashing
-insects troubled me, and that night, whilst I enjoyed the coming on of
-sleep, I could not but fancy that I heard the whisper of a god's
-garment, and wondered had I troubled a god's meditation and walk.
-
-
-                                   II
-
-To-day, it is another country, as different from the last as old age
-from maturity. No longer does the greenfinch in the hawthorn say a
-hundred times that it has five young ones and is happy. No longer does
-the perfect grass, seen betwixt the boles of beeches, burn against the
-sky. For that dream of mountains has come true, and so many and so great
-are they that I can compare my loneliness only with what I have fancied
-to be the loneliness of one planet that now is and again is not in a
-tumultuous, grey, midnight sky, or of a light upon a ship between clouds
-and angry sea, far off.
-
-[Illustration: IN THE WOODS, FARCHYNYS, BARMOUTH ESTUARY]
-
-The thought of steam and electricity never truly touches the primitive
-sense of distance; and here, even the milestones among the foxgloves are
-somewhat insolent, when they say that the town under that farthest hill
-is thirty miles away; for the hill, unknown to me, is farther away than
-any place I have ever seen, and I would rather say that it is thirty
-years away and in the dim future or the dim past.
-
-In their shape, there is something human, or suggesting human work, in
-these hills. Castles, or less noble masonry, noble when fallen, look
-thus in their ruins, and become thus tricked with delicate verdure and
-flowers. A great plough driven at random through frosty country would
-have turned up half-mile clods like these. And at twilight there is a
-ridge like an extended giant with raised knees and chin thrown back; and
-often I have seen a horned summit, like a Pan, capture the white moon.
-
-This mountain ahead is not only old, but with its uncovered rock and
-broken boulders and hoary streams and twisted trees, that look as if a
-child had gathered garlands and put them in play upon the ancient stems,
-it declares mightily, if vaguely, the immense past which it has seen.
-There are English hills which remind us that this land also was once in
-Arcady: they are of a golden age,—the age of Goldsmith, of Walton, of
-Chaucer if you like, or of Theocritus; but they speak of nothing since;
-they bear no wrinkles, no wounds, no trophies. But by this mountain you
-cannot be really at ease until in some way you have travelled through
-all history. For it has not been as nothing to it that Persia, Carthage,
-Greece and Rome, and Spain have been great and are not. It has been worn
-by the footprints of time which have elsewhere but made the grass a
-little deeper or renewed the woods. It has sat motionless, looking on
-the world; it has grown wrinkled; it is all memory. Were it and its
-fellows to depart, we should not know how old we were; for we should
-have only books. Therefore I love it. It offers no illusions. Its roads
-are winding and rough. The grass is thin; the shelter scarce; the valley
-crops moderate; the cheese and mutton good; the water pure; the people
-strong, kind, intelligent, and without newspapers; the fires warm and
-bright and large, and throwing light and shadow upon pewter and brass
-and oak and books. It offers no illusions; for it is clear, as it is not
-in a city or in an exuberant English county, that the world is old and
-troubled, and that light and warmth and fellowship are good. Sometimes
-comes a thought that it is a huge gravestone, so is it worn, so obscure
-and brief its legend. It belongs to the past, to the dead; and the dead,
-as they are more numerous, so here they are greater than we, and we only
-great because we shall one day be of their number. You cannot look at it
-without thinking that the time will come when it may be, and we are not,
-nor the races of men—
-
-[Illustration: INCOMING TIDE, NEAR BARMOUTH]
-
-                  sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita
-                  senet quiete.
-
-And hearing an owl among its oak trees, its age was quaintly expounded
-to me by that passage in the _Mabinogion_ where the Eagle of Gwernabwy
-seeks a wife.
-
-"The Eagle of Gwernabwy had been long married to his wife, and had by
-her many children. She died, and he continued a long time a widower; but
-at length he proposed a marriage with the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. But afraid
-of her being young, so as to have children by her, and thereby degrade
-his own family, he first of all went to inquire about her age amongst
-the aged of the world. Accordingly he applied to the Stag of Rhedynfre,
-whom he found lying close to the trunk of an old oak, and requested to
-know the Owl's age.
-
-"'I have seen,' said the Stag, 'this oak an acorn, which is now fallen
-to the ground through age, without either bark or leaves, and never
-suffered any hurt or strain, except from my rubbing myself against it
-once a day, after getting up on my legs; but I never remember to have
-seen the Owl you mention younger or older than she seems to be at this
-day. But there is one older than I am, and that is the Salmon of
-Glynllifon.'
-
-"The Eagle then applied to the Salmon for the age of the Owl. The Salmon
-answered, 'I am as many years old as there are scales upon my skin, and
-particles of spawn within my belly; yet never saw I the Owl you mention
-but the same in appearance. But there is one older than I am, and that
-is the Blackbird of Cilgwri.'
-
-"The Eagle next repaired to the Blackbird of Cilgwri, whom he found
-perched upon a small stone, and inquired of him the Owl's age.
-
-"'Dost thou see this stone upon which I sit,' said the Blackbird, 'which
-is now no bigger than what a man can carry in his hand? I have seen this
-very stone of such weight as to be a sufficient load for a hundred oxen
-to draw, which has suffered neither rubbing nor wearing, save that I rub
-my bill on it once every evening, and touch the tips of my wings on it
-every morning, when I expand them to fly; yet I have not seen the Owl
-either older or younger than she appears to be at this day. But there is
-one older than I am, and that is the Frog of Mochno Bog; and if he does
-not know her age, there is not a creature living that does know it.'
-
-"The Eagle went last of all to the Frog, and desired to know the Owl's
-age. He answered, 'I never ate anything but the dust from the spot which
-I inhabit, and that very sparingly; and dost thou see these great hills
-that surround and overawe this bog where I lie? They are formed only of
-the excrements from my body since I have inhabited this place; yet I
-never remember to have seen the Owl but an old hag, making that hideous
-noise Too-hoo-hoo, always frightening the children of the
-neighbourhood.'"
-
-Farther along the road, and not wholly cut off from a world of richer
-fields, there is the ruin of an abbey, which, being the work of human
-hands, says the same thing more clearly. It is but a cave of masonry
-topped by umbrageous ivy that swells over its edge like froth over a
-tankard. Altar and bells and books and large abbatic oven are gone. Only
-the jackdaw remains. The winds blow through and through the ruins. There
-is moss; here are flowers,—yellow cistus and cinque-foil, purple
-fumitory, pearly eyebright, and still some white stitchwort stars. But
-nothing dies save what we let die, and here, as in a library, on this
-once consecrated ground, meet all religions. It has room for the Druid.
-Its ivy leaves repeat the praises of moon and sun. It will deny no fairy
-and no god an altar and a place for dancing. I have gone there with many
-fancies and many memories of books, and there they find a home. And if,
-as some have done, you go there with willingness and an inability to
-accept what dreams have hitherto been dreamed, you may seem there,—in
-favourable hours, when the casements of all the senses are opening wide
-upon eternity, and all things are silent as fishes, and the curves of
-bramble and brier among the masonry seem to be thinking,—to be on the
-edge of a new mythology and to taste the joy of the surmises of him who
-first saw Pan among the sedges or the olives.
-
-[Illustration: BARMOUTH BRIDGE]
-
-
-                                 _July_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-For three days I walked and drove towards Llyn-y-Fan Fach. On the first
-day I passed through a country of furnaces and mines, and the country
-had been exquisitely made. The gently swirling lines of hill and valley
-spoke of the mountains far off, as the little waves and the foam coming
-up the shore like chain-mail speak of the breakers out in the bay. Every
-large field that was left unburdened by house or factory had a fair
-curve in it, and even the odd pieces of land were something more than
-building sites and suggested their context. But as we passed through,
-only the highest points gave the curious eye any satisfaction, since the
-straight lines of houses, the pits and the heaps of refuse, and the
-enormous factories, obscured the true form of the land. Even so might
-some survivor of a deluge look upon the fair land he knew; for we lacked
-the courage to think of hill and valley as having undergone an
-inevitable change, which in a century might be known to have brought
-beauty with it, as changes do. Everything was brand-new, but not fresh.
-A wanton child might have done it all, had he been large and rich and
-careless enough to do it thus, _nec numero nec honore_. Or had it been
-all built to the music of the organ-grinder whom I met playing, for the
-joy of playing, "The Absent-minded Beggar"? The staring, mottled houses
-of various stone and brick, which had no character save what comes of
-perfect lack of character, might have been made by some neglected boy
-who had only played with penny trains and motor cars and steamers and
-bicycles. Phlox and foxglove, and sweet-william and snapdragon, and
-campanula and amber lilies could not make sweet the "rockeries" of
-hot-looking waste. The streets, named after factory magnates, had been
-made in long blocks and broken up by the boy, thoughtlessly. The
-factories themselves, noble as some of the furnaces were by day and
-night when sweating men moved to and fro before them, were of the same
-origin. They were mere cavities, and one marvelled that the smoke from
-their chimneys was permitted to waver and roll in the same way as clouds
-the most splendid and august. Many were already in places decayed. That
-they had been glazed only to have the windows pierced by the stones of
-happy children was all in their favour that could be seen. Their roofs
-had fallen in, and neither moss nor ivy had had time to grow thereon;
-the splintered wood was still new and white. Middle-aged men of fifteen
-and aged men of thirty were in keeping with their ludicrous senility. A
-millionaire playing at imitating antiquity could have done no worse. The
-decay was made in Birmingham. Time had been sweated and had done its
-work very ill. Here and there, indeed, there were scenes which perhaps
-an unprejudiced mind would have found sublime. There were pools, for
-example, filled with delicate grass and goldfish amongst it. They were
-made yesterday, and yet had they fed little brooks for ages they could
-not have been more shining and serene as sunset poured all its treasury
-into their depths. Passing one, soon after dawn, and before the
-night-workers had left the factory, the reeds in it stood up just so
-that no storied pool had more the trick of antiquity. Near by, one green
-field, set amidst houses and a factory, was enclosed by abundant but
-ill-stretched barbed wire, without gate or possible entrance of any
-kind. In the middle was a tattered notice, warning trespassers. No
-cloister was ever more inviolate. The grass grew as it liked, and all
-whom the heavy headstones of the buildings had spared in the rash burial
-of rural divinities must there have danced; and the grass shone as if
-with recent festival, and its emptiness hinted at a recent desertion.
-All the other fields had been carelessly defaced by broken cheap china
-and tin kettles and rags, and like cattle that have a day to live and
-are insulted with the smell of their lucky companions' blood, they were
-dreary and anxious. Footmarks, but not one footpath, crossed them in all
-directions.... A Battersea kitchen after Christmas is adorned like this
-land with similar spoiled toys. Their pathos is the same in kind; but
-here it is worse, because a grown-up person—the original grandeur and
-antiquity of the land as shown in the one green field—has burst in and
-marred the completeness of the children's play.
-
-[Illustration: MISTY MORNING, NEAR BARMOUTH]
-
-
-                                   II
-
-At the edge of one village in this country there was a new public-house,
-the worst of the buildings in the place, because the most impudent. It
-glittered and stank and was called "The Prince of Wales." Inside,
-English and some Welsh voices were singing together all of Britain's
-most loved songs; perhaps "Dolly Gray" predominated, and in its
-far-floating melody the world-sorrow found a voice; for a harper played
-on the harp while they sang. The landlord liked to have the harper
-there, because he drew customers and kept them, and it was clear that he
-himself, when he had time, loved music, since he took his pipe out of
-his mouth to hum the last words of a song about a skylark, a dead
-mother, and some angels. The next song was "The Rising of the Lark,"
-which begins thus:
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration: A LONELY SHORE, BARMOUTH ESTUARY]
-
-No one sang except the harper; the landlord frowned, remarked that "Evan
-was very drunk tonight," and offered to stop the song if we objected,
-and then began to talk. He said that the harper was a poor sort of man;
-had been a schoolmaster and was a "scholar"; had been to prison for an
-unmentioned crime; and was now a man with a wife, whom he supported by
-odd jobs and by "my own charity, for," explained the host, "I let him
-have his drinks free." He was fond of his harp, as if it had been a
-horse or a barrel of beer; and boasted, when drunk, that he knew that he
-was the sixth of his family who had played the harp, and that same harp,
-and that he was the last of the true harpers. So we went into the
-taproom and sat down with fourteen miners and the harper, who was doing
-his best with "God bless the Prince of Wales."
-
-"You are fond of your National Anthem," said a voice which might have
-cut glass and perhaps came from Glasgow.
-
-Whereupon, with sublime, gentle anger the harper played and sang the
-National Anthem of Wales:—
-
-[Illustration]
-
-  Mae hen wlad fy Nhadau yn anwyl i mi, Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, en-
-  wogion o fri; Ei gwrol ry - fel - wyr, gwlad-garw-yr tra
-  mad, Dros ryddid goll-a-sant eu gwaed. Gwlad! Gwlad!
-  pleid - iol wyf i'm Gwlad, Tra môr yn fur i'r
-  bur hoff bau, O bydded i'r hen-iaith ba - rhau.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW FROM BONTDDU, DOLGELLY]
-
-The words cannot, of course, be translated, but the following are as
-much like them as a photograph of Snowdon is like Snowdon. "Dear to me
-is the old land of my fathers, a land of bards and minstrels of great
-name. Her brave warriors, best of patriots, poured out their blood for
-freedom. Ancient and mountainous Wales, Paradise of the bard, every
-valley and cliff is lovely in my sight; through the feeling of
-patriotism, how alluring is the ripple on her rivers and brooks. If the
-enemy treads my country under foot, the old language of the Welsh lives
-as it used to live; the Muse suffers not, in spite of the horrid hand of
-the traitor, nor yet the melodious harp of my country." And the chorus
-says: "My country, my country, I am bound up with my country. While the
-sea is a boundary to the fair and well-loved place, may the old language
-last." ...
-
-While he sang, we saw that the harper was a little, pale, snub-nosed,
-asthmatic man, with red hair and a delicate, curved mouth and
-heavy-lidded, pathetic, sentimental, but unsympathetic grey eyes, and
-glowing white fingers. He leaned over his instrument as a mother over
-her child when she is bathing it, or as a tired man reaping with a
-reaping-hook. He evidently knew what he liked; yet, as the evening wore
-out, he lost himself sentimentally over the poorest tunes. He seemed to
-love listening at least as well as playing. Slowly we emptied the house
-of all its Englishmen by encouraging him to play the airs which the harp
-had known through all its life. He played the plaintive best. Such quick
-happiness as "New Year's Eve," which begins—
-
-[Illustration]
-
-moved his sorrow more and his sentiment less, and his white fingers
-stuck among the strings.
-
-When he rose at 11 P.M. to go, he could carry the harp, but hardly
-himself; and we led him home, murmuring sad ditties lovingly. As he
-stumbled in, he cursed his wife, a frail burden of middle age,
-singularly like himself, and then continued to murmur.
-
-The light of one candle and the beauty of the harp almost made beautiful
-the room in which we stood, while he sat with his instrument. The garish
-wall-paper was mildewed with lovely gleaming white fur, near the
-windows; elsewhere it was decorated by a large tradesman's photograph of
-Mr. Chamberlain, a copy of "The Maiden's Prayer," and the usual framed
-mourning verses on relatives; there was, too, a plush mandoline, and in
-the hearth a frond of the royal fern, and over it photographs of two
-generations of big consumptive men.
-
-[Illustration: THUNDERY WEATHER, NEAR DOLGELLY]
-
-For a time the harper hesitated between the English tunes which were
-most in favour at "The Prince of Wales" and the songs for which the harp
-was made, when it was made for a bard who could string a harp, make a
-song for it, and accompany himself on the strings. We praised the Welsh
-airs, and though he seemed to ignore us, he played nothing else. We saw
-only his eyes, his white flickering fingers, and the harp, and as the
-triumphant, despairing, adoring melodies swept over it, this foolish
-casket of a man seemed to gather up all that could live of the lovers
-and warriors of a thousand years. No epitaph could be so eloquent of
-transient mortality. He had but to cloud or brighten those cruel,
-sentimental eyes, and to whisper to the dead instrument, to utter all
-that they had ever uttered. To this heir had come the riches of many
-hearts and he squandered them in a taproom for beer, and here for our
-amusement, as if they had been no better than gold and he a spendthrift.
-When sometimes he paused and silence came, or only the bark of a pump
-was heard, we seemed to have been assisting at the death and the last
-carouse of the souls for whom the music spoke. They lived only in his
-fingers and the harp, and with these they must die. They were as
-fleeting as pale butterflies in storm or as the Indian moonflower that
-blossoms only after sunset in May. Yet again and again the fingers and
-the harp consented to their life, and reassured, and half-believing
-that, because he had so much in trust, he could not die, we sat down and
-fell asleep, and waking again, were not surprised to find, as the July
-dawn approached, that the harper was harping still. For in that holy
-light that twittered among the strings, he was an immortal harper,
-doomed for ever to go on, because there was so much to be done, and
-because, as the landlord had said, he was the last of his race.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-I went on, and was over the edge of this country, "built to music and so
-not built at all," when the sun began to rise behind me. Before, a range
-of hills stood up against the cold sky with bold lines such as a happy
-child will draw who has much paper and a stout crayon, and looked so
-that I remembered the proverb which says, that if a man goes up Cader
-Idris at night, by dawn he is dead, or mad, or a poet. They were
-immense; they filled half the sky; yet in the soft light that felt its
-way glimmeringly, and as if fearfully, among their vast valleys and
-along their high crags, they looked like ruins of something far more
-mighty; the fields also, on this side of them, and all the alder-loving
-streams and massy woods, were but as the embers of something which the
-night had made and had only half destroyed before its flight. And it was
-with surprise that, as I took my eyes off the prospect and looked down
-and in the hedge, I saw that I was in a place where lotus and agrimony
-and vetch were yellow, and the wild rose continued as ever to hesitate
-between red and white.
-
-[Illustration: NEAR PENMAEN POOL—NOON]
-
-It was not long possible to turn my back upon the rising sun, and when I
-looked round, I saw that the country I had left had been taken into the
-service of the dawn and was beautiful two miles away. Factory and
-chimney and street were bent in a rude circle round the sun, and were as
-the audience of some story-teller, telling a new tale—silent, solemn,
-and motionless, round a fire; and over them the blue clouds also were
-silent, solemn, and motionless, listening to the same tale, round the
-sun.
-
-When I went on towards the hills, they by that time looked as if they
-had never known the night; and sweet it was to pass, now and then, a
-thatched, embowered cottage, with windows open to the scented air, and
-to envy the sleepers within, while I could see and recognise the
-things—the sky and earth and air, the skylarks singing among the fading
-stars, and the last cuckoo calling in the silent, vast and lonely summer
-land—which make dreamless sleep amidst them so divine, I had long not
-known why. For half the day there was nothing to remember but sudden
-long views that led, happily, nowhere, among the clouds or the hills,
-and farms with sweetly smiling women, and jutting out of every
-hedge-bank a little _pistyll_ of fair water, curving and shining in the
-heat, over a slice of stone or through a pipe, into the road. These
-things the memory has to work to remember. For, in truth, the day was
-but as a melody heard and liked. A child who, in the Welsh story, went
-to the land of the fairies, could only say that he had been listening to
-sweet airs, when he returned after a long stay.
-
-But at length, when I was among the hills, the ferns whispered all along
-the stony hedges, and on a cold stream of wind came the scent of
-invisible hay, and a great drop of rain shook all the bells on a
-foxglove stalk, and the straight, busy rain came down, and the hills
-talked with the heavens while it thundered heavily. The doves and jays
-only left the hedge as I passed within reach of them. The crouching
-partridge did not stir even after her eye caught mine. The lightning was
-as a tree of fire growing on the northern sky. The valley below was a
-deep and tranquil mere, in which I saw a church and trees and fields, as
-if they were reflections of things in the sky, and, like reflections in
-water, they were reverend in their beauty. The rain in my face washed
-off more than the weariness of a long day's walk, and I rejoiced, and
-found it easy to catch a train six miles off, which had seemed
-impossible.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW OF CADER IDRIS]
-
-
-                                   IV
-
-On the next day I was near the lake, Llyn-y-Fan Fach, and high up among
-hills, which had in many places outgrown their grassy garments, and
-showed bare cliffs, senates of great boulders, and streams of sliding
-fragments of stone like burnt paper. The delicate mountain sheep were
-panting in the heat, or following the shifting oasis of a shadow that
-sometimes moved across the hill; a horse stood nervously still, envying
-the shadow which he cast upon the ground. The world, for hours, was a
-hot, long road, with myself at one end and the lake at the other, when
-gradually I descended into a gentle land again.
-
-Far off, church bells were celebrating the peace and beauty of the
-morning as I turned into a lane of which more than twenty yards were
-seldom visible at one time; and I lost sight of everything else. Tall
-hedgerow elms and orchard trees held blue fragments of the sky among
-their leaves and hid the rest. Here and there was a cottage among the
-trees, and it seemed less the work of human hands than the cordon and
-espalier trees, apple and pear, and the fan-shaped cherry on the wall,
-with glowing bark. July, which had made the purple plum and the crimson
-bryony berry, had made it also, I thought. The lane was perhaps long
-enough to occupy an hour of the most slow-paced tranquil human life.
-Even if you talked with every ancient man that leaned on his spade, and
-listened to every young linnet that was learning to sing in the hazels,
-you could not spend more than two hours in passing along it. Yet, more
-than once, as I was pausing to count the white clusters of nuts or to
-remind myself that here was the first pale-blue flower of succory, I
-knew that I took up eternity with both hands, and though I laid it down
-again, the lane was a most potent, magic thing, when I could thus make
-time as nothing while I meandered over many centuries, consulting many
-memories that are as amulets. And even as I walked, the whole of time
-was but a quiet, sculptured corridor, without a voice, except when the
-tall grasses bowed and powdered the nettles with seed at my feet. For
-the time I could not admit the existence of strident or unhappy or
-unfortunate things. I exulted in the knowledge of how cheaply purchased
-are these pleasures, exulted and was yet humiliated to think how rare
-and lonely they are, nevertheless. The wave on which one is lifted clear
-of the foam and sound of things will never build itself again. And yet,
-at the lane's end, as I looked back at the long clear bramble curves, I
-will confess that there was a joy (though it put forth its hands to an
-unseen grief) in knowing that down that very lane I could never go
-again, and was thankful that it did not come rashly and suddenly upon
-the white highroad, and that there is no such thing known to the spirit
-as a beginning and an end. For not without cool shadow and fragrance was
-the white highroad.
-
-Then, after some miles up a hot and silent hill, I came to the lake
-under the chin of a high summit, and it was cool....
-
-At the end of the twelfth century, when Owen Gwynedd in the north and
-Lord Rhys in the south made little of English kings, a farmer's widow
-lived with one son at Blaensawdde, near the lake. She sent her cattle on
-to the Black Mountain under the care of her son. And the cattle liked
-Llyn-y-Fan because the great stones on its shore gave them shade, and
-because the golden stony shallows were safe and sweet, and no water was
-finer than that in the little quiet wells of the Sawdde brook.
-
-Watching his cattle there one day, the youth saw a lovely girl, with
-long, yellow hair and pale, melancholy face, seated on the surface of
-the lake and looking down into the mirror of the water, for she was
-combing her hair. Some say that she was rowing with golden sculls up and
-down the lake in a golden boat, so ample was her hair. The young man was
-moved by her loveliness to hold out to her his own barley-bread and
-cheese, which was all that he had with him. And she came near, but she
-would not accept the food; when he tried to touch her, she slid away,
-saying—
-
-                     "O thou of the crimped bread,
-                     'Tis not easy to catch me";
-
-and so disappeared, as a lily when the waves are rising.
-
-The youth told his adventure to his mother, who advised him to take
-unbaked dough for the girl, instead of his crisp barley bread.
-
-[Illustration: MIST ON CADER IDRIS]
-
-The next morning he was at the lake before dawn, and saw cold ripples on
-the water and a cloud on the highest of the hills. But as the light
-overcame the cloud and began to warm the ripples, he saw some of his
-cattle in danger on the steep side of the lake, where the rains run
-almost perpendicularly down to the margin and cut weals of naked red
-earth in the mountain-side. And as he was running round to the cattle,
-he saw the girl upon the water, and again held out his hand to offer his
-unbaked dough. Again she refused, and said:
-
-                      "O thou of the moist bread,
-                      I will not have thee."
-
-Then, with smiles, she disappeared.
-
-The youth told his second adventure to his mother, and she advised him
-to take slightly baked bread. The Welsh have a proverb: "Better is
-cookery than kingship"; and she being skilled with the oven, baked him
-the bread.
-
-The next morning he was again at the lake. The cold ripples turned to
-gold and then to silver, and the cloud left the mountain; and he saw the
-wind making grey O's and V's on the water, until it was almost evening,
-and behind him the oak trees in the Sawdde valley gleamed where his
-homeward way would be, when he saw several cows walking on the water,
-and then the girl moving towards him. He ran forward into the water; he
-held out the bread, and she took it, and promised to marry him on the
-condition that he should not give her three causeless blows; if he did,
-she would disappear. Suddenly she left him, and he would have cast
-himself in with despair, if she had not returned with another as
-beautiful and in the same way, together with a majestic, tall, and hoary
-man, who promised to bestow the girl upon him if he could distinguish
-her.
-
-So the two girls stood before him; and the youth, casting down his eyes
-in thought and perplexity, saw one thrust her little foot forward, and
-he noticed how her sandals were tied, because he had before studied the
-beauty of her ankles and feet; and he chose rightly. The old man
-promised that they should have as many cattle, horses, sheep, and goats
-as she could count of each without drawing breath. The girl counted
-quickly, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on, and all the beasts
-came up from the lake; and the young man went with the girl and married
-her, and lived at Esgair Llaethdy beyond Blaensawdde, and there she bore
-him three sons.
-
-[Illustration: IN THE WOODS, BERWYN]
-
-But one day, when they were to go together to a christening, she was
-reluctant, saying that it was too far to walk; and he bade her take a
-horse. She asked for her gloves, and when he returned with them, he
-found her still delaying, and flicked her shoulder with one and said
-pettingly, "Go, go." And she reminded him that he had given her a
-causeless blow.
-
-On another day, at a wedding, she gave way to tears, and he tapped her
-shoulder to admonish her. And she reminded him that he had given her two
-causeless blows.
-
-Many years later, at a funeral, she laughed, and again he tapped her
-shoulder. And she turned, and called her cattle and horses and sheep and
-goats by name—the brindled cow, the white speckled, the mottled, the
-white-faced cows;
-
-                    "And the grey Geingen
-                    With the white bull
-                    From the court of the king;
-                    And the little black calf
-                    Though suspended on the hook,
-                    Come thou also quite well home";
-
-and the four grey oxen ploughing in the fields. They followed her to the
-lake, and behind them grew the furrow made by the plough which the four
-oxen still drew, and they all entered the lake.
-
-Her sons desired to see her, and she appeared again to her son
-Rhiwallon, and told him that he was to be a healer of men, and gave him
-prescriptions, and promised that if he needed her, she would come again.
-So she often met them near the lake, and once walked with them towards
-Myddfai, as far as Pant-y-Meddygon, where she showed them herbs and
-their virtues. And they became famous, and good physicians. They were
-physicians to Rhys Gryg of South Wales; and the last of their
-descendants who practised at Myddfai was buried in 1739 at Myddfai
-church.
-
-
-                                _August_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-On a fine, very hot day I had to wait three hours for a train, and
-should have left the bald junction for that time, if I had not seen
-there a poet of my acquaintance, contentedly reading Spenser on the
-central platform. I sat down with him, but he preferred reading to
-talking, and I looked over his shoulder to read:
-
-                 Begin then, O my dearest sacred Dame!
-                 Daughter of Phœbus and of Memorye....
-
-[Illustration: ABERDOVEY]
-
-And I could not sufficiently admire his fortitude, until, on the arrival
-of a train, he left the book on the seat, and walked down alongside the
-train. It stopped ten minutes, and he talked with persons in three
-different carriages before it left. He came back unperturbed, and told
-me briefly that —— from Patagonia was in the train, with —— the bard
-from North Wales, and a friend from London. Seeing me surprised, he
-explained that every Saturday in the summer he spent entirely on the
-platform, waiting for surprises of this kind. Four trains stopped there
-before I left, and each seemed to be laden with friends and
-acquaintances,—some who lived in distant parts and even overseas, and
-some whom he had not seen for years. And some of the persons whom he
-greeted he had never seen before, which was a good reason for greeting
-them; he had perhaps heard of them, or they of him; and so they talked.
-
-The liking of Welshmen for Welshmen is very strong, and that not only
-when they meet on foreign soil, as in London, but in their own land.
-They do not, I suppose, love their neighbours more than other men do,
-but when they meet a fellow-countryman for the first time they seem to
-have a kind of surprise and joy, in spite of the commonness of such
-meetings. They do not acquiesce in the fact that the man they shake
-hands with is of their race, as English people do. They converse readily
-in trains: they are all of one family, and indeed if you are Welsh, not
-only can you not avoid meeting relatives, but you do not wish to. Small
-news about the coming and going of people travels among them rapidly,
-and I have never got out of a train in Wales without feeling that I
-shall meet some one whom I should like to meet, on the platform or in
-the first street. They like their own land in the same way. I do not
-easily believe in patriotism, in times of peace or war, except as a
-party cry, or the result of intoxication or an article in a newspaper,
-unless I am in Wales.
-
-I did not know before that any save sellers of newspapers were happy in
-railway stations, and as my train went out, I passed the poet at his
-Spenser again and recalled the poem called "Howell's Delight," which was
-written by a young, unfortunate prince of North Wales in the twelfth
-century:—
-
-     A white foam-crowned wave flows o'er the grave
-     Of Rhuvawn Bevyr, chief of Rulers.
-     I this day hate England, a flat and inactive land,
-     With a people involved in every wile;
-     I love the land where I had the much-desired gift of mead,
-     Where the shores extend in tedious conflict;
-     I love the society and the numerous inhabitants
-     Therein, who, obedient to their Lord,
-     Direct their views of peace;
-     I love its sea-coast and its mountains,
-     Its cities bordering on its forests, its fair landscapes,
-     Its dales, its waters, and its vales,
-     Its white seamews, and its beauteous women;
-     I love its warriors, and its well-trained steeds,
-     Its woods, its strongholds, and its social domicile;
-     I love its fields clothed with tender trefoil,
-     Where I had the glory of a lasting triumph;
-     I love its cultivated regions, the prerogative of heroism,
-     Its far extended wilds, and its sports of the chase,
-     Which, Son of God! are great and wonderful.
-     How sleek the majestic deer, and in what plenty found;
-     I achieved with a push of a spear the task of honour
-     Between the Chief of Powys and fair Gwynedd;
-     And if I am pale in the rush of conflict,
-     'Tis that I know I shall be compelled to leave my country,
-     For it is certain that I cannot hold out till my party comes,
-     A dream has revealed it, and God says 'tis true.
-     A white foam-crowned wave flows o'er the grave,
-     A white bright-foaming wave boldly raves against the towns,
-     Tinted the time it swells like glittering hoar.
-     I love the marches of Marioneth,
-     Where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm;
-     I love the nightingale on the privet wood
-     In the famous vale of Cymmer Deuddwfr,
-     Lord of heaven and earth, the glory of Gwyneddians.
-     Though it is so far from Keri to Caerliwelydd,
-     I mounted the yellow steed, and from Maelienydd
-     Reached the land of Reged between night and day.
-     Before I am in the grave, may I enjoy a new blessing
-     From the land of Tegyngyl of fairest aspect!
-
-
-                                   II
-
-The flowers by the road, wood-betony, sage, mallow, ragwort ... were
-dry; the larches, that were fitted to the hillside like scales or breast
-feathers, were dry; but a mountain stream, which many stones tore to
-ribbons, was with me for miles, and to the left and to the right many
-paths over the hills ran with alluring courses for half a mile, like
-happy thoughts or lively fancies, and ended suddenly. The mountains
-increased in height as the sun sank, and their sides began to give a
-home to enormous, still shadows and to rich, inaccessible groves among
-the clefts. And in the end of the afternoon I came to a village I knew,
-which grew round an irregular lawn.
-
-From the inn, I could see the whole village.
-
-The limes before me were full of light; the green grass beyond was
-tending to be grey. There were not far fewer people than usual in the
-neighbourhood, yet the calm was great. It seemed to have something to
-announce and to call solemnly for silence; the voice of a child crying,
-a man with shining cuffs, was an extraordinary impertinence.
-
-[Illustration: SUNNY AFTERNOON, CARDIGAN BAY]
-
-But two reclining cows were calm enough, and in the middle distance an
-oak was stately enough. A tramp, his wife, and five children spoke with
-quiet, husky voices that were sad enough. A passage from _Hyperion_
-which I recalled was noble enough. Six bells that rang three miles off
-and some white downs of cloud on the horizon were in harmony. It was a
-time when the whole universe strove to speak a universal speech, the
-speech of the stars in their courses, of the flower that is beautiful,
-of the soul that aspires, of the mind that thinks. But, as it seemed,
-owing to my fault, the effort was unsuccessful, and I rose hurriedly and
-left the village behind.
-
-
-                                  III
-
-And while the hedgerows on one side of the road were in places rich with
-the heavy, horizontal sunshine that came through gateways on the other
-side, I saw the star-like shining of the windows of an old house on a
-hill. A difficult winding lane led up to it, and so long was the lane
-that between the road and the house a badger and a raven had their
-homes. When I came near the house one pallid angle of it glowed, and
-only where it glowed was it visible.
-
-The house was perhaps two hundred years old—stately, grey as the old
-blackthorns in the hedge, and it was, perhaps because I knew of the
-fading race that had lived within it, the oldest thing among those old
-hills. It was more unchangeable than the most grim crag on the hills
-which had its milkwhite harebell on that day. It was a survival from
-winter, from hundreds of winters, and therefore, though young in years,
-it spoke a language which time, knowing that the unchangeable is dead,
-had forgotten:
-
-         A spirit calling in an old old tongue
-         Forgotten in lost graves in lonesome places;
-         A spirit huddled in an old old heart
-         Like a blind crone crouched o'er a long-dead fire....
-
-Nothing ever happened among the Powells at ——. The lawn was mowed; the
-fern from the hill was carted down; the little red apples ripened; the
-Powell hair turned from gold to grey. A stranger, indeed, heard much of
-them, but when he asked where they lived, he was told that there were
-thirty of them in the church and one at —— on the hill. Five generations
-of them had lived there, since the only conspicuous one of the family
-had died in the first war with Napoleon. Of those five, the last could
-only say that theirs had been the most desperate of quests, for they
-knew not what they sought. They had lived in dignity and simplicity,
-neither sporting nor cultured, yet loving foxhounds and books.
-Generation after generation of the children had learned "L'Allegro" and
-"Il Penseroso" from their fathers, and with all their happiness in that
-dim house, they learned to love "Il Penseroso" best....
-
-[Illustration: A SUDDEN SQUALL, CARDIGAN BAY]
-
-
-                              _September_
-
-In the afternoon I climbed out of a valley, descended again, and came on
-to a road that rolled over many little hills into many little valleys,
-and at the top of each hill grew the vision of a purple land ahead. But,
-for some miles, the valleys were solitary. There were brooks in them
-with cold, fresh voices, and copses of oak, and sometimes the smoke or
-the white wall of a house. There sang the latest of the willow-wrens,
-and among the blackthorns a bullfinch, with delicate voices. The air was
-warm and motionless; the light on oak and grass was steady and rich; the
-sky was low and leaning gently to the earth, and its large white clouds
-moved not, though they changed their shapes. But these things belonged
-to the brooks, the copses, the willow-wrens; or so it seemed, since that
-warm day, which elsewhere might have seemed so kind with an ancient
-kindness as if to one returning home after long exile, was not kind, but
-was indifferent and made an intruder of me. And I should have passed the
-stony hedges and the little brooks over the road and the desolate mine,
-in the indifferent little worlds of the valleys, one by one, as if they
-had been in a museum, or as if I had been taken there to admire them,
-had it not been that on the crests of the road between valley and
-valley, I saw the purple beckoning hills far away, and that, at length,
-towards the last act of the dim, rich, long-drawn out and windless
-sunset, the road took me into a small valley that was different. Just
-within reach of the sunset light, on one side of the valley lay a farm,
-with ricks, outhouses, and two cottages, all thatched. In the corner of
-the field nearest to the house, the long-horned craggy cattle were
-beginning to lie down. Those cattle, always vast and fierce, seemed to
-have sprung from the earth—into which the lines of their recumbent
-bodies flowed—out of which their horns rose coldly and angrily. The
-buildings also had sprung from the earth, and only prejudice taught me
-that they were homes of men. They enmeshed the shadows and lights of
-sunset in their thatch, and were as some enormous lichen-covered things,
-half crag, half animal, which the cattle watched, together with five
-oaks.
-
-There was not a sound, until a child ran to a pump, and sang a verse of
-some grave hymn lightheartedly, and filled a shining can with dark
-water, and disappeared.
-
-[Illustration: ST. DAVID'S—BISHOP'S PALACE]
-
-Then I raised my eyes, so that they crept swiftly, though not without
-feeling the weariness of the distance, over hill after hill to the one
-upon which the last, mild, enormous, purple dragon of the sunset was
-pasturing; yet I saw nothing in earth or sky which did not belong to
-those things, half crag, half animal, in the small valley, in happiness
-and peace that consented to the voice of the child.
-
-Then I passed the farm and saw a crimson fire casting innumerable arms
-about a room; I heard the rattle and click of the pump; and I knew that
-it was cold, that I had far to go, and that the desolation beyond the
-farm was illimitable.
-
-For such moods of the world are easily shut against us for some small
-thing, as the world of the little people was shut against the man in the
-tale which Gerald of Wales repeats:—
-
-A priest of Gower, named Elidorus, told Gerald that when he was a
-schoolboy he was often beaten by his master. So one day he ran away and
-hid himself in a hollow among the alder roots at the edge of a stream.
-There he was safe, but had no food. And on the third day two wonderfully
-little men came to him and said that if he would come with them, they
-would lead him to a happy and pleasant country. He therefore left his
-hiding-place and went with the little men through a country of wood and
-field and water that was beautiful, although they saw neither sun nor
-moon. At last they came to the court of the king, and Elidorus was
-presented to him; and, after looking at him carefully, the king gave him
-over to his young son. And the people of that country, though they were
-wonderfully little, were beautiful in shape and of a fair complexion,
-and they wore long hair that fell over their shoulders in the manner of
-women. Their horses and hounds were of a suitable size. The little
-people ate neither flesh nor fish, but lived on milk, which they
-concocted with saffron. They never took an oath; they always spoke the
-truth. Nor had they any kind of public worship, but simply kept and
-loved good faith. And their language was very much like Greek, as he
-afterwards said.
-
-[Illustration: THE STACKS, NEAR TENBY]
-
-The little people often went up into our world, and never returned
-without speaking harshly of men for their ambition and want of faith and
-constancy. Sometimes Elidorus went up with them. Sometimes he went up
-alone, but revealed himself to his mother only, telling her of his life
-and of the little people and their country. When he told her that gold
-abounded there, she asked him to bring her some golden thing as a gift.
-So he stole a golden ball from the son of the king and ran to his mother
-with it. But the little people pursued him, and in his haste he stumbled
-over the threshold of his mother's door and fell. He lost hold of the
-ball, and the little people picked it up and went away, laughing at him
-and taunting him. And when he rose up, he was ashamed and angry because
-he had stolen the ball. Then he would have gone back to the country of
-the little people, but, although he searched for a year, he could never
-discover the true path. In course of time he gave up the search and the
-hope of returning. He even went back to school and became a priest. But
-long afterwards, when he was an old man, he could never speak of his
-strange truancy without tears.
-
-
-                               _October_
-
-
-                                   I
-
-The rain and the wind had ceased, and in the garden the Painted Lady
-butterflies were tremulously enjoying the blue Michaelmas daisies, and
-an old man was gathering seeds of hollyhock, evening primrose, and
-foxglove, and putting them into white cups on the garden paths. In the
-hedges the bryony coils were crimson and green among thorn and hazel;
-the sparrows were thick in the elms, whose branches had snatched straws
-from passing waggons; one bare ash tree was all in bud with singing
-linnets. Over all was a blue sky, with throbbing clouds of rooks; and
-beyond all, over leagues of rocky pastures and grim oaks, the
-mountains,—and upon one of them a white flower of cloud or snow, above
-which presently rose many clouds, and in the midst of them a narrow pane
-of sky full of misty golden light, and behind that a land where Troy is
-still defended,—where still Camilla, loving war and maidenhood
-eternally, bounds over the unbending corn,—and where, in the hall of a
-castle, four-and-twenty damsels are embroidering satin, and the least
-lovely of them is lovelier than Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, "when
-she has appeared loveliest at the Offering, or on the day of the
-Nativity, or at the feast of Easter."
-
-
-                                   II
-
-The last village was far behind. The last happy chapel-goer had passed
-me long ago. A cock crowed once and said the last word on repose. The
-rain fell gently; the stems of the hazels in the thickets gleamed; and
-the acorns in the grassy roads, and under the groups of oaks, showed all
-their colours, and especially the rosy hues where they had but just
-before been covered by the cup. One by one I saw the things which make
-the autumn hedges so glorious and strange at a little distance: the
-yellow ash trees, with some green leaves; the hoary and yellow willows;
-the hawthorns, purple and crimson and green; the briers, with most hips
-where there were fewest leaves; the green brambles with red fruit and
-black; tall, grey, and leafless thistles with a few small crimson
-flowers; the grey-green nettles with purple stems; the ragwort flowers;
-and on the long, green, wet grass the fallen leaves shining under red
-and yellow oaks; and through the olive lances of hazel the fields
-shining in patines of emerald. Doves cooed in the oaks, pheasants
-gleamed below. The air was full of the sweetness of the taste of
-blackberries, and the scent of mushrooms and of crumbling, wild
-carrot-seeds, and the colour of yellow, evening grass. The birches up on
-the hills above the road were golden, and like flowers. Between me and
-them a smouldering fire once or twice sent up dancing crimson flames,
-and the colour and perfume of the fire added themselves to the power of
-the calm, vast, and windless evening, of which the things I saw were as
-a few shells and anemones at the edge of a great sea. The valley waited
-and waited.
-
-Then by the roadside I saw a woman of past middle age sitting silently.
-Her small head was poised a little haughtily on a blithe neck; her fine,
-grey, careful hair spared gloomy white forehead and round ears, which
-shone; her full, closed lips spoke clearly of both the sadness of to-day
-and the voluptuousness of yesterday. She was beautiful, and not merely
-because she had once been a beautiful girl. She had become mortal
-through grief, and though I could not see her crown, yet crowned she
-was.
-
-Will you always, O sad and tranquil Demeter, sit by the wayside and
-expect Persephone?
-
-
-                                  III
-
-It was the last day of the month, and in a gently heaving land, which
-was broken every three or four miles by a sudden, castled crag, Autumn
-was perfect, but with just a touch of sublimity added to its beauty by
-the thought that, on the next day or the next, winter would fall upon
-her unsuspected, as Pizarro and the Spanish cavalry fell upon that noble
-Indian, Atahualpa, who had come up to them in peace and meekness and
-pomp, upon a golden litter, among thousands of his gentle subjects,
-making music and decorated with gold, and expecting to meet the gods.
-
-[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE'S ROCK, TENBY]
-
-The bells of the cattle on broad, yellow lawns were ringing. Squirrels
-glowed in the road; the heavy rooks let fall the acorns among the leaves
-continually. The last beams of the sun reached now a circle of high
-bracken on a far-off hill, and reached it alone and transfigured it with
-strong, quiet light; and then made one brown hill seem to be consumed in
-a golden glow, while the next hill was sombre; and again devoted
-themselves to a group of beeches that shone ruddy, branch and leaf and
-bole, and divine and majestic and unrelated to the cattle passing
-underneath.
-
-The sun went down; wild-duck and moorhen cried and scudded on the calm,
-winding, silver river at my feet; and in a field beyond, that retained
-so much liquid and lugubrious light as to seem a green water, some
-laughing boys in white and yellow played football, without regarding the
-silver and purple, frosty sky, to which, nevertheless, their shrill
-voices added something, from which their movements took something, that
-was glorious and pathetic. And near by, dark oxen with rocking gait
-thrust their horns up into the sky as they approached the bridge.
-
-[Illustration: OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, NEAR SWANSEA]
-
-
-                               _November_
-
-The night had almost come, and the rain had not ceased, among the hills
-of an unknown country. Behind me, twelve desolate miles of hill and sky
-away, was a village; and on the way to it, half-a-dozen farms; and
-before me were three or four houses scattered over two or three miles of
-winding lanes, with an inn and a church. The parson had just come away
-from his poultry, and as his wife crossed the road with her apron over
-her head, I asked where the inn was, and whether it had a room ready in
-the winter. Two minutes after she had seen me—if she could see me in the
-dark lane—she had told me that if the inn had no room, I was not to go
-farther, but to stay at the vicarage. But the inn had a bed to spare,
-and there was good beer to be had by a great fire in a room shining with
-brass and pewter, and overhead guns and hams and hanks of wool; and the
-hostess was jocund, stout, and young, and not only talkative but anxious
-to be talked to, and she had that maternal kindness—or shall I call it
-the kindness of a very desirable aunt?—towards strangers, which I have
-always found in Welsh women, young and old, in the villages and on the
-moors. So there I stayed and listened to the rain and the fire and the
-landlady's rich, humming voice uttering and playing strange tricks with
-English. I was given a change of clothing as if I had asked and paid for
-it. Then I went to the vicarage, and because I said I loved Welsh hymns
-and Welsh voices, the vicar and his wife and daughter, without unction
-or preparation or a piano, sang to me, taking parts, some tremendous
-hymns and some gay melodies,
-
-             Whence banished is the roughness of our years,
-
-which made the rain outside seem April rain. They sang, and told me
-about the road I was to follow, until I had to go to my inn.
-
-Next day, after paying what I liked at the inn, and promising the
-hostess that I would learn Welsh, I walked for twenty miles over stony
-roads gleaming with rain upon the white thorns and bloom on the sloes,
-and through woods where nothing brooded solemnly over grey moss and
-green moss on the untrodden, rotten wood, and up dry, ladder-like beds
-of brooks that served as paths, over peat and brindled grass, and along
-golden hazel hedges, where grew the last meadow-sweet with herb-robert
-and harebell and one wild rose, and above little valleys of lichened ash
-trees; and sometimes beneath me, and sometimes high above, the yellow
-birches waved in the rain, like sunset clouds fettered to the ground and
-striving and caracoling in their fetters.
-
-Again I came at nightfall to a strange farmhouse, and was honoured by
-being asked into the kitchen; again I was given dry clothes. The juicy
-mutton broke up like game. The farmer sang to me from the Welsh
-hymn-book and from a collection of old Welsh songs, in a room which was
-none the worse for a portrait of Miss Maud Millett, "The Soldier's
-Farewell," and the presence of a fierce-thoughted, mild-eyed young
-minister, who was the most majestic man I have seen since I first saw
-the shop-walkers at Maple's—the kind of man whom one supposes that the
-animals observe, and so learn to temper their contempt for us. This man
-had the strange whim to call the devil a gentleman, a poor distinction
-which I could not understand until he showed me a passage, that should
-be highly interesting to gentlemen and the residue of mankind, in one of
-the Iolo MSS. Beginning at the beginning, the MS. declares that Adam's
-eldest son was ungenteel, "a low vassal"; but Seth and Abel were
-genteel. The angels also, the tenth grade, who fell from heaven, were
-ungenteel, "through pride, which is the principal characteristic of
-weakness." Continuing, the writer says of Noah's sons that one was a
-lord, the second a gentleman, the third a servile clown. Either the
-usual order of the sons is changed, or Ham was held to be a gentleman
-because from him was descended Nimrod, and all destroyers are gentlemen.
-If this be true, then Japheth was a "servile clown,"—in spite of the
-fact that he was "the first who made a targe with a lake in it, to
-signify that he and his brothers possessed the whole world," inventing
-heraldry,—merely in order that ungentility might have a common fount.
-And thus we see that descent is efficacious to all except descendants of
-Japheth (or Ham), and that therefore the genealogies are waste paper,
-and a popular pursuit which has hitherto been regarded as harmless is
-proved to be also fraudulent.... Then he went back to his books, which
-he allowed me to see. They were pretty, uncut editions of the profane
-classics; theology, Welsh history, and _Grimm's Fairy Tales_—all thumbed
-and pencilled. Frowning above was a photograph of Spurgeon, and a
-picture of Whitman from a chance number of an English weekly.
-
-When I left on the next morning early, the farmer was threshing with an
-oaken flail in his barn; but he stepped out to tell me what he knew of
-the way through the bogs and over the hills,—for there was no road or
-path,—and to beg me not to go, and to ask me to pay what I had paid at
-my former inn, for my lodging.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW NEAR MUMBLES, SWANSEA]
-
-The next twenty miles were the simplest and most pleasant in the world.
-For nearly the whole way there was a farm in every two miles. I had to
-call at each to ask my way. At one, the farmer asked me in and sat me by
-his peat fire to get dry, and gave me good milk and butter and bread,
-and a sack for my shoulders, and a sense of perfect peace which was only
-disturbed when he found that I could not help him in the verses he was
-writing for a coming wedding. At another, the farmer wrote out a full
-list of the farms and landmarks on my way, lest I should forget, and
-gave me bread and butter and milk. At another, I had but to sit and get
-dry and watch an immeasurably ancient, still, and stately woman, her
-face bound with black silk which came under her chin like a stock, and
-moving only to give a smile of welcome and goodwill. At another, they
-added cheese to the usual meal, and made the peat one golden cone upon
-the hearth, and brewed a pale drink which is called tea. Sometimes the
-shrill-voiced women, with no English, their hair flying in the wind,
-came out and shrieked and waved directions. In one of the houses I was
-privileged to go from the kitchen, with its dresser and innumerable jugs
-and four tea-services, to the drawing-room. It was a change that is
-probably more emphasised in Wales than elsewhere, since the kitchens are
-pleasanter, the drawing-rooms more mysterious, than in England, I think.
-The room was cold, setting aside the temperature, and in spite of
-crimson in the upholstery and cowslip yellow in the wall-paper and
-dreary green on the floor. There was a stuffed heron; a large pathetic
-photograph of man and wife; framed verses; some antimacassars, and some
-Bibles.... The room was dedicated to the unknown God. The farmer did not
-understand it; he admired it completely, and with awe, reverencing it as
-a priest his god, knowing that it never did him any good, and yet not
-knowing what evil might come if he were without it.
-
-At last, as I left landmarks behind in the rain, I reached a poor little
-house where a family of sixteen sat round the peat or went about their
-work, all preserving that easy dignity when their poverty is under the
-eyes of a stranger which I have ever found among the Welsh. Of his own
-accord, the farmer came with me over the worst part of my way—two
-apparently trackless miles—until I came to a road at last. He spoke no
-English; and yet I had, and think he had, a wonderful sense of
-satisfaction in our companionship of an hour, as he led me over
-undulating, boggy lands intersected by rivers,—which looked a little way
-off like an unpeopled continent in miniature, with lake and hill and
-stream,—and along the edges of steep crags that rose sheer from black
-brooks and grey foam, and above hollows inhabited by perfect, golden
-birches. It was a land which always comes back to me when the same cold
-rain, on the top of a London omnibus, beats the face and blurs the
-hurrying crowd and makes the ears tingle. Once, the rain stopped, and
-the air was calm, as we passed among decaying oaks, which were as a
-church full of men when the organ begins, and we no better than any one
-of them.... He accepted money with as little offence as the others had
-given when they refused it. As a rule, I would rather drop a sovereign
-by the road than offer a man sixpence who has nothing of the lackey
-about him, though imitativeness has compelled me to do otherwise.
-
-[Illustration: PENNARD CASTLE, GLAMORGANSHIRE]
-
-As he left me, a mist which he had probably foreseen suddenly cloaked me
-and hid everything except the road and its green edges, where the
-gentlest of winds shook the rain on the feathered grasses, but could not
-make it fall. The road was a river, shallow but swift, and for four
-miles there was not a house visible, except when the mist divided for a
-minute and showed, far away, a fair, shining, unshadowed valley, and a
-white house and motionless sheep, which I saw as a departed spirit might
-for a moment behold the earth; for the world was gone like last year's
-clouds. Yet again, the mist rose a little and showed lawns with a lovely
-dim light over the grass, as if the lawns had a light of their own which
-also made them seem aloof. And strangely sufficient was the mist, the
-hard road, and the moist stick in my hand, when my mood changed as when
-at night bells clash as if they were building the cathedral again with
-their noise, and we watch its pinnacles thus made among the stars, and
-joyously they clash so that we believe they will never cease; and
-suddenly they cease and slowly toll. For the inn glimmered close by, and
-I heard the rustle of many sheep, and my brain began to prepare itself
-for meeting men again.
-
-
-                               _December_
-
-Twenty miles from the sea, a little river leaves an underground lake,
-flows through a cave, and falls radiant from the darkness among steep
-rocks, and takes a course like a man's thoughts when they have the joy
-of an unknown impulse and no certain aim. There, the river always talks
-of Spring. It winds and studies all the country round,—castle and farm
-and inn and old graves,—with many sharp digressions, which I suppose it
-could not have done without, any more than I in a similar case. Now it
-shines and curves gently and looks over its bank at the cattle, and now,
-changing its voice, it is gloomy and intent among mossy stones, and now
-it leaps and is all foam over a ladder of crag. Suddenly it enters a
-steep, wooded valley, and falling over a perpendicular cliff, it is
-richly embowered, and always remembers Summer, and begins to please the
-trout where it swirls with shuddering foam or runs swiftly in the
-middle, and gloomily and slow under the alder roots. But in the wood,
-where birch and oak and hornbeam stand over it, it gains a look of great
-and growing age which mountain rivers have, and a shadow besets its
-cheerfulness, so unlike the happy prime of English waters among cowslip
-meadows. When it leaves the wood it is a masterly, full-grown stream
-that can turn a mill-wheel. Then it begins to pause in deep pools under
-shadowy bridges, where the otter slides for a moment over a slippery
-ledge and then can hide his path for fifty yards. There the girls stand
-and dip their vessels, and think for a minute while the vessels fill,
-and raise them again, spilling some, and show that the black water can
-shine as when it left the mountain ten miles away.
-
-Leaving a hamlet near one bridge, the river runs through such a lonely
-land that even on stormy nights it is heard only by the groups and
-groves of oaks that guard the stony and tussocky pastures. Here and
-there, on either hand, a brook adds a murmur to its music. A throbbing
-flock of lapwings for ever wheels and gleams and calls over it. The
-royal fern basks on its edge. And there Autumn abides.
-
-When it reaches the next village, the river is so yellow and poisonous
-that only in great floods dare the salmon come up. There, with two other
-rivers, it makes a noble estuary, and at the head of that estuary and in
-the village that commands it, the old and the new seem to be at strife.
-
-On the one hand are the magnificent furnaces; the black, wet roads; the
-ugly houses, that have the one pleasing virtue of not pretending to be
-anything else, with their naïvely chosen names, such as "Bryn Gwyn Bach"
-and Mazawattee Villa; the cheap and pretentious chapels; yet all of them
-filled with people bearing the old names,—the women called Olwen,
-Myfanwy, Angharad,—loving the old songs, theologies, histories. I heard
-of one man there who once heard part of _Robinson Crusoe_ told on a
-winter night. For a year he struggled and learned to read, and found no
-version in Welsh. Then he went to London, and while he helped to sell
-milk, learned to read English, and came back home with a copy of the
-desirable book.
-
-[Illustration: OLD CASTLE KEEP, CARDIFF]
-
-On the other hand, there is the great water, bent as if it were a white
-arm of the sea, thrust into the land to preserve the influence of the
-sea. Close to the village stands a wooded barrow and an ancient camp;
-and there are long, flat marches where sea-gulls waver and mew; and a
-cluster of oaks so wind-worn that when a west wind comes it seems to
-come from them as they wave their haggish arms; and a little desolate
-white church and white-walled graveyard, which on December evenings will
-shine and seem to be the only things at one with the foamy water and the
-dim sky, before the storm; and when the storm comes the church is
-gathered up into its breast and is a part of it, so that he who walks in
-the churchyard is certain that the gods—the gods that grow old and
-feeble and die—are there still, and with them all those phantoms
-following phantoms in a phantom land,—a gleam of spears, a murmur of
-arrows, a shout of victory, a fair face, a scream of torture, a song,
-the form of some conqueror and pursuer of English kings,—which make
-Welsh history, so that to read it is like walking in that place among
-December leaves that seem never to have lived and been emerald, and
-looking at the oaks in the mist, which are only hollows in the mist,
-while an ancient wind is ceaselessly remembering ancient things.
-
-
-
-
-                                APPENDIX
-
-
-For those who care to go into some of the art questions suggested by the
-illustrations and their originals, we have included a short appreciative
-criticism by Mr. A. J. Finberg. From experience we have found that the
-general reader and art-lover derives enhanced pleasure from having
-certain qualities brought to his notice. The art expert also may find
-some interest in the artist's point of view and methods of working.
-
-                                                          A. & C. BLACK.
-
-
-
-
-                   A NOTE ON MR. FOWLER'S LANDSCAPES
-
-                        By ALEXANDER J. FINBERG
-
-
-When Rudyard Kipling's stories first gripped the imagination of the
-reading public, it became the fashion among a certain set of profound
-thinkers to go about asking whether such writings could really be
-regarded as works of art. The author's extraordinary powers of
-observation, his insight, his skill in telling his story and in
-impressing the imagination of his readers, could not be gainsaid; yet
-the thin shrill voices kept on repeating: "But is it art?"
-
-I do not wish to pretend that the artist whose paintings have been
-reproduced in this volume can fairly be compared with Mr. Kipling. Mr.
-Robert Fowler does not aspire to fill such a place in the world of art
-as Mr. Kipling fills in the world of politics and letters. But
-incidentally there happen to be some few points in common between the
-two men. Neither of them cares a brass button for the formulas of the
-critics. Neither is oppressed by the weight of precedent and authority.
-They both look at things with their own eyes and weave the texture of
-their works out of their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations. They
-draw their inspiration from life rather than from the books or pictures
-of other men. They seem to hold that almost any material is capable of
-treatment. The one has boasted that he has found nothing "common or
-unclean," and the other that he has never seen an ugly thing in his
-life. And the parallel will be complete enough for my purpose when all
-the art critics of the kingdom begin to gird at Mr. Fowler's landscapes
-for their lack of artificiality, and to ask, as the book-reviewers asked
-of the Kipling stories: "But is it art?"
-
-It may perhaps seem strange that I should imagine that Mr. Fowler's
-vivid and accomplished paintings are likely to provoke such an
-objection. But the temptation to judge by precedent, to test new things
-by their likeness to the old, is a very strong one. This is especially
-the case in matters of pictorial art. A picture that does not startle us
-out of our conventional grooves of thought seems to us to be the most
-natural thing in the world. We reward it for its complaisance by saying
-that it is like nature. But when we are confronted by an unconventional
-rendering of nature, we give expression to our ruffled feelings by
-saying, either that it is unnatural, or that it is not art. At the
-present time so much attention has been given to the careful study of
-nature's aspects that few are likely to overlook or deny the astonishing
-accuracy of Mr. Fowler's transcripts. On the other hand, those who have
-a great fondness for pictures are apt to feel that his work is too much
-like nature and not enough like other works of art. The design in his
-pictures is often so subtle and elusive that it either seems accidental
-or else is overlooked. The art is often so artfully concealed that the
-astonished critic is tempted to ask, "But is it art?" I know the
-temptation is very real, because—I may as well confess it—because I have
-succumbed to it myself.
-
-When first I saw some of Mr. Fowler's paintings—it was at the end of
-1903, in the Goupil Gallery in London—I was struck by the accuracy with
-which Mr. Fowler had reproduced his visual impressions of nature. The
-work didn't look as though it had been done by a human being. "If I had
-been told that these results had been produced by some new process of
-colour photography I should have believed it," I wrote on the spur of
-the moment. The artist seemed to have cut himself off so completely from
-the art of the past, to have de-humanised himself, so to speak, that it
-was perhaps natural for me to compare his methods of work with the cold
-impassivity of a machine. But, though natural enough, such an impression
-touches only on the most superficial aspect of Mr. Fowler's art. Unless
-it is treated merely as the first step towards a more intimate
-investigation, it is likely even to be misleading.
-
-In the rough and tumble of everyday life we are often enough compelled
-to act upon our first hurried impressions. It is one of the greatest
-privileges of art to give us opportunities for correcting these first
-impressions, for disciplining and training our very faculties of
-perception. The art critic who understands his business will therefore
-be jealous of his right to amplify his first impressions of an artist's
-work by a more searching investigation. He will not overvalue a
-reputation for consistency, if only he can develop his half-truths into
-more fully articulated conceptions; he will be courageous enough to say
-to-day what he thinks to-day, and to-morrow what he thinks to-morrow.
-
-What, then, is the result of a more prolonged experience of this
-artist's work? what are the essential qualities that I find in his work,
-when I have done what I can to rid myself of the conscious and
-unconscious prejudices that colour so inevitably one's first
-impressions?
-
-In the first place, I think it is evident that Mr. Fowler is a painter
-who loves nature more than pictures—a much rarer thing than many people
-would suppose. Most painters learn to be original by imitating other
-artists. Mr. Fowler never seems to give us echoes of other men and of
-other men's works. His paintings are the immediate outcome of an
-overpowering desire to embody his own feelings and sensations. To many
-artists nature is interesting only in so far as she furthers their
-business of making pretty pictures. But the man who painted "The Stacks,
-Tenby," regarded nature as something more than the mere raw material of
-art. He seems to have said to himself, "Nature is greater than all our
-artifices," and to have abandoned himself to the might and splendour and
-incommensurability of the great mother. The tricks of the trade are all
-forgotten or abandoned. Here is no cunning artifice of line, no obvious
-formula of design. The scene itself speaks to us from the canvas: the
-art and the artist are forgotten.
-
-It is the same with canvas after canvas. In the early morning scene of
-"Conway from Benarth" we forget that it is a painted scene that we have
-before our eyes, so resistless is the eloquence of the sleeping towers
-and hills. But this concealment of himself is the very triumph of the
-artist.
-
-How rare is this power of self-suppression only those who have passed
-much of their time in the company of artists and pictures can fully
-realise. You will meet hundreds of clever, dexterous artists before you
-will find one sincere enough to efface himself in his work, to stand
-aside and let his subject speak to you for itself.
-
-It seems to me that the largeness and peace of nature appeal most
-forcibly to the artist. Such pictures as the "Conway Estuary near
-Gogarth Abbey," "Llandudno Bay—a Nocturne," "A Sunny Field near
-Llanberis," are so musical with the respite and peace that the artist's
-soul found there. But whatever note she touches nature seldom finds him
-unresponsive. "Conway Castle and Quay" lazily dozing in the noon-tide
-heat, the cliffs like sleeping dragons guarding the lonely shore of the
-"Barmouth Estuary," the sullen gloom of "Moelwyn," the glamour and
-enchantment as of fairyland in the "Silvery Light on Conway Shore," the
-rush and resounding din of "The Swallow Falls,"—all these experiences
-has the artist lived through and stamped for us on the canvas.
-
-There is one reward nature gives to those who love her with Mr. Fowler's
-self-abandonment, which the illustrations of this volume prove that the
-artist has gathered abundantly. He never seems to repeat himself. His
-work has something of nature's infinity, her prodigality and
-inexhaustible resources. We not only pass from scene to scene, but we
-share the myriad adventures of the days and hear the tramp of the
-seasons resounding through his pictures.
-
-Mr. Fowler once adorned the walls of his studio with this motto: "The
-world has been enough invented: let us discover it." He meant that he
-had had the temerity to look at the world for himself, and that he
-wanted us also to see something of the glorious things he could
-discover—not invent. On another occasion he said: "I always laugh when I
-hear people say that my ideal is the camera. They never see the reality
-clearly enough in all its beauty to wish to reproduce it in its
-entirety. I would willingly be a camera if I could get some of the
-wonders I see in the fact." "Go out one of these glorious mornings," he
-added, "and look at the scene just as it lies on the retina, and ask
-what is wrong with this beautiful thing that one should have to haul in
-'memories of _other_ days' and other people's pictures."
-
-Mr. Fowler's landscapes show that he is not one of those who fly to
-dreams to satisfy the craving for beauty that exists in every human
-breast. The reality, he feels, is infinitely more wonderful than
-anything we could imagine. But the full significance of reality is not
-displayed on the highway so that even the most careless and indifferent
-cannot fail to see it: it is only to the lover that the beauty of
-reality is revealed.
-
-In a remarkable article dealing with certain modern developments in the
-art of painting which Mr. Fowler has recently published, a passage
-occurs which throws considerable light on his own aims as a painter.
-After criticising the absence of beauty which is noticeable in many of
-the works of the modern impressionists, and commenting on the tendency
-of such movements to harden into a formula, he writes: "Perhaps the
-demand is unreasonable, but what one would wish to see in the near
-future is the work of an artist who uses the brush simply, directly, and
-delightfully, and with such a sense of structure that all the finest
-_nuances_ of form, even the most vague and distant—whether of cloud or
-mountain-side—get built in air as if by magic; whose colour will be so
-exquisitely true that, unlike the spectral treatment, no amount of
-analysis will disclose its secret; whose luminosity will not depend on
-theoretic and mechanical separation of colours, but on a more vivid
-visual analysis, and more consistent with the natural handling of a
-brush. Added to this one wants—abstracted from the natural scene—the
-noble elements of decoration and design. Also a hand so swift and sure
-that it is amply able to cope with the quickly-passing phase, and able
-to give back, in fact, tint for tint and tone for tone, and reproduce
-that inexorable logic and consistence of lighting on which the illusion
-of visual Nature herself depends. This will be 'to copy Nature,'"—and to
-copy nature is, according to many artists and writers, a thing to be
-avoided. "Well," adds Mr. Fowler, "it may be so. If one could only see
-it done _once_, one could be a better judge."
-
-It seems to me that the artist has done well to insist upon this point.
-We hear so much of the antithesis of Beauty and Nature that we are apt
-to forget that beauty may be natural and nature beautiful. Hazlitt and
-Ruskin especially were constantly falling into the mistake of making the
-distinction between beauty or art and nature far too cutting. "Nature,"
-wrote Hazlitt, "is consistent, unaffected, powerful, subtle; art is
-forgetful, apish, feeble, coarse. Nature is the original, and therefore
-right; art is the copy, and can but tread lamely in the same steps." But
-if art is the copy of nature, it is difficult to see how it can be so
-absolutely unlike its original as Hazlitt's impassioned rhetoric would
-make it out to be. Reynolds was not only a better painter than Hazlitt,
-but he proves himself a better critic when he insists that "a
-comprehensive and critical knowledge of the works of nature is the only
-source of beauty and grandeur"; and when he writes, "The terms beauty,
-or nature, are but different modes of expressing the same thing."
-Reynolds was therefore consistent when he blamed the Dutch painters—not
-for imitating nature, but for copying nature in a one-sided and vulgar
-way, and for missing the beauties that intelligent insight and loving
-sympathy can always discover.
-
-Mr. Fowler is right in refusing to admit that beauty is unnatural or
-that nature is unbeautiful. He is right in maintaining that it is not by
-listening to the "fond illusion of his heart" that the poet or the
-artist should create for us, but that he should see more clearly into
-the nature of reality than the majority of men. In his landscapes, at
-least, he has given up—so far as it may be—the desire to
-
-                                 add the gleam,
-               The light that never was, on sea or land,
-
-and has resolved to "welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, and frequent
-sights of what is to be borne." That such a man should find so much of
-beauty and of joy in the world as Mr. Fowler has evidently found is
-surely something to be grateful for.
-
-The reproductions of Mr. Fowler's paintings in this volume will serve to
-introduce his work to a larger public than that of the habitual haunters
-of picture galleries. But this does not mean that the artist is either a
-beginner or an unknown man. It is only as a landscape painter that Mr.
-Fowler might perhaps be regarded as a new-comer. As a figure painter he
-has already established a considerable reputation. His works have been
-bought for several of the great Continental collections, and his fine
-pictures of "Ariel" and "Eve and the Voices" are among the ornaments of
-the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. Still, as a landscape painter Mr.
-Fowler is practically a new-comer, and he has so far given the public
-few opportunities of becoming acquainted with his powers. A few years
-ago he held an exhibition at the Salon Gurlitt in Berlin of some eighty
-of his "nature-portraits," as the German critics styled his work, and in
-1903 some thirty of his paintings were shown in one of the exhibitions
-at the Goupil Gallery in London. He has frequently exhibited figure
-subjects at the Royal Academy, but only once, in 1903, has he exhibited
-a landscape there. This was a large picture of "Conway Castle." It
-formed a notable feature of the Central Gallery, and proved that a new
-landscape painter had arisen sensitive, to an extraordinary degree, to
-the fugitive and exquisite charms of natural light. Such a picture could
-only have been painted by one who had devoted many years of study to
-subjects that lie outside the range of the ordinary figure painter.
-
-It was not therefore surprising to find that the artist had painted
-something like two thousand studies in the open air before he could
-"reproduce that inexorable logic and consistence of lighting" which
-characterises the seventy or eighty pictures which are reproduced in the
-present volume. For thirty years the figure painter has devoted
-fragments of each year to what at first seemed the hopeless attempt to
-capture those subtle and elusive beauties of nature which, through
-evident lack of swiftness and skill, elude the painters, or, at best,
-can only be memorised. Each year had found the artist nerving himself to
-fresh efforts by saying to himself, "Nature can be actually reproduced
-in paint,—given the ability," and each winter he had returned to his
-studio from his campaign among the mountains wondering when, if ever,
-that ability would come to him. But gradually the hand has become
-quicker and more skilful, the eye more certain. After years of the most
-exacting discipline something of the very illusion of the sunbeams
-seemed to get on to the canvas, and the artist's hand learned the
-cunning of his swift, flying, vivid, suggestive touch—a touch which
-sometimes seems like an electric shock received from the tense and
-excited vision.
-
-Perhaps it is one of Mr. Fowler's most conspicuous merits that his works
-seem to have sprung up spontaneously in response to the artist's
-passionate interest in nature's aspects. He has not turned for support
-to the formulas of abstract science. He has simply felt a genuine
-passion for the truth and beauty of the visible concrete reality, and he
-has clung with admirable tenacity and faith to what he has himself felt
-and proved to be of worth. For in art, as in every other walk of life,
-the enemy of all excellence and of all progress is the tendency to
-accept ready-made habits of thought, to go with the crowd, to rely upon
-routine and machinery. So few are ready to "pay in their person," to win
-their way to a higher standpoint by dint of their own sufferings,
-exertions, and failures.
-
-It is this readiness to "pay in his person" that seems to form the
-distinguishing note of Mr. Fowler's work. He has discarded all
-picture-making formulas, setting himself to put on record as definite a
-statement as possible of his own feelings and sensations in the presence
-of nature. If only he could get something of what he himself had seen,
-he knew it would be beautiful enough. The whole merit of his work thus
-springs from his initial, his fundamental determination to see true, and
-to paint things in their actual relationship.
-
-Work like that of Mr. Fowler is particularly liable to be misjudged by
-an ignorant or hasty glance. It is easy for those who do not consider
-what art is to call it artless, and for those who do not see deeply into
-the infinite beauty of nature to sneer at it as "a mere transcript of
-nature." "As painting is an art," says Reynolds—and he knew what he was
-talking about—"they" (the ignorant) "think they ought to be pleased in
-proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed; they will from
-this supposition prefer neatness, high finishing, and gaudy colouring to
-the truth, simplicity, and unity of nature." But it is not to the
-undiscriminating that Mr. Fowler's work makes its appeal; his aim is
-rather to use art than to make a display of it. And such work rewards us
-for all the interest we can take in it.
-
-
-                                THE END
-
-
-           _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
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-                            BONNIE SCOTLAND
-
-           CONTAINING =75= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
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-            PAINTED AND DESCRIBED BY A. HENRY SAVAGE LANDOR
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-                            TIBET AND NEPAL
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-                CONTAINING =75= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
-                            (=50= IN COLOUR)
-
-
-                        BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.
-                         TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES
-
-                                 VENICE
-
-           CONTAINING =100= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
-
-                     PAINTED BY ROBERT FOWLER, R.I.
-                       DESCRIBED BY EDWARD THOMAS
-
-                            BEAUTIFUL WALES
-
-           CONTAINING =75= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
-
-                        BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.
-                         TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES
-
-                            WAR IMPRESSIONS
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-           CONTAINING =99= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
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-                       BY CAPTAIN S. E. ST. LEGER
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-                        PAINTED BY A. S. FORREST
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-                            THE WEST INDIES
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-                        BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.
-                         TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES
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-                            WORLD'S CHILDREN
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-           CONTAINING =100= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
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-                        BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.
-                         TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES
-
-                             WORLD PICTURES
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-           CONTAINING =20= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
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-                             BY C. LEWIS HIND
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-                        ADVENTURES AMONG PICTURES
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- CONTAINING =24= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS (8 IN COLOUR, =16= IN BLACK AND
-                                  WHITE)
-
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-                    PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.
-                        TEXT BY ROSALINE MASSON
-
-                               EDINBURGH
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-           CONTAINING =21= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
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-                             BY LADY BUTLER
-                       PAINTER OF "THE ROLL CALL"
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-                       LETTERS FROM THE HOLY LAND
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-                    PAINTED BY H. J. DOBSON, R.S.W.
-                       DESCRIBED BY WM. SANDERSON
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-                      SCOTTISH LIFE AND CHARACTER
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-           CONTAINING =20= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
-
-
-                           BY W. EARL HODGSON
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-                             TROUT FISHING
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-               CONTAINING A MODEL BOOK OF FLIES IN COLOUR
-
-
-                    PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.
-                      TEXT BY MRS. A. MURRAY SMITH
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-                           WESTMINSTER ABBEY
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-           CONTAINING =21= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
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-                          BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH
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-                         THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
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-        CONTAINING =13= FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY AN
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-                             BY GORDON HOME
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- ILLUSTRATIONS, EIGHT OF THEM IN COLOUR, FROM PAINTINGS BY SUTTON PALMER
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-           OIL-COLOURS, WATER-COLOURS, PASTELS, AND ETCHINGS
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-                               REMBRANDT
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-                           BY MORTIMER MENPES
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-              _The first of a Series of Monographs on the
-                             Great Masters_
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- CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY SIMON HARMON VEDDER
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-                         ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
-
-                           BY C. M. A. HEWETT
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-                                THE RAT
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-                            BY G. E. MITTON
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-                                THE DOG
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-                        _Others in preparation_
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-                            GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
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-                        BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
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-                           UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
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- CONTAINING 8 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR, AND MANY OTHERS IN THE
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-                             BY JOHN BUNYAN
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-                         THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
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-   CONTAINING 8 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY GERTRUDE DEMAIN
-                             HAMMOND, R.I.
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-                        WILLIAM TELL TOLD AGAIN
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-     CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY PHILIP DADD
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-                            BY G. E. MITTON
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-                       CHILDREN'S BOOK OF LONDON
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-   CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY JOHN WILLIAMSON
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-                        BY THE REV. R. C. GILLIE
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-                          THE STORY OF STORIES
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-                 CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
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-                        BY THE REV. R. C. GILLIE
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-                   THE KINSFOLK AND FRIENDS OF JESUS
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-       CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND SEPIA
-
-
-          PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.
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-                          TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beautiful Wales, by Edward Thomas
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Beautiful Wales
-
-Author: Edward Thomas
-
-Commentator: Robert Fowler
-             Alex J. Finberg
-
-Release Date: July 9, 2016 [EBook #52539]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL WALES ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class='tnotes covernote'>
-
-<p class='c000'>  <strong>Transcriber's Note:</strong></p>
-
-<p class='c000'>  The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c001'>BEAUTIFUL WALES</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>AGENTS IN AMERICA</div>
-    <div>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</div>
-    <div><span class='sc'>64 &amp; 66 Fifth Avenue, New York</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='Frontispiece'  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_004.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE STACK, HOLYHEAD</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <h1 class='c003'>BEAUTIFUL WALES</h1>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c002'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>PAINTED BY ROBERT</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>FOWLER · R·I · DESCRIBED</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>BY EDWARD THOMAS</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>WITH A NOTE ON MR.</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>FOWLER'S LANDSCAPES</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>BY ALEX. J. FINBERG</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>PUBLISHED BY A. &amp; C.</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='xlarge'>BLACK · LONDON · MCMV</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div  class='figright id002'>
-<img src='images/title_page.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>PREFACE</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'>A few of my jests, impressions of scenery, and
-portraits in this book have already been printed in
-<cite>The Daily Chronicle</cite>, <cite>The World</cite>, <cite>The Week's Survey</cite>,
-<cite>The Outlook</cite>, and <cite>The Illustrated London News</cite>.
-I have only to add that the line of verse on p. <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>
-is by Mr. Ernest Rhys; the lines on p. <a href='#Page_71'>71</a> are by
-Mr. T. Sturge Moore; and those on pp. <a href='#Page_130'>130</a> and
-<a href='#Page_178'>178</a> by Mr. Gordon Bottomley: and to confess,
-chiefly for the benefit of the solemn reviewer,
-that I know nothing of the Welsh language.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>EDWARD THOMAS.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table0' summary='CONTENTS'>
-  <tr>
-    <th class='c005'></th>
-    <th class='c006'>PAGE</th>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>CHAPTER I</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Preliminary Remarks on Men, Authors, and Things in Wales</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>CHAPTER II</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Entering Wales</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_28'>28</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>CHAPTER III</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>A Farmhouse under a Mountain, a Fire, and some Firesiders</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_41'>41</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>CHAPTER IV</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Two Ministers, a Bard, a Schoolmaster, an Innkeeper, and Others</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>CHAPTER V</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>Wales Month by Month</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'>APPENDIX</td></tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c005'><span class='sc'>A Note on Mr. Fowler's Landscapes, by Alexander J. Finberg</span></td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#Page_201'>201</a></td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table0' summary='LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS'>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>1.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Stack, Holyhead</td>
-    <td class='c006'><em><a href='#Frontispiece'>Frontispiece</a></em></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <th class='c008'></th>
-    <th class='c005'>&nbsp;</th>
-    <th class='c006'>FACING PAGE</th>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>2.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Summer Evening, Anglesey Coast</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp2'>2</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>3.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Yachts, Anglesey Coast</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp4'>4</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>4.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Beaumaris—Moonlight</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp6'>6</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>5.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Beach, Beaumaris</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp8'>8</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>6.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Trout Stream</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp12'>12</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>7.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Near Menai Straits</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp14'>14</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>8.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Near Bangor</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp18'>18</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>9.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Footpath on the Great Orme</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp20'>20</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>10.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A View from the Great Orme's Head</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp24'>24</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>11.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Old Cottage and Ruins of Abbey, Great Orme's Head</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp26'>26</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>12.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Breezy Morning, Llandudno Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp28'>28</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>13.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Country Lane</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp30'>30</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>14.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Nocturne, Llandudno Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp32'>32</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>15.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Conway from Benarth—Early Morning</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp36'>36</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>16.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Near Colwyn Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp38'>38</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>17.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Distant View of Penmaenmawr—Early Morning Light</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp42'>42</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>18.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Silvery Light, Conway Shore</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp44'>44</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>19.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Mountain Pass—Noon</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp48'>48</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>20.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Conway Castle and Quay—Noon</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp50'>50</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>21.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Conway Valley</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp54'>54</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>22.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Carnarvon, from Anglesey</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp56'>56</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'><span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>23.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Boddnant Hall, Conway Valley</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp60'>60</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>24.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Carnarvon Castle</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp62'>62</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>25.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Distant View of Carnarvon Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp66'>66</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>26.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>On the River Seiont, Carnarvonshire—Evening Glow</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp68'>68</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>27.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Bridge, Cwm-y-Glo—Evening</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp72'>72</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>28.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Field Path, near Llanrug</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp74'>74</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>29.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Windy Day, near Llanrug</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp78'>78</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>30.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Morning Mists, near Trefriw</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp80'>80</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>31.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Distant View of Bettws-y-Coed</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp82'>82</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>32.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Old Bridge, Bettws-y-Coed</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp84'>84</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>33.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Swallow Falls, Bettws-y-Coed</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp86'>86</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>34.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Fairy Glen, Bettws-y-Coed</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp90'>90</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>35.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Church Pool, Bettws-y-Coed</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp92'>92</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>36.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Miner's Bridge on River Llugwy</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp96'>96</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>37.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Sunny Field, near Llanberis</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp100'>100</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>38.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Welsh Farm, near Llanberis</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp104'>104</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>39.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Snowdon from Cwm-y-Glo</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp106'>106</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>40.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Snowdon from Llanberis Lake</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp108'>108</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>41.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Snowdon from Traeth Mawr</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp110'>110</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>42.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Snowdon from Capel Curig Lake—Summer Evening</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp114'>114</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>43.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>In the Lledr Valley</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp116'>116</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>44.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Duffws Mountain</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp120'>120</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>45.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Duffws Mountain in Mist</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp122'>122</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>46.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Coming Night, near Beddgelert</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp126'>126</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>47.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Aberglaslyn</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp128'>128</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>48.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>View of Moelwyn</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp132'>132</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>49.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Hayfield near Portmadoc</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp134'>134</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>50.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Valle Crucis Abbey</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp136'>136</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>51.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>View of Llangollen</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp138'>138</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>52.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Lonely Shore near Penrhyn Deudraeth</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp140'>140</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>53.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Shore near Harlech—Afternoon</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp142'>142</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>54.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>In the Woods, Farchynys, Barmouth Estuary</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp146'>146</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>55.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Incoming Tide, near Barmouth</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp148'>148</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>56.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Barmouth Bridge</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp152'>152</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>57.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Misty Morning, near Barmouth</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp154'>154</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>58.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Lonely Shore, Barmouth Estuary</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp156'>156</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>59.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>View from Bontddu, Dolgelly</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp158'>158</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>60.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Thundery Weather, near Dolgelly</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp160'>160</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>61.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Near Penmaen Pool—Noon</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp162'>162</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>62.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>View of Cader Idris</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp164'>164</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>63.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Mist on Cader Idris</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp168'>168</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>64.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>In the Woods, Berwyn</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp170'>170</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>65.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Aberdovey</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp172'>172</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>66.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Sunny Afternoon, Cardigan Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp176'>176</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>67.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>A Sudden Squall, Cardigan Bay</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp178'>178</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>68.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>St. David's—Bishop's Palace</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp180'>180</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>69.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>The Stacks, near Tenby</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp182'>182</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>70.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>St. Catherine's Rock, Tenby</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp186'>186</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>71.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Old Roman Bridge, near Swansea</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp188'>188</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>72.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>View near Mumbles, Swansea</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp192'>192</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>73.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Pennard Castle, Glamorganshire</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp194'>194</a></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c008'>74.</td>
-    <td class='c005'>Old Castle Keep, Cardiff</td>
-    <td class='c006'><a href='#fp198'>198</a></td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-  <div class='nf-center'>
-    <div><em>The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed in England</em></div>
-    <div><em>by Hentschel Colourtype, Ltd.</em></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph1'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>WALES</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CHAPTER I<br /> PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON MEN, AUTHORS, AND THINGS IN WALES</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'>Among friends and acquaintances and authors, I
-have met many men who have seen and read more
-of Wales than I can ever do. But I am somewhat
-less fearful in writing about the country, inasmuch
-as few of them seem to know the things which I
-know, and fewer still in the same way. When I
-read their books or hear them speak, I am interested,
-pleased, amazed, but seldom am I quite sure that
-we mean the same thing by Wales; sometimes I
-am sure that we do not. One man writes of the
-country as the home of legends, whose irresponsibility
-puzzles him, whose naïveté shocks him.
-Another, and his name is legion, regards it as
-littered with dead men's bones, among which a few
-shepherds and miners pick their way without
-caring for the lover of bones. Another, of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>same venerable and numerous family as the last,
-has admired the silver lake of Llanberis or blue
-Plynlimmon; has been pestered by the pronunciation
-of Machynlleth, and has carried away a low
-opinion of the whole language because his own
-attempts at uttering it are unmelodious and even
-disgusting; has fallen entirely in love with the
-fragrant Welsh ham, preferring it, in fact, to the
-curer and the cook. Others, who have not, as
-a rule, gone the length of visiting the persons
-they condemn, call the Welshmen thieving, lying,
-religious, and rebellious knaves. Others would
-repeat with fervour the verse which Evan sings
-in Ben Jonson's masque, <cite>For the Honour of
-Wales</cite>:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>And once but taste o' the Welsh mutton,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Your English seep's not worth a button:</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and so they would conclude, admitting that the
-trout are good when caught. Some think, and are
-not afraid of saying, that Wales will be quite a
-good place (in the season) when it has been
-chastened a little by English enterprise: and I
-should not be surprised were they to begin by
-introducing English sheep, though I hardly see
-what would be done with them, should they be cut
-up and exposed for sale. The great disadvantage
-of Wales seems to be that it is not England, and
-the only solution is for the malcontents to divide
-their bodies, and, leaving one part in their native
-land, to have the rest sent to Wales, as they used
-to send Welsh princes to enjoy the air of two,
-three, and even four English towns, at the same
-time and in an elevated position.</p>
-
-<div id='fp2'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_021.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SUMMER EVENING, ANGLESEY COAST</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>Then also there are the benevolent writers of
-books, who have for a century repeated, sometimes
-not unmusically, the words of a fellow who wrote
-in 1798, that the beauty of Llangollen "has been
-universally allowed by gentlemen of distinguished
-taste," and that, in short, many parts of Wales
-"have excited the applause of tourists and poets."
-Would that many of them had been provided with
-pens like those at the catalogue desks of the British
-Museum! Admirable pens! that may be put to so
-many uses and should be put into so many hands
-to-day and to-morrow. Admirable pens! and yet
-no one has praised them before. Admirable pens
-that will not write; and, by the way, how unlike
-those which wrote this:—</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"Caldecot Castle, a grand and spacious edifice
-of high antiquity, occurs to arrest the observation
-of the passing stranger about two miles beyond the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>new passage; appearing at no great distance across
-the meadows that lie to the left of the Newport
-road. The shattered remnants of this curious
-example of early military architecture are still so far
-considerable as to be much more interesting than
-we could possibly have been at first aware, and
-amply repaid the trouble of a visit we bestowed
-upon it, in our return through Monmouthshire by
-the way of Caldecot village. In the distance truly
-it does not fail to impress the mind with some idea
-of its ancient splendour, for it assumes an aspect
-of no common dignity: a friendly mantling of
-luxuriant ivy improves, in an eminent degree, the
-picturesque effect of its venerable mouldering
-turrets; and, upon the whole, the ruin altogether
-would appear unquestionably to great advantage,
-were it, fortunately for the admirers of artless
-beauty, stationed in a more conspicuous situation,
-like the greater number of edifices of a
-similar nature in other parts of the country."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The decency, the dignity, the gentlemanliness
-(<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">circa</span></i> 1778), the fatuity of it, whether they tickle or
-affront, are more fascinating than many better but
-less portentous things. There was, too, a Fellow
-of the Royal Society who said in the last century
-that, in the Middle Ages, St. Winifred's Well and
-Chapel, and the river, and Basingwerk, must have
-been "worthy of a photograph."</p>
-
-<div id='fp4'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_027.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>YACHTS, ANGLESEY COAST</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>Yet there are two others who might make any
-crowd respectable—the lively, the keen-eyed, the
-versatile Mr. A. G. Bradley, and George Borrow,
-whose very name has by this time absorbed and
-come to imply more epithets than I have room to
-give. From the former, a contemporary, it would
-be effrontery to quote. From the latter I allow myself
-the pleasure of quoting at least this, and with
-the more readiness because hereafter it cannot justly
-be said that this book does not contain a fine
-thing about Wales. Borrow had just been sitting
-(bareheaded) in the outdoor chair of Huw Morus,
-whose songs he had read "in the most distant part
-of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy"; and
-on his way back to Llangollen, he had gone into a
-little inn, where the Tarw joins the Ceiriog brook.
-"'We have been to Pont-y-Meibion,' said Jones,
-'to see the chair of Huw Morus,' adding, that the
-Gwr Boneddig was a great admirer of the songs of
-the Eos Ceiriog. He had no sooner said these
-words than the intoxicated militiaman started up,
-and, striking the table with his fist, said: 'I am a
-poor stone-cutter—this is a rainy day and I have
-come here to pass it in the best way I can. I am
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>somewhat drunk, but though I am a poor stone-mason,
-a private in the militia, and not so sober
-as I should be, I can repeat more of the songs of
-the Eos than any man alive, however great a
-gentleman, however sober—more than Sir Watkin,
-more than Colonel Biddulph himself.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"He then began to repeat what appeared to be
-poetry, for I could distinguish the rhymes occasionally,
-though owing to his broken utterance it was
-impossible for me to make out the sense of the
-words. Feeling a great desire to know what verses
-of Huw Morus the intoxicated youth would repeat,
-I took out my pocket-book and requested Jones,
-who was much better acquainted with Welsh
-pronunciation, under any circumstances, than myself,
-to endeavour to write down from the mouth
-of the young fellow any verses uppermost in his
-mind. Jones took the pocket-book and pencil and
-went to the window, followed by the young man,
-scarcely able to support himself. Here a curious
-scene took place, the drinker hiccuping up verses,
-and Jones dotting them down, in the best manner he
-could, though he had evidently great difficulty to distinguish
-what was said to him. At last methought
-the young man said, 'There they are, the verses
-of the Nightingale (Eos), on his deathbed....'</p>
-
-<div id='fp6'  class='figcenter id004'>
-<img src='images/i_033.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>BEAUMARIS—MOONLIGHT</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>"... A scene in a public-house, yes! but in a
-Welsh public-house. Only think of a Suffolk
-toper repeating the deathbed verses of a poet;
-surely there is a considerable difference between
-the Celt and the Saxon?"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But the number is so great of sensible, educated
-men who have written on Wales, or would have
-written if business or pleasure or indolence or
-dislike of fame had not prevented them, that either
-I find it impossible to visit the famous places
-(and if I visit them, my predecessors fetter my
-capacity and actually put in abeyance the powers
-of the places), or, very rarely, I see that they were
-imperfect tellers of the truth, and yet feel myself
-unwilling to say an unpleasant new thing of village
-or mountain because it will not be believed,
-and a pleasant one because it puts so many excellent
-people in the wrong. Of Wales, therefore, as
-a place consisting of Llandudno, Llangammarch,
-Llanwrtyd, Builth, Barmouth, Penmaenmawr,
-Llanberis, Tenby, ... and the adjacent streams
-and mountains, I cannot speak. At ——, indeed,
-I ate poached salmon and found it better than any
-preserver of rivers would admit; it was dressed
-and served by an Eluned (Lynette), with a complexion
-so like a rose that I missed the fragrance,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>and movements like those of a fountain when the
-south wind blows; and all the evening they sang,
-or when they did not sing, their delicate voices made
-"<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">llech</span>" and "<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">llawr</span>" lovely words: but I remember
-nothing else. At —— I heard some one playing
-<cite>La ci darem la mano</cite>: and I remember nothing
-else. Then, too, there was ——, with its castle and
-cross and the memory of the anger of a king: and
-I remember that the rain outside my door was the
-only real thing in the world except the book in my
-hand; for the trees were as the dreams of one who
-does not care for dreams; the mountains were as
-things on a map; and the men and women passing
-were but as words unspoken and without melody.
-All I remember of —— is that, as I drew near to
-it on a glorious wet Sunday in winter, on the
-stony roads, the soles began to leave my boots. I
-knew no one there; I was to reach a place twelve
-miles ahead among the mountains; I was assured
-that nobody in the town would cobble on Sunday:
-and I began to doubt whether, after all, I had been
-wise in steadily preferring football boots to good-looking
-things at four times the price; when,
-finally, I had the honour of meeting a Baptist—a
-Christian—a man—who, for threepence, fixed my
-soles so firmly that he assured me they would
-last until I reached the fiery place to which he
-believed I was travelling, and serve me well there.
-I distrusted his theology, and have yet to try them
-on "burning marl," but they have taken me some
-hundreds of miles on earth since then.</p>
-
-<div id='fp8'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_039.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE BEACH, BEAUMARIS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>It would be an impertinence to tell the reader
-what Llangollen is like, especially as he probably
-knows and I do not. Also, I confess that its
-very notoriety stupefies me, and I see it through
-a cloud of newspapers and books, and amid a
-din of applausive voices, above which towers a
-tremendous female form "like Teneriffe or Atlas
-unremoved," which I suppose to be Lady Eleanor
-Butler.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Nevertheless, I will please myself and the discerning
-reader by repeating the names of a few
-of the places to which I have never been, or of
-which I will not speak, namely, Llangollen, Aberglaslyn,
-Bettws-y-Coed, the Fairy Glen, Capel Curig,
-Colwyn, Tintern, Bethesda, Llanfairfechan, Llanrhaiadr,
-Llanynys, Tenby (a beautiful flower with a
-beetle in it), Mostyn, Glyder Fach and Glyder
-Fawr, Penmaenmawr, Pen-y-Gader, Pen-y-Gwryd,
-Prestatyn, Tremadoc, the Swallow Falls, the Devil's
-Bridge, the Mumbles, Harlech, Portmadoc, Towyn,
-and Aberdovey (with its song and still a poet
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>there). I have read many lyrics worse than that
-inventory.</p>
-
-<hr class='c010' />
-
-<p class='c000'>But there is another kind of human being—to
-use a comprehensive term—of which I stand in
-almost as much awe as of authors and those who
-know the famous things of Wales. I mean the
-lovers of the Celt. They do not, of course, confine
-their love—which in its extent and its tenuity
-reminds one of a very great personage indeed—to
-the Celt; but more perhaps than the Japanese or
-the Chinese or the Sandwich Islander the Celt
-has their hearts; and I know of one who not only
-learned to speak Welsh badly, but had the courage
-to rise at a public meeting and exhort the (Welsh-speaking)
-audience to learn their "grand mother
-tongue." Their aim and ideal is to go about the
-world in a state of self-satisfied dejection, interrupted,
-and perhaps sustained, by days when they
-consume strange mixed liquors to the tune of all
-the fine old Celtic songs which are fashionable. If
-you can discover a possible Celtic great-grandmother,
-you are at once among the chosen. I
-cannot avoid the opinion that to boast of the
-Celtic spirit is to confess you have it not. But,
-however that may be, and speaking as one who is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>afraid of definitions, I should be inclined to call
-these lovers of the Celt a class of "decadents," not
-unrelated to Mallarmé, and of æsthetes, not unrelated
-to Postlethwaite. They are sophisticated,
-neurotic—the fine flower of sounding cities—often
-producing exquisite verse and prose; preferring
-<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">crême de menthe</span></i> and <em>opal hush</em> to metheglin or
-stout, and Kensington to Eryri and Connemara;
-and perplexed in the extreme by the Demetian
-with his taste in wall-papers quite untrained.
-Probably it all came from Macpherson's words,
-"They went forth to battle and they always fell";
-just as much of their writing is to be traced to
-the vague, unobservant things in Ossian, or in the
-proud, anonymous Irishman who wrote <cite>Fingal</cite> in
-six cantos in 1813. The latter is excellent in this
-vein. "Let none then despise," he writes, "the
-endeavour, however humble, now made, even by
-the aid of fiction, to throw light upon the former
-manners and customs of <em>one of the oldest and
-noblest nations of the earth</em>. That <em>once we were</em>, is
-all we have left to boast of; that <em>once we were</em>,
-we have record upon record.... We yet can
-show the stately pharos where waved the chieftain's
-banner, and the wide ruin where the palace stood—the
-palace once the pride of ages and the theme
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>of song—once <i><span lang="fi" xml:lang="fi">Emuin a luin Aras Ullah</span></i>." The
-reader feels that it is a baseness to exist. Mr.
-John Davidson, who, of course, is as far removed
-from the professional Celt as a battle-axe from a
-toothpick, has put something like the fashionable
-view majestically into the mouth of his "Prime
-Minister":</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>... That offscouring of the Eastern world,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The melancholy Celt, whom Latin, Greek,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And Teuton drove through Europe to the rocks,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The utmost isles and precincts of the sea;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Who fight for fighting's sake, and understand</div>
-      <div class='line'>No meaning in defeat, having no cause</div>
-      <div class='line'>At heart, no depth of purpose, no profound</div>
-      <div class='line'>Desire, no inspiration, no belief;—</div>
-      <div class='line'>A twilight people living in a dream,</div>
-      <div class='line'>A withered dream they never had themselves,</div>
-      <div class='line'>A faded heirloom that their fathers dreamt:</div>
-      <div class='line'>How much more happy these had they destroyed</div>
-      <div class='line'>The spell of life at once, and so escaped</div>
-      <div class='line'>An unregarded martyrdom, the consciousness</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of inefficience and the world's contempt.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-
-<div id='fp12'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_047.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE TROUT STREAM</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>"An Earth-born coolness</div>
-      <div class='line'>Coloured with the sky."</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>But it is probably true that when one has said
-that the typical Celt is seldom an Imperialist, a
-great landowner, a brewer, a cabinet minister, or
-(in Wales, at least) a member of the Salvation
-Army, one has exhausted the list of his weaknesses;
-and that not greatly wanting to be one of
-these things, he has endeared himself to those to-day
-who have set their hearts on gold and applause
-and have not gained them, and those few others
-who never sought them. I heard of a pathetic,
-plausible stockbroker's clerk the other day, who,
-having spent his wife's money and been at last
-discovered by his tailor, took comfort in studying
-his pedigree, which included a possibly Welsh Lewis
-high upon the extreme right. He was sufficiently
-advanced in philology to find traces of an Ap' in
-his name, which was Piper, and he could repeat
-some of Ossian by heart with great emotion and
-less effect. I prefer the kind of Celt whom I met
-in Wales one August night. It was a roaring wet
-night, and I stepped into the shelter of a bridge to
-light a pipe. As I paused to see if it was dawn yet,
-I heard a noise which I supposed to be the breathing
-of a cow. My fishing-rod struck the bridge; the
-noise ceased, and I heard something move in the
-darkness close by. I confess that my pipe went
-out when, without warning, a joyous, fighting
-baritone voice rose and shook the bridge with the
-words.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Through all the changing scenes of life,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>In trouble and in joy,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The praises of my God shall still</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>My heart and tongue employ.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>The voice sang all the verses of the hymn, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>then laughed loudly, yet with a wonderful serenity.
-Then a man stood up heavily with a sound like a
-flock of starlings suddenly taking flight. I lit a
-match and held it to his face and looked at him,
-and saw a fair-skinned, high-cheek-boned face,
-wizened like a walnut, with much black hair
-about it, that yet did not conceal the flat, straight,
-eloquent mouth. He lit a match and held it to my
-face, and looked at me and laughed again. Finding
-that I could pronounce Bwlch-y-Rhiw, he was
-willing to talk and to share the beer in my satchel.
-And he told me that he had played many parts—he
-was always playing—before he took to the road:
-he had been a booking-office clerk, a soldier, a
-policeman, a gamekeeper, and put down what
-he called his variability to "the feminine gender."
-He would not confess where he had been to school,
-and his one touch of melancholy came when, to
-show that he had once known Latin, he began to
-repeat, in vaguely divided hexameters, the passage in
-the <cite>Aeneid</cite> which begins <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Est in conspectu Tenedos</span></i>.
-For he could not go on after <em>At Capys</em> and was
-angry with himself. But he recalled being caned
-for the same inability, and laughed once more.
-Every other incident remembered only fed his
-cheerfulness. Everything human had his praise,—General
-Buller in particular. I cannot say the
-same of his attitude towards the divine. His conversation
-raised my spirits, and I suppose that the
-bleared and dripping dawn can have peered on few
-less melancholy men than we. "Life," said he, "is
-a plaguey thing: only I don't often remember it."
-And as he left me, he remarked, apologetically, that
-he "always had been a cheerful ——, and couldn't
-be miserable," and did me the honour of supposing
-that in this he resembled me.</p>
-
-<div id='fp14'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_053.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>NEAR MENAI STRAITS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>He went off singing, in Welsh, something not
-in the least like a hymn to a fine victorious hymn
-tune, but had changed, before I was out of hearing,
-to the plaintive, adoring "Ar hyd y nos." And I
-remembered the proverbial saying of the Welsh,
-that "the three strong ones of the world" are "a
-lord, a headstrong man, and a pauper."</p>
-
-<hr class='c010' />
-
-<p class='c000'>Having heard and read the aforesaid authors,
-tourists, higher philatelists, and lovers of the Celt,
-I need hardly say, firstly, that I have come under
-their influence; secondly, that I have tried to avoid
-it; and thirdly, that I am not equal to the task of
-apportioning the blame between them and myself
-for what I write.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And, first, let me ease my memory and pamper
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>my eyes, and possibly make a reader's brain reverberate
-with the sound of them, by giving the names
-of some of the streams and lakes and villages I have
-known in Wales. And among the rivers, there are
-Ebbw and Usk, that cut across my childhood with
-silver bars, and cloud it with their apple flowers
-and their mountain-ash trees, and make it musical
-with the curlew's despair and the sound of the
-blackbird singing in Eden still; and Towy and
-Teivy and Cothi and Ystwyth; and, shyer streams,
-the old, deserted, perhaps deserted, pathways of the
-early gods, the Dulais and Marlais and Gwili and
-Aman and Cenen and Gwenlais and Gwendraeth
-Fawr and Sawdde and Sawdde Fechan and Twrch
-and Garw; and those nameless but not unremembered
-ones (and yet surely no river in Wales but has
-a name if one could only know it well enough) that
-crossed the road like welcomed lingerers from some
-happier day, flashing and snake-like, and ever about
-to vanish and never vanishing, and vocal all in reed
-or pebble or sedge, some deep enough for a sewin,
-others too shallow to wash the dust from the little
-pea-like toes of the barefooted child that learns
-from them how Nile and Ganges flow, and why
-Abana and Pharpar were dear, and why these are
-more sweet; and there is Llwchwr, whose voice is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>bright in constant shadow; and Wye; and the little
-river in a stony valley of Gower which at first reminded
-me, and always reminds me, of the adventure
-of Sir Marhaus, Sir Gawaine, and Sir Uwaine.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"And so they rode, and came into a deep valley
-full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of
-water; above thereby was the head of the stream a
-fair fountain, and three damosels sitting thereby.
-And then they rode to them, and either saluted
-other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about
-her head, and she was threescore winter of age or
-more, and her hair was white under the garland.
-The second damosel was of thirty winter of age,
-with a circlet of gold about her head. The third
-damosel was but fifteen year of age, and a garland
-of flowers about her head. When the knights had
-so beheld them, they asked them the cause why
-they sat at that fountain? 'We be here,' said the
-damosels, 'for this cause: if we may see any
-errant knights, to teach them unto strange
-adventures; and ye be three knights that seeken
-adventures, and we be three damosels, and therefore
-each one of you must choose one of us; and
-when ye have done so we will lead you unto three
-highways, and there each of you shall choose a way
-and his damosel with him. And this day twelvemonth
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>ye must meet here again, and God send you
-your lives, and thereto ye must plight your troth.'
-'This is well said,' said Sir Marhaus." And no
-other than a Welsh story-teller could have made
-that clear picture of the three damosels.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And there is Severn in its wild and unnoted
-childhood, its lovely and gallant youth, its noble
-and romantic prime, as it leaves Wales and passes
-Shrewsbury, the pattern of all famous streams—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros;</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and its solemn, grey, and mighty and worldly-wise
-old age, listening to its latest daughter the Wye,
-where it has</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>A cry from the sea, a cry from the mountain;</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and Clwyd and Conway and Ceiriog and Aled and
-Dovey, streams that remember princes and bards;
-and the little waters flowing from Cwellyn Lake, of
-which a story is told.</p>
-
-<div id='fp18'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_061.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>NEAR BANGOR</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>Near the river which falls from Cwellyn Lake,
-they say that the fairies used to dance in a meadow
-on fair moonlit nights. One evening the heir to
-the farm of Ystrad, to which the meadow belonged,
-hid himself in a thicket near the meadow. And
-while the fairies were dancing, he ran out and
-carried off one of the fairy women. The others at
-once disappeared. She resisted and cried, but he
-led her to his home, where he was tender to her, so
-that she was willing to remain as his maid-servant.
-But she would not tell him her name. Some time
-afterward he again saw the fairies in the meadow
-and overheard one of them saying, "The last time
-we met here, our sister Penelope was snatched
-away from us by one of the mortals." So he
-returned and offered to marry her, because she was
-hard-working and beautiful. For a long time she
-would not consent; but at last she gave way, on
-the condition "that if ever he should strike her
-with iron, she would leave him and never return to
-him again." They were happy together for many
-years; and she bore him a son and a daughter;
-and so wise and active was she, that he became one
-of the richest men of that country, and besides the
-farm of Ystrad, he farmed all the lands on the north
-side of Nant-y-Bettws to the top of Snowdon,
-and all Cwm Brwynog in Llanberis, or about five
-thousand acres. But one day Penelope went with
-him into a field to catch a horse; and as the horse
-ran away from him, he was angry and threw the
-bridle at him, but struck Penelope instead. She
-disappeared. He never saw her again, but one
-night afterward he heard her voice at his window,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>asking him to take care of the children, in these
-words:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Oh, lest my son should suffer cold,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Him in his father's coat enfold:</div>
-      <div class='line'>Lest cold should seize my darling fair,</div>
-      <div class='line'>For her, her mother's robe prepare.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>These children and their descendants were called
-the Pellings, says the teller of the tale; and "there
-are," he adds, "still living several opulent and
-respectable persons who are known to have sprung
-from the <em>Pellings</em>. The best blood in my own veins
-is this fairy's."</p>
-
-<div id='fp20'  class='figcenter id005'>
-<img src='images/i_067.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A FOOTPATH ON THE GREAT ORME</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>And of lakes, I have known Llyn-y-Fan Fach,
-the lonely, deep, gentle lake on the Caermarthen
-Fan, two thousand feet high, where, if the dawn
-would but last a few moments longer, or could one
-swim but just once more across, or sink but a little
-lower in its loving icy depths, one would have such
-dreams that the legend of the shepherd and the
-lady whom he loved and gained and lost upon the
-edge of it would fade away: and Llyn Llech Owen,
-and have wondered that only one legend should be
-remembered of those that have been born of all the
-gloom and the golden lilies and the plover that
-glories in its loneliness; for I stand in need of a
-legend when I come down to it through rolling
-heathery land, through bogs, among blanched and
-lichened crags, and the deep sea of heather, with a few
-flowers and many withered ones, of red and purple
-whin, of gorse and gorse-flower, and (amongst the
-gorse) a grey curling dead grass, which all together
-make the desolate colour of a "black mountain";
-and when I see the water for ever waved except
-among the weeds in the centre, and see the waterlily
-leaves lifted and resembling a flock of wild-fowl,
-I cannot always be content to see it so remote, so
-entirely inhuman, and like a thing a poet might
-make to show a fool what solitude was, and as it
-remains with its one poor legend of a man who
-watered his horse at a well, and forgot to cover it
-with the stone, and riding away, saw the water
-swelling over the land from the well, and galloped
-back to stop it, and saw the lake thus created and
-bounded by the track of his horse's hooves; and thus
-it is a thing from the beginning of the world that
-has never exchanged a word with men, and now
-never will, since we have forgotten the language,
-though on some days the lake seems not to have
-forgotten it. And I have known the sombre
-Cenfig water among the sands, where I found the
-wild goose feather with which I write.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And I have seen other waters; but least of
-them all can I forget the little unnecessary pool
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>that waited alongside a quiet road and near a grim,
-black village. Reed and rush and moss guarded
-one side of it, near the road; a few hazels overhung
-the other side; and in their discontented
-writhing roots there was always an empty moorhen's
-nest, and sometimes I heard the bird hoot
-unseen (a sound by which the pool complained, as
-clearly as the uprooted trees over the grave of
-Polydorus complained), and sometimes in the unkind
-grey haze of winter dawns, I saw her swimming
-as if vainly she would disentangle herself from
-the two golden chains of ripples behind her. In
-the summer, the surface was a lawn of duckweed on
-which the gloom from the hazels found something
-to please itself with, in a slow meditative way,
-by showing how green could grow from a pure
-emerald, at the edge of the shadow, into a brooding
-vapourish hue in the last recesses of the hazels.
-The smell of it made one shudder at it, as at poison.
-An artist would hardly dare to sit near enough to
-mark all the greens, like a family of snaky essences,
-from the ancient and mysterious one within to the
-happy one in the sun. When the duckweed had
-dissolved in December, the pool did but whisper
-that of all things in that season, when</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Blue is the mist and hollow the corn parsnep,</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>it alone rejoiced. It was in sight of the smoke
-and the toy-like chimney-stacks of the village, of
-new houses all around, and of the mountains. It
-had no possible use—nothing would drink of it.
-It did not serve as a sink, like the blithe stream
-below. It produced neither a legend nor a brook.
-It was a whole half-acre given up to a moorhen
-and innumerable frogs. It was not even beautiful.
-And yet, there was the divinity of the place,
-embodied, though there was no need for that, in
-the few broken brown reeds that stood all the
-winter, each like a capital Greek <em>lambda</em>, out of
-the water. When the pool harboured the image
-of the moon for an hour in a winter night, it
-seemed to be comforted. But when the image
-had gone, the loss of that lovely captive was
-more eloquent than the little romantic hour.
-And I think that, after all, the pool means the
-beauty of a pure negation, the sweetness of
-utter and resolved despair, the greatness of Death
-itself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And I have been to Abertillery, Pontypool,
-Caerleon, infernal Landore, Gower, Pontardulais,
-Dafen, Llanedi, Llanon (where only the little Gwili
-runs, but good children are told that they shall go
-to Llanon docks), Pen-y-Groes, Capel Hendre, Maesy-bont,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>Nantgaredig, Bolgoed, Pentre Bach, Bettws,
-Amanford, Llandebie, Pentre Gwenlais, Derwydd,
-Ffairfach, Llandeilo, Tal-y-Llychau, Brynamman,
-Gwynfe, Llanddeusant, Myddfai, Cil-y-Cwm,
-Rhandir Mwyn, and the farms beyond,—Maes
-Llwyn Fyddau, Bwlch-y-Rhiw, Garthynty, Nant-yr-ast,
-Blaen Cothi, Blaen Twrch,—Llanddewi
-Brefi, Tregaron, Pont Llanio, Llanelltyd, Bettws
-Garmon, Bala, Aber Dusoch.... And I have
-crossed many "black" mountains, and Gareg Lwyd,
-Gareg Las, the Banau Sir Gaer, Crugian Ladies,
-Caeo, Bryn Ceilogiau, Craig Twrch, and Craig-y-Ddinas....</p>
-
-<div id='fp24'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_075.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A VIEW FROM THE GREAT ORME'S HEAD</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>The chapels and churches, Siloh, Ebenezer,
-Llanedi, Llandefan, Abergwesyn, Llanddeusant, ... but
-I dare not name them lest I should
-disturb some one's dreams, or invite some one to
-disturb my own. They are all in the admirable
-guide-books, which say nothing of the calm and
-the nettles and the shining lizards and the sleepy
-luxurious Welsh reading of the lessons at ——;
-and the wet headstones at ——, where you may
-lean on any Sunday in the rain and hear the hymn
-take heaven by storm, and quarrel melodiously
-upon the heights, and cease and leave the soul
-wandering in the rain as far from heaven as
-Paolo and Francesca in their drifts of flame; and
-——, white and swept and garnished, and always
-empty, and always lighted by a twilight four
-hundred years old, the door being open and ready
-to receive some god or goddess that delays; and
-Soar at ——, so blank, lacking in beauty and even
-in ugliness,—so blank that when one enters, the
-striving spirit will not be content, and perforce
-takes flight and finds an adventure not unlike that
-of the man who was once returning from Beddgelert
-fair by a gloomy road, and saw a great and splendid
-house conspicuously full of gaiety in a place where
-no such house had seemed to stand before; and
-supposing that he had lost his way, he asked and
-was given a lodging, and found the chambers
-bright and sounding with young men and women
-and children, and slept deeply in a fine room, on a
-soft white bed, and on waking and studying his
-neighbourhood, saw but a bare swamp and a tuft
-of rushes beneath his head.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And there is Siloh at ——, standing bravely,—at
-night, it often seems perilously,—at the end of
-a road, beyond which rise immense mountains
-and impassable, and, in my memory, always the
-night and a little, high, lonely moon, haunted for
-ever by a pale grey circle, looking like a frail
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>creature which one of the peaks had made to sail
-for his pleasure across the terrible deeps of the
-sky. But Siloh stands firm, and ventures once a
-week to send up a thin music that avails nothing
-against the wind; although close to it, threatening
-it, laughing at it, able to overwhelm it, should the
-laugh become cruel, is a company of elder trees,
-which, seen at twilight, are sentinels embossed
-upon the sky—sentinels of the invisible, patient,
-unconquerable powers: or (if one is lighter-hearted)
-they seem the empty homes of what the mines and
-chapels think they have routed; and at midnight
-they are not empty, and they love the mountain
-rain, and at times they summon it and talk with
-it, while the preacher thunders and the windows
-of the chapel gleam.</p>
-
-<div id='fp26'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_081.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>OLD COTTAGE AND RUINS OF ABBEY, GREAT ORME'S HEAD</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>And there is ——, where an ancient, unwrinkled
-child used to talk in gentle, melancholy accents
-about hell to an assembly of ancient men who
-sometimes muttered "<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Felly, felly</span>," as men who had
-heard it so often that they longed to be there and
-to taste and to see; where the young men and
-maidens sang so lustily and well that I wondered the
-minister never heard them, or, hearing, understood
-them. To the children, when they listened, his
-mild ferocity did but put an edge on the bird's-nesting
-of the day before and the day after. When
-they did not listen, some of them looked through
-the windows and saw heaven as fresh and gaudy,
-in the flowers of a steep garden close by, as in the
-coloured pictures of apostles and lambs on their
-bedroom walls; but chiefly in the company of
-delicate lime trees that stood above the garden, on
-a grassy breast of land. The fair, untrodden turf
-below them shone even when the sun was not
-with it. The foliage of all the limes, in autumn,
-ripened together to the same hue of gold. It
-burned and was cool. It flamed and yet had something
-in it of the dusk. It was the same as when,
-many years ago, two children saw in it some
-fellowship with the coloured windows at Llandaff,
-and with the air of an old library that had "golden
-silence and golden speech" over the door. And
-the trees seemed to be a council of blessed creatures
-devising exquisite enjoyments and plotting to outwit
-the preacher. They might be not ill-chosen
-deputies of leisure, health, and contemplation, and
-all that fair and reverend family. In the cool gloom
-at the centre of the foliage sat also Mystery, with
-palms linked before her eyelids, unlinking them
-but seldom, lest seeing might shut out visions.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CHAPTER II<br /> ENTERING WALES</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'>The best way into Wales is the way you choose,
-provided that you care. Some may like the sudden
-modern way of going to sleep at London in a train
-and remaining asleep on a mountain-side, which has
-the advantage of being the most expensive and
-the least surprising way. Some may like to go
-softly into the land along the Severn, on foot, and
-going through sheath after sheath of the country,
-to reach at last the heart of it at peaty Tregaron,
-or the soul of it on Plynlimmon itself. Or you
-may go by train at night; and at dawn, on foot,
-follow a little stream at its own pace and live its
-fortnight's life from mountain to sea.</p>
-
-<div id='fp28'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_087.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>BREEZY MORNING, LLANDUDNO BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>Or you may cross the Severn and then the lower
-Wye, and taking Tredegar and Caerleon alternately,
-or Rhigws and Landore, or Cardiff and Lantwit, or
-the Rhondda Valley and the Vale of Neath, and
-thus sharpening the spirit, as an epicure may
-sharpen his palate, by opposites, find true Wales
-everywhere, whether the rivers be ochre and
-purple with corruption, or still as silver as the
-fountain dew on the mountain's beard; whether
-the complexions of the people be pure as those
-of the young cockle-women of Penclawdd, or as
-heavily superscribed as those of tin-platers preparing
-to wash. Or you may get no harm by treading in
-the footsteps of that warm-blooded antiquarian,
-Pennant, who wrote at the beginning of his tours
-in Wales: "With obdurate valour we sustained
-our independency ... against the power of a
-kingdom more than twelve times larger than
-Wales: and at length had the glory of falling,
-when a divided country, beneath the arms of
-the most wise and most warlike of the English
-monarchs." That "we" may have saved the soul
-even of an antiquarian.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But the entry I best remember and most love
-was made by a child whom I used to know better
-than I have known anyone else. He disappeared,
-after a slow process of evanishment, several years
-ago: and I will use what I know as if it were my
-own, since the first person singular will help me
-to write as if I should never be subjected to the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>dignity of print,—as if I were addressing, not the
-general reader, but some one who cared.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>At a very early age, I (that is to say, he, <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bien
-entendu</span></i>) often sat in a room in outer London,
-where I now see that it was probably good to be.
-It was always October there, and the yellow poplar
-leaves were always falling. And so also there was
-always a fire—a casket in which emeralds and
-sapphires contended with darker spirits continually.
-Where are the poplars now? Where the leaves
-which loved the frost that spoiled them at last?
-Where the emeralds and sapphires—and the child?
-There were late October twilights that seemed so
-mighty in their gentleness and so terrible in their
-silence that they alarmed the child with fear of
-desolation, until the spell was suspended by lighted
-lamps and drawn curtains and fearless voices of
-elder persons, though one could draw the curtains
-and see the thing still, and oneself, and the very
-fire, outside in its embrace. And still</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The jealous ear of night eave-dropped our talk.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp30'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_093.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>COUNTRY LANE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>I think those twilights have overwhelmed all at
-last, and they have their way with child and trees
-and fire. But they have spared one thing, which
-even in those days was more puissant than the fire,
-though they have left their marks upon it, and now
-it seems a less mighty thing if one goes to it soberly
-too critically, or even too cheerfully. For a picture
-hung in the room, and the last October sunlight
-used to fall upon it when the silence set in. The
-picture meant Wales.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In the foreground, a stream shone with ripples
-in the midst, and glowed with foam among the
-roots of alders at the edge. Branches with white
-berries overhung the stream; and there were
-hornbeams and writhen oaks; and beyond them,
-a sky with a shaggy and ancient storm in it, and
-wrestling with that, and rising into it, the ruins of
-an Early English chancel. The strength and anger
-and tenderness and majesty of it were one great
-thought. I still think that could deeds spring
-panoplied from thoughts, and could great thoughts
-of themselves do anything but flush the cheek,
-such a simply curving landscape as this would be
-at the bidding of one of those great thoughts that
-empty all the brain.... Under one of the
-columns by the chancel, the artist meant to have
-drawn vaguely a pile of masonry and a muscular
-ivy stem. And that was the point of the picture,
-because it seemed to be a kneeling knight, with
-one forearm on an oval shield and the other
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>buried in his beard, and his head bent. I suppose
-that the thought that it was a knight, and that the
-knight was Launcelot, first came as I looked at
-the picture once, straight from a book where I had
-been reading:</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"Then Sir Launcelot departed, and when he
-came to the Chapel Perilous, he alighted, and tied
-his horse to a little gate. And as soon as he was
-within the churchyard he saw on the front of the
-Chapel many fair, rich shields turned upside down;
-and many of the shields Sir Launcelot had seen
-knights have before; with that he saw standing by
-him thirty great knights, more by a yard than any
-man that he had ever seen, and all these grinned
-and gnashed at Sir Launcelot; and when he saw
-their countenances he dreaded them sore, and so
-put his shield afore him, and took his sword in his
-hand ready to do battle; and they were all armed
-in black harness, ready with their shields and
-swords drawn. And when Sir Launcelot would
-have gone through them they scattered on every
-side of him, and gave him the way to pass; and
-therewith he waxed all bold, and entered into the
-Chapel, and there he saw no light but a dim lamp
-burning, and then he was aware of a corse covered
-with a cloth of silk. And as Sir Launcelot stooped
-down and cut a piece of the cloth away, the earth
-quaked, and he was afraid...."</p>
-
-<div id='fp32'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_099.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A NOCTURNE, LLANDUDNO BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>And the picture was a picture of the Chapel
-Perilous; and thus out of a poor story-book and
-a dear picture and the dim poplars in the dim
-street, I made a Launcelot who was not merely an
-incredible mediæval knight of flesh and armour,
-but a strange immortal figure that lived and was
-desirable and friendly in the grey rain of a suburb
-in the nineteenth century.</p>
-
-<hr class='c010' />
-
-<p class='c000'>This was the beginning of the creation of Wales.
-Or shall I say that it was the beginning of the
-discovery? Let the reader decide, with the help
-of the explanation, that I use the words as I
-should use them of a play of Shakespeare's, or a
-picture of Titian's, or any other living thing which
-grows and changes and is born again, in age after
-age, as certainly and as elusively as the substance
-of a waterfall is changed; even in one moment
-these things are never the same to any two
-observers, backward or advanced, egotistical or
-servile, blind or keen....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Looking back, the artistry of time makes
-it appear that soon after I had become certain
-that the painter had somehow caught Launcelot
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>kneeling at the foot of the column, I reached
-Wales.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There I saw one of the Round Tables of Arthur,
-but also a porpoise hunt in the river close by; and
-the porpoise threshed the water so that the shining
-spray now hides the Round Table from my view.
-And I heard the national anthem of Wales: and
-at first I cowered beneath the resolved and terrible
-despair of it, forgetting that—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>In every dirge there sleeps a battle-march;</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>so that I seemed to look out from the folds of a
-fantastic purple curtain of heavily embroidered
-fabric upon a fair landscape and an awful sky; and
-I know not whether the landscape or the sky was
-the more fascinating in its mournfulness.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>And trumpets blown for wars,—</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and it was of Arthur's last battle that I dreamed.
-But the sky cleared, and I seemed to let go of
-the folds of the curtain and to see a red dragon
-triumphing and the shielded Sir Launcelot again;
-and next, it was only a tournament that I saw,
-and there were careless ladies on high among the
-golden dust. And, at last, I could once more
-think happily of the little white house where I
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>lived, and the largest and reddest apples in all the
-world that grew upon the wizened orchard, and
-the smoked salmon and the hams that perfumed
-the long kitchen, and all the shining candlesticks,
-and the wavy, crisp, thin leaves of oaten bread
-that were eaten there with buttermilk: and the
-great fire shook his rustling sheaf of flames and
-laughed at the wind and rain that stung the
-window-panes; and sometimes a sense of triumph
-arose from the glory of the fire and the vanity of
-the wind, and sometimes a sense of fear lest the
-fire should be conspiring with the storm. That
-also was Wales—a meandering village street, the
-house with the orchard, and a white river in sight
-of it, and the great music of the national anthem
-hovering over it and giving the whole a strange
-solemnity.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Just beyond the village, but not under the same
-solemn sky, I see an island of apple trees in spring,
-which in fact belongs to a somewhat later year.
-It was reached by a mile of winding lane that
-passed the slender outmost branches of the village,
-and lastly, a shining cottage, with streaked and
-mossy thatch, and two little six-paned windows,
-half-filled with many-coloured sweets, and boasting
-one pane of bottle-glass. Outside sat an old woman;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>her moist, grey, hempen curls framing a cruel
-face which had been made by three or four swift
-strokes of a hatchet; her magnificent brown eyes
-seeming to ponder heavenly things and really
-looking for half-pence. A picture would have
-made her—wringing her hands slowly as if she
-were perpetually washing, or sitting bolt upright
-and pleased with her white apron—a type of
-resigned and reverend and beautiful old age. On
-the opposite side of the road was a white and
-thatched piggery, half the size of the house; and
-alongside of it, a neat, moulded pile of coal-dust,
-clay, and lime, mixed, for her ever-burning fire.
-The pigs grunted; the old woman, who would
-herself watch the slaughtering, sat and was pleased,
-and said, "Good morning," and "Good afternoon,"
-and "Good evening" as the day went by, except
-when the children were due to pass to and from
-school, with half-pence to spend.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Just beyond this dragon and its house, an important
-road crossed the lane, which then narrowed
-and allowed the hedgerow hazels to arch over it and
-let in only the wannest light to the steep, stony
-hedge-bank of whin and grass and fern and violets.
-Little streams ran this way and that, under and over
-and alongside the lane, and at length a larger one
-was honoured by a bridge, the parapet covered
-with flat, dense, even turf. The bridge made way
-for a wide view, and to invite the eye a magpie
-flew away from the grassy parapet with wavy
-flight to a mountain side.</p>
-
-<div id='fp36'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_107.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CONWAY FROM BENARTH—EARLY MORNING</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>Between the bridge and the mountain, and in
-fact surrounded by streams which were heard
-although unseen, was an island of apple trees.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There were murmurs of bees. There was a
-gush and fall and gurgle of streams, which could
-be traced by their bowing irises. There was a
-poignant glow and fragrance of flowers in an air
-so moist and cold and still that at dawn the earliest
-bee left a thin line of scent upon it. Beyond, the
-mountain, grim, without trees, lofty and dark,
-was clearly upholding the low blue sky full of slow
-clouds of the colour of the mountain lambs or of
-melting snow. This mountain and this sky, for
-that first hour, shut out, and not only shut out but
-destroyed, and not only destroyed but made as if
-it had never been, the world of the old woman, the
-coal-pits, the schools, and the grown-up persons.
-And the magic of Wales, or of Spring, or of
-childhood made the island of apple trees more
-than an orchard in flower. For as some women
-seem at first to be but rich eyes in a mist of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>complexion and sweet voice, so the orchard was
-but an invisible soul playing with scent and colour
-as symbols. Nor did this wonder vanish when
-I walked among the trees and looked up at the
-blossoms in the sky. For in that island of apple
-trees there was not one tree but was curved and
-jagged and twisted and splintered by great age, by
-the west wind, or by the weight of fruit in many
-autumns. In colour they were stony. They were
-scarred with knots like mouths. Some of their
-branches were bent sharply like lightning flashes.
-Some rose up like bony, sunburnt, imprecating
-arms of furious prophets. One stiff, gaunt bole
-that was half hid in flower might have been Ares'
-sword in the hands of the Cupids. Others were
-like ribs of submerged ships, or the horns of an
-ox emerging from a skeleton deep in the sand of
-a lonely coast. And the blossom of them all
-was the same, so that they seemed to be Winter
-with the frail Spring in his arms. Nor was I
-surprised when the first cuckoo sang therein, since
-the blossom made it for its need. And when a
-curlew called from the mountain hopelessly, I
-laughed at it.</p>
-
-<div id='fp38'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_113.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>NEAR COLWYN BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>When I came again and saw the apple trees in
-flower, the island was very far away, and the
-unseen cuckoo sang behind a veil and not so
-suitably as the curlew. There was something of
-the dawn in the light over it, though it was mid-day;
-and I could hardly understand, and was
-inclined to melancholy, until chance brought into
-my head the poem of the old princely warrior poet
-Llywarch Hên, and out of his melancholy and
-mine was born a mild and lasting joy. He sang:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Sitting high upon a hill, to battle is inclined</div>
-      <div class='line'>My mind, but it does not impel me onward.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Short is my journey, my tenement is laid waste.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Sharp is the gale, it is bare punishment to live.</div>
-      <div class='line'>When the trees array themselves in gay colours</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of Summer, extremely ill am I this day.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>I am no hunter, I keep no animal of the chase,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I cannot move about:</div>
-      <div class='line'>As long as it pleases the cuckoo, let her sing.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The loud-voiced cuckoo sings with the dawn,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Her melodious notes in the dales of Cuawg:</div>
-      <div class='line'>Better than the miser is the lavish man.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing,</div>
-      <div class='line'>On the blossom-covered branches;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Woe to the sick that hears their contented notes.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>At Aber Cuawg the cuckoos sing.</div>
-      <div class='line'>The recollection is in my mind,</div>
-      <div class='line'>There are that hear them that will not hear them again.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Have I not listened to the cuckoo on the ivied tree?</div>
-      <div class='line'>Did not my shield hang down?</div>
-      <div class='line'>What I loved is but vexation; what I loved is no more.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>And I thought that perhaps it is even true, as
-Taliesin sang, that "A man is wont to be oldest
-when born, and younger all the time," and that the
-apple flowers did but remind me of old capacities
-laid waste.</p>
-
-<hr class='c010' />
-
-<p class='c000'>These little things are the opening cadences of
-a great music which I have heard, and which is
-Wales. But I have forgotten the whole, and have
-echoes of it only, when I hear an old Welsh song,
-when I am trying to catch a trout, or am eating
-bread and butter and white cheese, and drinking
-pale tea, in a mountain farm.... One echo of it
-I had strangely in Oxford, when, entertaining an
-old wise gipsy, and asking him of his travels, and
-whether he had been in Wales, he meditated for
-a long time, and then sang in an emotionless
-and moving tone the "<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Hen wlad fy nhadau</span>," up
-there among the books, the towers, and the
-stars. I have had a vision of a rose. But my
-memory possesses only the doubtful and withered
-dustiness of a petal or two.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CHAPTER III<br /> A FARMHOUSE UNDER A MOUNTAIN, A FIRE, AND SOME FIRESIDERS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'>Having passed the ruined abbey and the orchard, I
-came to a long, low farmhouse kitchen, smelling of
-bacon and herbs and burning sycamore and ash.
-A gun, a blunderbuss, a pair of silver spurs, and a
-golden spray of last year's corn hung over the high
-mantelpiece and its many brass candlesticks; and
-beneath was an open fireplace and a perpetual red
-fire, and two teapots warming, for they had tea for
-breakfast, tea for dinner, tea for tea, tea for supper,
-and tea between. The floor was of sanded slate
-flags, and on them a long many-legged table, an oak
-settle, a table piano, and some Chippendale chairs.
-There were also two tall clocks; and they were the
-most human clocks I ever met, for they ticked
-with effort and uneasiness: they seemed to think
-and sorrow over time, as if they caused it, and did
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>not go on thoughtlessly or impudently like most
-clocks, which are insufferable; they found the
-hours troublesome and did not twitter mechanically
-over them; and at midnight the twelve strokes
-always nearly ruined them, so great was the effort.
-On the wall were a large portrait of Spurgeon,
-several sets of verses printed and framed in memory
-of dead members of the family, an allegorical tree
-watered by the devil, and photographs of a bard
-and of Mr. Lloyd George. There were about
-fifty well-used books near the fire, and two or three
-men smoking, and one man reading some serious
-book aloud, by the only lamp; and a white girl was
-carrying out the week's baking, of large loaves, flat
-fruit tarts of blackberry, apple, and whinberry, plain
-golden cakes, large soft currant biscuits, and curled
-oat cakes. And outside, the noises of a west wind
-and a flooded stream, the whimper of an otter, and
-the long, slow laugh of an owl; and always silent,
-but never forgotten, the restless, towering outline
-of a mountain.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The fire was—is—of wood, dry oak-twigs
-of last spring, stout ash sticks cut this morning,
-and brawny oak butts grubbed from the
-copse years after the tree was felled. And I
-remember how we built it up one autumn, when
-the heat and business of the day had almost let
-it die.</p>
-
-<div id='fp42'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_121.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>DISTANT VIEW OF PENMAENMAWR—EARLY MORNING LIGHT</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>We had been out all day, cutting and binding
-the late corn. At one moment we admired the
-wheat straightening in the sun after drooping in
-rain, with grey heads all bent one way over the
-luminous amber stalks, and at last leaning and
-quivering like runners about to start or like a wind
-made visible. At another moment we admired the
-gracious groups of sheaves in pyramids made by
-our own hands, as we sat and drank our buttermilk
-or ale, and ate bread and cheese or chwippod (the
-harvesters' stiff pudding of raisins, rice, bread, and
-fresh milk) among the furze mixed with bramble and
-fern at the edge of the field. Behind us was a place
-given over to blue scabious flowers, haunted much
-by blue butterflies of the same hue; to cross-leaved
-heath and its clusters of close, pensile ovals, of a
-perfect white that blushed towards the sun; to a
-dainty embroidery of tormentil shining with unvaried
-gold; and to tall, purple loosestrife, with
-bees at it, dispensing a thin perfume of the kind
-that all fair living things, plants or children,
-breathe.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>What a thing it is to reap the wheat with your
-own hands, to thresh it with the oaken flail in the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>misty barn, to ride with it to the mill and take your
-last trout while it is ground, and then to eat it with
-no decoration of butter, straight from the oven!
-There is nothing better, unless it be to eat your
-trout with the virgin appetite which you have won
-in catching it. But in the field, we should have
-been pleased with the plainest meal a hungry man
-can have, which is, I suppose, barley bread and a
-pale "double Caermarthen" cheese, which you cut
-with a hatchet after casting it on the floor and
-making it bounce, to be sure that it is a double
-Caermarthen. And yet I do not know. For even
-a Welsh hymnist of the eighteenth century, in translating
-"the increase of the fields," wrote avidly of
-"wheaten bread," so serious was his distaste for
-barley bread. But it was to a meal of wheaten
-bread and oat cake, and cheese and onions and
-cucumber, that we came in, while the trembling
-splendours of the first stars shone, as if they also
-were dewy like the furze. Nothing is to be compared
-with the pleasure of seeing the stars thus in
-the east, when most eyes are watching the west,
-except perhaps to read a fresh modern poet, straight
-from the press, before any one has praised it, and to
-know that it is good.</p>
-
-<div id='fp44'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_127.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SILVERY LIGHT, CONWAY SHORE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>As we sat, some were singing the song
-"<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Morwynion Sir Gaerfyrdd-in.</span>" Some were looking
-out at the old hay waggon before the gate.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Fine grass was already growing in corners of
-the wrecked hay waggon. Two months before, it
-travelled many times a day between the rick and
-the fields. Swallow was in the shafts while it
-carried all the village children to the field, as it had
-done some sixty years ago, when the village wheelwright
-helped God to make it. The waggoner
-lifted them out in clusters; the haymakers loaded
-silently; the waggon moved along the roads
-between the swathes; and, followed by children
-who expected another ride, and drawn by Swallow
-and Darling, it reached the rick that began to rise,
-like an early church, beside the elms. But hardly
-had it set out for another load than Swallow shied;
-an axle splintered and tore and broke in two, near
-the hub of one wheel, which subsided so that a
-corner of the waggon fell askew into the tussocks,
-and the suspended horse-shoe dropped from its
-place. There the mare left it, and switched her
-black tail from side to side of her lucent, nut-brown
-haunches, as she went.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>All day the waggon was now the children's own.
-They climbed and slid and made believe that they
-were sailors, on its thin, polished timbers. The
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>grass had grown up to it, under its protection.
-Before it fell, the massive wheels and delicate
-curved sides had been so fair and strong that no one
-thought of its end. Now, the exposed decay raised
-a smile at its so recent death. No one gave it
-a thought, except, perhaps, as now, when the
-September evening began, and one saw it on this
-side of the serious, dark elms, when the flooded
-ruts were gleaming, and a cold light fell over it
-from a tempestuous sky, and the motionless air
-was full of the shining of moist quinces and yellow
-fallen apples in long herbage; and, far off, the cowman
-let a gate shut noisily; the late swallows
-and early bats mingled in flight; and, under an
-oak, a tramp was kindling his fire....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Suddenly in came the dog, one of those thievish,
-lean, swift demi-wolves, that appear so fearful of
-meeting a stranger, but when he has passed, turn
-and follow him. He shook himself, stepped into
-the hearth and out and in again. With him was
-one whose red face and shining eyes and crisped
-hair were the decoration with which the wind
-invests his true lovers. A north wind had risen
-and given the word, and he repeated it: let us
-have a fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So one brought hay and twigs, another branches
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>and knotted logs, and another the bellows. We made
-an edifice worthy of fire and kneeled with the dog
-to watch light changing into heat, as the spirals of
-sparks arose. The pyre was not more beautiful
-which turned to roses round the innocent maiden
-for whom it was lit; nor that more wonderful
-round which, night after night in the west, the
-clouds are solemnly ranged, waiting for the command
-that will tell them whither they are bound in
-the dark blue night. We became as the logs, that
-now and then settled down (as if they wished to be
-comfortable) and sent out, as we did words, some
-bristling sparks of satisfaction. And hardly did we
-envy then the man who lit the first fire and saw
-his own stupendous shadow in cave or wood and
-called it a god. As we kneeled, and our sight grew
-pleasantly dim, were we looking at fire-born recollections
-of our own childhood, wondering that such
-a childhood and youth as ours could ever have
-been; or at a golden age that never was?...
-The light spelt the titles of the books for a moment,
-and the bard read Spenser aloud, as if forsooth a
-man can read poetry in company round such a fire.
-So we pelted him with tales and songs....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And one of the songs was "The Maid of
-Landybie," by the bard, Watcyn Wyn. Here
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>follows the air, and a translation which was made
-by an English poet. The naïveté of the original has
-troubled him, and the Welsh stanza form has driven
-him to the use of rhymeless feminine endings; but
-I think that his version will, with the air, render
-not too faintly the song I heard.</p>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_132.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE MAID OF LANDYBIE<br /><br /><em>Air</em>: <span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Y Ferch o Blwyf Penderyn.</span></p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">'Rwy'n car - u merch o Lan - dy - bi - e, Ac y mae hith-e'n fy</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">nghar - u i O bob merch i - fanc yn Sir Gaer - fyrdd-in,</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">'Does neb o hon - yn' mor hardd a hi, Ar ei grudd-iau mae rhos-</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">- yn - au, Cym - ysg liw - iau coch a gwyn: Y hi y'wr un - ig</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">ferch a fyn - af, A hith - e — dim ond y fi - ne fyn.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>I love a maid of Landybie</div>
-      <div class='line'>And it is she who loves me too.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of all the women of Caermarthen</div>
-      <div class='line'>None is so fair as she, I know.</div>
-      <div class='line'>White and red are her cheeks' young roses,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The tints all blended mistily;</div>
-      <div class='line'>She is the only maid I long for,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And she will have no lad but me.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>I love one maid of Landybie.</div>
-      <div class='line'>And she too loves but one, but one;</div>
-      <div class='line'>The tender girl remains my faithful,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Pure of heart, a bird in tone.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Her beauty and her comely bearing</div>
-      <div class='line'>Have won my love and life and care,</div>
-      <div class='line'>For there is none in all the kingdoms</div>
-      <div class='line'>Like her, so blushing, kind, and fair.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>While there is lime in Craig-y-Ddinas;</div>
-      <div class='line'>While there is water in Pant-y-Llyn;</div>
-      <div class='line'>And while the waves of shining Loughor</div>
-      <div class='line'>Walk between these hills and sing;</div>
-      <div class='line'>While there's a belfry in the village</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whose bells delight the country nigh,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The dearest maid of Landybie</div>
-      <div class='line'>Shall have her name held sweet and high.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp48'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_135.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A MOUNTAIN PASS—NOON</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>When we are by this fire, we can do what we
-like with Time, making a strange solitude within
-these four walls, as if they were cut off in time as
-in space from the great world by something more
-powerful than the night; so that, whether Llewelyn
-the Great, or Llewelyn the Last, or Arthur, or
-Kilhwch, or Owen Glyndwr, or the most recent
-prophet be the subject of our talk, nothing intrudes
-that can prevent us for the time from being
-utterly at one with them. They sing or jest or
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>make puns; they talk of hero and poet as if they
-had met them on the hills; and as the poet has
-said, "Folly would it be to say that Arthur has
-a grave."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In such a room are legends made, if made at
-all. In fact, I lately saw a pretty proof of it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The valley in which the farmhouse lies is not so
-fortified that some foreign things of one kind and
-another cannot enter. And a miner or a youth on
-holiday from London brought a song of Bill Bailey
-to the ears of one of the children of the house, a
-happy, melancholy boy named Merfyn. The elders
-caught it for a day or two, and though the song
-does not recommend itself to those who are heirs
-to "Sospan bach" and "Ar hyd y nos," the name of
-the hero stuck. The child asked who he was, and
-could get no answer. When anything happened
-about the farm that could not easily be explained,
-it was jestingly said that Bill Bailey was at the
-bottom of it. The child seriously caught up the
-name and the mystery, and applied it with amusing
-and strange effect. Thus, when he had asked
-who made the mushrooms in the dawn, and was
-not satisfied, he himself decided, and with pride
-and joy announced, that they were Bill Bailey's
-work. Looking into the fire one night, and seeing
-faces that he could not recognise among the
-throbbing heat, he saw Bill Bailey, as he surmised.
-Thus is a new solar hero being bred. The last
-news is that he made Cader Idris and Orion and
-the Pleiades, and that the owls cry so sadly because
-he is afoot in the woods.</p>
-
-<div id='fp50'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_141.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CONWAY CASTLE AND QUAY—NOON</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>And yet, if we are so unwise as to draw back
-the curtain from the window at night, the illusion
-of timelessness is broken for that evening, and in
-the flower-faced owl by the pane, in the great hill
-scarred with precipices, and ribbed with white and
-crying streams, with here and there a black tree
-disturbed and a very far-off light, I can see nothing
-but the past as a magnificent presence besieging
-the house. At such times the legends that I
-remember most are those of the buried and unforgotten
-lands. What I see becomes but a symbol
-of what is now invisible. And sometimes I dream
-of something hidden out there and elaborating
-some omnipotent alcahest for the world's delight
-or the world's bane; sometimes, as when I passed
-Llanddeusant and Myddfai, I could see nothing
-that was there, because I was thinking of what
-had been long ago. There is still a tradition on
-the coast that Cardigan Bay now covers a country
-that was once populous and fair and rich. The
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>son of a prince of South Wales is said to have had
-charge of the floodgates on the protecting embankment,
-and one night the floodgates were
-left open at high tide, while he slept with wine,
-and the sea was over the corn. "Seithenyn the
-Drunkard let in the sea over Cantre-'r-Gwaelod,
-so that all the houses and lands contained in it
-were lost. And before that time there were in it
-sixteen fortified towns superior to all the towns
-and cities in Wales, except Caerlleon on the Usk.
-And Cantre-'r-Gwaelod was the dominion of
-Gwyddno, King of Cardigan, and this event
-happened in the time of Ambrosius. And the
-people who escaped from that inundation came
-and landed in Ardudwy, the country of Arvon,
-the Snowdon mountains, and other places not
-before inhabited...." The sands in some places
-uncover the roots of an old forest. According to
-one tradition the flood took place during a feast.
-The harper suddenly foresaw what was to happen
-and warned the guests; but he alone escaped.
-There is also a tradition that Bala Lake covers old
-palaces. It is said that they have been seen on
-clear moonlit nights, when the air is one sapphire,
-and that a voice is heard saying, "Vengeance will
-come"; and another voice, "When will it come?"
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>and again the first voice saying, "In the third
-generation." For a prince once had a palace where
-the lake is. He was cruel and persisted in his
-cruelty, despite a voice that sometimes cried to him,
-"Vengeance will come." One night there was a
-bright festival in the palace, and there were many
-ladies and many lords among the guests, for an
-heir had just been born to the prince. The wine
-shone and was continually renewed. The dancers
-were merry and never tired. And a voice cried,
-"Vengeance." But only the harper heard; and he
-saw a bird beckoning him out of the palace. He
-followed, and if he stopped, the bird called,
-"Vengeance." So they travelled a long way, and
-at last he stopped and rested, and the bird was
-silent. Then the harper upbraided himself, and
-turned, and would have gone back to the palace.
-But he lost his way, for it was night. And in the
-morning he saw one calm large lake where the
-palace had been; and on the lake floated the
-harper's harp....</p>
-
-<hr class='c010' />
-
-<p class='c000'>This fire, in my memory, gathers round it many
-books which I have read and many men that I
-have spoken with among the mountains—gathers
-them from coal-pits and tin-works and schools and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>chapels and farmhouses and hideous cottages,
-beside rivers, among woods; and I have drawn a
-thin line round their shadows and have called the
-forms that came of it men, and their "characters"
-follow.</p>
-
-<div id='fp54'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_149.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CONWAY VALLEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CHAPTER IV<br /> TWO MINISTERS, A BARD, A SCHOOLMASTER, AN INNKEEPER, AND OTHERS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Mr. Jones, the Minister</span></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>Jones is a little, thin, long-skulled, black-haired,
-pale Congregational minister, with a stammer and
-a squint. He has a book-shelf containing nothing
-but sermons and theology, which he has read, and
-the novels of Sir Walter Scott, which he hopes to
-read. I suppose he believes in metempsychosis.
-He is accustomed to say that everything is theology—which
-is fine; and that theology is everything—which
-is hard. He tries to love man as
-well as God, and succeeds in convincing every one
-of his honesty, generosity, and industry. In the
-care of souls he fears no disease or squalor or shape
-of death. But there is a condescension about his
-ways with men. He calls them the worldliest of
-God's creatures. But with the Divine he is happy
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>and at ease, and in his pulpit seems to sit on the
-right hand. Then his Biblical criticism is absent
-as if it had never been, and he sees the holy things
-at once as clearly as Quarles and as mystically as
-Herbert or Crashaw. He speaks of them with the
-enthusiasm of a collector or of a man of science
-dealing with a bone or a gas. Like them, he sees
-nothing but the subjects of the moment. He
-loves them as passionately and yet with a sense of
-possession. He gives to them the adoration which
-he seems wilfully to have withheld from women,
-pageantry, gardens, palaces—which his speech
-would have adorned. He lavishes upon them his
-whole ingenious heart, so that, to those used to
-the false rhetoric and dull compliment of ordinary
-worshippers, there is in his sermons something
-fantastical, far-fetched, or smelling of the lamp.
-If he has to describe something naked or severe,
-he must needs give them a kind of voluptuousness
-by painting the things which they lack, and the
-lack of which makes them what they are. With
-Herbert, he might repeat:</p>
-
-<div id='fp56'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_155.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CARNARVON, FROM ANGLESEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wherewith whole shoals of Martyrs once did burn,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Besides their other flames? doth Poetry</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wear Venus' livery? only serve her turn?</div>
-      <div class='line'>Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and lays</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Upon thine altar burnt? Cannot thy love</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise</div>
-      <div class='line'>As well as she? Cannot thy Dove</div>
-      <div class='line'>Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight?</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?</div>
-      <div class='line'>Why doth the fire which by thy power and might</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Than that, which one day worms may chance refuse?</div>
-      <div class='line'>Sure, Lord, there is enough in thee to dry</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Oceans of ink; for as the Deluge did</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Cover the Earth, so does thy Majesty;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Each cloud distils thy praise, and doth forbid</div>
-      <div class='line'>Poets to turn it to another use.</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Roses and lilies speak thee: and to make</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>A pair of cheeks of them, is thy abuse.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Why should I women's eyes for crystal take?</div>
-      <div class='line'>Such poor invention burns in their low mind</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Whose fire is wild, and does not upward go</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>To praise, and on thee, Lord, some note bestow.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Open the bones, and you shall nothing find</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in thee</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Thy beauty lies in the discovery.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is no matter to him that to the uninspired
-audience his holy persons appear only exquisite
-marionettes. His sermons are all of his love
-for them. Could one leave out the names of
-prophet and evangelist, they might seem to
-be addressed to earthly beauties. No eyebrow
-ever awakened more glowing praise. He takes
-religion, as he does his severe morality, like a
-sensuous delight. One might think from his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>epithets that he was an æsthete, except that he is
-so abandoned.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When he ventures to speak of men, their very
-virtues and vices are all handled in such a way
-that they seem to be his own imaginations. Thus,
-his drunkard is as unreal and as terrible as a chimera.
-The words are those of a man who has conceived
-a drunkard in his own brain, and then, seeing
-the real thing, has preferred his own conception,
-and shunned the poor human imitation. Still, he
-speaks of religious things, of incidents in the life of
-David or Christ or the Maries, as if he had seen, for
-example, the Holy Family in some misty barn among
-his own hills. I have even heard him introduce a
-farmer whittling a flail of hazel sticks and binding
-it with willow thongs, in a picture of that scene.
-This quaintness and clearness are perhaps the
-result of his not quite healthy asceticism. But
-even by the farmhouse fire he makes use of them,
-and will speak of the red or brown hair of scriptural
-characters, and even of the grey hair and shining
-eyes of Charity. In hunger or weariness or pain,
-common people sometimes see things thus: he
-never sees them otherwise. In the chapel they
-delight the older labourers, and yet fail because they
-vanish in the cold night air and "leave not a rack
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>behind." Some hearers, on the other hand, sicken
-at them, when the blood is noisy in the breast and
-the brain is warm, as they sicken at drugs.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is not, therefore, surprising that at one time
-he had gorgeous earthly dreams. But with an
-oddity of which nothing will cure him, he is much
-troubled by this pomp which he desires not to see
-save in celestial things. And now he allows sleep
-nightly but a brief victory over him.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Landlord of the "Cross Inn"</span></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>A very pretty companion for Jones was Owen,
-the innkeeper, a robust man of words, who called
-himself the preacher's best customer, because he
-needed so much of his charity.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>He was a perfect Celt, according to the English
-superstition. For never was there such a failure
-who was also such a swaggerer as he. He had fair
-hair, blue eyes, and a small, elegant beard, which</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Business could not make dull, nor passion wild.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>He was bullied by a contemptuous wife; he was
-ridiculed by all his regular customers, rallied by the
-rest. But the beard was always neat and fair, a
-symbol of his unconquerable mind. No matter how
-he was trodden down, he smelt sweet. He had
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>humour, for he could laugh at himself, though he
-lacked the common gift of being able to laugh at
-others, and had no repartee. The more lusty the
-Saturday night thrusts at him, the more vivid was
-his reply, and it was commonly a piece of egoism
-and self-exposure, which, if not so long and so
-wonderfully draped, would have called for a repetition
-of the very blow he was parrying. Once when
-he had been sold up and had little more than a wife
-and a walking-stick in the world, and his position
-attracted some trifling compliments and condolences
-from his old harriers, he stood up, and, wielding his
-stick and motioning to his wife to be silent, gave
-an inventory of the things he had lost with such
-decoration as would have abashed an auctioneer.
-There is a Welsh proverb, "A Welshman keeps
-nothing until he has lost it"; and the now invisible
-and inaccessible furniture called up such a tumult
-of admiration that he cared not that it was no
-longer his. How rich he looked! As the words
-flowed on and it was time for his hearers to be
-going, it was clear that if he had forgotten anything,
-he had invented more; but though he ended
-in no better company than that of his wife, who
-picked something from his coat and held it between
-the tips of two fingers for his humiliation, he but
-wiped his forehead and cursed because he had forgotten
-the ancient horse-trappings of brass that used
-to hang over the mantelpiece at the —— Arms.</p>
-
-<div id='fp60'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_163.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>BODDNANT HALL, CONWAY VALLEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>His voice, whether he sang or spoke, was of
-wide range and exquisite adjustment, and he spoke
-with care and gusto, as if he loved his native
-tongue. Under its influence, he respected nobody
-of any importance. Thus, he was once pretty
-justly thrashed; when, having tired his chastiser by
-his patience, he remarked at great length that he
-supposed the other did not know who he was, and
-the splendour of his manner overcame his heated
-companion. No sooner had he got home than he
-gave a rapturous description of how one had given
-another a thrashing down the road. He did it so
-well that he was asked whether he was the beater.
-"No," said he bravely, "it happened that I was
-beat."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Had he lost by a bargain, had he taken a bad
-coin unawares, had he been worsted in argument,
-he could so rant that he moved every one, and
-himself obviously first of all, and made the worse
-appear the better. He kept a genealogical tree in
-constant use by pruning and watering, and though
-there was not only a prince but a poet in it, I
-think he gloried less in the old splendour of his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>family than in the length of its fall, as who should
-say he had once been so high that he was "from
-morn to dewy eve" in falling.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When first I saw him, he had just come into
-the "Cross Inn." It was mid-day; the weather
-was cold and wet; and since he never liked to see
-a man drinking by himself, and the shepherds
-coming down from the mountains to market had
-called pretty often, he was not sober. He told me
-that his was a fine house—the finest in the village,
-and therefore in the county; and that it had not
-paid the former tenant well, who had, in fact, sold
-but eighteen gallons of beer in a month. He was
-going to do better than that, he said; to make a
-beginning, he was going to drink that quantity
-himself. I asked for brandy. He had not a drop,
-and explained that he had a weakness for it himself—took
-a drop very often; and that therefore,
-to get out of temptation, he had finished his stock
-on the night before. "But," said he, "I have upstairs
-such a bed as you—pardon me—never slept
-in yet."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"I have no doubt," said I, and sat down.</p>
-
-<div id='fp62'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_169.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CARNARVON CASTLE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>But when he heard that I was walking across
-Wales, and had therefore tried many beds, he
-insisted that I should see the thing. It was the
-finest in the village—in the county—in Wales—"I
-don't see why I should not say in the whole
-world." Truly it was a noble bed, in a great,
-empty, raftered, uncarpeted room; the wood all
-darkened oak, with a dusky gleam; the hangings
-ample and of a rich crimson stuff; the purity of
-the linen splendid. If a royal person or a poet
-had not slept in it, "that was their misfortune."
-He stood by, awed and reverent, beholding the
-bed. I was not his equal in eloquence, and he
-echoed my praise with an elaborate "of course":
-and for the sake of hearing some of the words he
-loved, he finally invited me to spend a night in the
-bed, "as his guest," so he magnificently said.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>All his family were of the same temper. His
-father and mother had gone to London years ago,
-and, at seventy years of age, to the infirmary of a
-workhouse....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The aged paupers sat in a long, grey, motionless,
-and silent row—like a sculptured frieze, or like
-persons expecting to be photographed—under the
-wall of a church. Before them was a strip of grass,
-one emerald half of which shone so that it seemed
-of an element like flame; for it was pure, insubstantial
-colour; and into this, as the paupers
-saw, the tide of the shadow of the church gradually
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>ate. Beyond the grass was the infirmary, and
-alongside it a yellow road, and on that a hearse.
-Watching this and the paupers, a crowd of persons,
-with uninterested, inquisitive eyes and bowler hats,
-stuck their noses through the railings which ran
-between the busy street and the infirmary. Motor
-cars brayed, hooves clattered.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Presently three men carried out a coffin, containing
-the remains of Mrs. Owen, and shoved it
-into the hearse. "God love me, what a coffin!"
-said one of the crowd. But the frieze of paupers
-were silent and motionless in the long grey row—all
-but the husband of the corpse. He, like the
-others, seemed to stare at the hearse with fixed
-gaze, and in a loud voice he remembered what a
-bonny woman the corpse had been, and in particular
-how, while a travelling musician played in the
-village street, when she was past fifty years of age,
-she had locked herself into the kitchen and danced,
-having spread a mat to deaden the clicking of her
-merry clogs; and he had watched her, unobserved.
-The story and his uncontrolled, bleating voice
-raised a laugh under the bowler hats; and the old
-men lifted their heads and straightened themselves
-and laughed; and most loudly and grimly of all
-laughed Owen, while he remembered the cottage
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>in sight of the beacons of Breconshire; and the
-hearse rolled out and the crowd removed.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Mr. Rowlands, the Minister</span></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>Rowlands, another minister, is six feet and two
-inches in height, seventeen stone in weight, and has
-a voice which is in proportion. When he stands
-up, one supposes that he can never sit down; when
-he sits down, one supposes that he can never stand
-up. Every one of his attitudes seems to be final.
-Only when he is moving is his ponderosity a little
-less than divine; for he moves with an odd briskness,
-so that, from behind, he is like a large schoolboy
-on some urgent business. His mind is subject
-to similar changes of aspect. In domestic life no
-one is less awful than he; and were he not good-tempered,
-cheerful, frolicsome, and humorous as
-well, he would be one of the most mirth-provoking
-of mankind. On children he leaves no impression
-but that of weight, and in spite of his black clothes,
-he once reminded a child (with a shrill voice) of
-Atlas upholding the world.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In his everyday life he is a learned, happy child.
-His curiosity is matched by his credulity. He is
-the victim not only of tradesmen, but of beggars.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>He cannot keep his coat clean, and that he sews on
-his own buttons is apparent from the fact that he
-seldom has more than one or two of those decorations.
-He knows every one in his neighbourhood—miners,
-farmers, parsons, and the resident Englishmen—and
-knows and loves them so well that he
-never condemned any one except for cruelty. For
-he seems to have started life with such a strong
-belief in the sinfulness of men, that he has ever
-since been pleased and surprised by this one's goodness
-and the amiability of that one's badness. He
-might, in truth, have spoken of himself in something
-like the words of that fine, possibly Welsh
-poet of the seventeenth century, Thomas Traherne:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>A learned and a happy ignorance</div>
-      <div class='line in8'>Divided me</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>From all the vanity,</div>
-      <div class='line'>From all the sloth, care, pain, and sorrow that advance</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>The madness and the misery</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of men. No error, no distraction I</div>
-      <div class='line'>Saw soil the earth or overcloud the sky.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>I knew not that there was a serpent's sting</div>
-      <div class='line in8'>Whose poison shed,</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>On men, did overspread</div>
-      <div class='line'>The world; nor did I dream of such a thing</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>As sin, in which mankind lay dead.</div>
-      <div class='line'>They were all brisk and living wights to me,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Yea, pure and full of immortality.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Joy, pleasure, beauty, kindness, glory, love,</div>
-      <div class='line in8'>Sleep, day, life, light,</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>Peace, melody, my sight,</div>
-      <div class='line'>My ears and heart did fill and freely move.</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>All that I saw did me delight.</div>
-      <div class='line'>The universe was then a world of treasure,</div>
-      <div class='line'>To me an universal world of pleasure....</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp66'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_177.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>DISTANT VIEW OF CARNARVON BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>His own verses, by the way, are not so good, for,
-like all Welsh ministers, he writes a hundred lines
-of verse every day, perhaps to avoid being thought
-singular.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>He makes a fine figure of Charity in his old age,
-with his preoccupied blue eyes under a brow that
-is marked only by three lines like three beams
-thrown upward by a sun. He has a large, joyous,
-curving mouth, side-whiskers, careless beard, large
-feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>He has but one touch of sentiment. Nearly
-half a century ago he fell in love with a pretty
-woman, and unsuccessfully; yet, though she is
-known to be married and still alive, he has come to
-have for her memory a grandfatherly tenderness,
-regarding her as a white and careless girl, in spite
-of time. For the rest, so warm and radiant is he,
-that I remember the peculiarity of Kai. "When
-it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry
-for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>his hand, and when his companions were coldest,
-it was to them as fuel with which to light their
-fire."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But in the pulpit—whether it is a whim or an
-atonement or merely a recollection of his years at a
-theological college—he always makes an attempt to
-dust the wrinkles of his waistcoat. In every other
-way he makes his week-day self incredible to a
-stranger. He justifies and makes use of his size
-more than any man I ever saw. Seeing him in the
-pulpit, it seems fitting that he should live there
-day and night, so necessary a pillar is he to the dull,
-small chapel, though, when holding out his arms, as
-often he does, he threatens to demolish the little
-arches and poor windows and to create something
-more splendid in their place. Going there once in
-his absence, a visitor remarked to a deacon that
-they had made some changes in the building; and
-asking what had gone from there, he was told,
-"Oh, only Mr. Rowlands."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Standing there, he undertakes to speak on behalf
-of the Deity, whose ways he explains, and by a
-magnificent self-conceit supposes that his own
-stature and voice are fitting symbols to mortals
-incapable of apprehending things more august.
-For a time, indeed, during the singing of the
-hymns, there is a geniality as of lightning about his
-face. He smiles; he tosses his head with the joy
-of the song, and may even be supposed to feel, not
-without sympathy, that the mighty music says
-things which were not dreamed of by prophets or
-apostles.</p>
-
-<div id='fp68'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_183.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>ON THE RIVER SEIONT, CARNARVONSHIRE—EVENING GLOW</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>When he reads a lesson, it is plain to see that
-above all other Gods he loves "the Lord that
-smiteth." He opens his mouth and rejoices in the
-rich and massy Welsh. He makes no attempt at
-mere clear reading, which would be of no use to an
-imaginative audience, that is familiar with the
-Bible; but, raising and lowering his voice, now
-hurrying as if to a precipice where all will be overthrown,
-now creeping as if he feared what is to
-come, he makes the chapter anew, creating it as if
-he were sculptor or musician. I suppose he uses
-nearly as many musical notes as if he sang; but
-the result differs from singing, as prose from poetry;
-and so noble is the prose that it suggests only one
-possible answer to the question which, like a school-man,
-he once asked, Whether the music of the
-spheres be verse or prose? Yet, if the note of the
-lesson is melancholy, full of the dreariness of moving
-over the void and creating, the note of the
-sermon is triumphant, or if not triumphant it is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>minatory, or if not minatory it is scornful, and at
-times a listener expects to see him wrapped in a
-cloud and carried away from an undeserving and
-purblind race.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The medium of what English people would call
-his rhetoric is the "<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">hwyl</span>," an exuberant, impassioned,
-musical modulation of the voice, and, to compare
-great things with small, comparable to the very
-finest intoning to which has been added (if we can
-suppose it) a lyrical, egotistical indulgence in all
-moods of pity, scorn, tenderness, anger, sorrow, joy,
-anxiety and hope. It can be familiar or lofty. It
-is as powerful as harp and song together; and the
-force of it often arises from the fact that what is
-heard is rather the musical accompaniment of the
-man's thought than the thought itself. Hence its
-terrible and lovely purposes, and the many sentiments
-with which it is shot, and the dubiousness of
-the loftier passages, as in the verses which the bards
-recited before Arthur and only one man understood
-them, except that they were in Arthur's praise.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I have seen him so thunder that I thought of
-the Llewelyns and Glyndwr, and forgot that the
-castles fester no longer with Englishmen, and</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in26'><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">aerea ramis</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">dependet galea et prato gravia arma quiescunt,</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>and for the moment, thought he was a man. No
-actor ever stormed and swelled so, because no actor
-yet played the part which he played. It was a
-chant; yet it was too uncontrollable for a chant.
-If you call it declamation, you must admit that to
-declaim a man shall first go to Medea, that she</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Having drawn that weakness from his limbs</div>
-      <div class='line'>Which torpid now and chilly there abode,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Through every vacant artery may force</div>
-      <div class='line'>The green and joyous sap of thriving plants,—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Juice of crushed stalks mixed with their ropy gums,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And purpled bright with strength from berry and grape,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Full of a stinging, swift, and masterful</div>
-      <div class='line'>Vivacity.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>For the blood of a declaimer of seventy does not
-travel so by ordinary ways. Nor can a declaimer,
-as he does, build up for the imagination an earth,
-with sky and mountains, within a little chapel, for
-the sake of showing how the lightning vaults and
-impales the unjust man. At other times his words
-rise up and circle and make fantastic architecture,
-as real as dreams, for the terror of the soul that for
-the time is forced to dwell therein. And though
-the substance of his sermon is but anecdote, biblical
-reference, exhortation, warning, picturesque logic
-built upon some simple religious theme, men and
-women weep under this divine bullying. A man,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>listening outside the chapel, put his hand to his head
-to make sure that his hat was on, so stiffly his hair
-stood up.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"Then the earth shook and trembled; the
-foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken,
-because he was wroth....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"He bowed the heavens also, and came down:
-and darkness was under his feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea,
-he did fly upon the wings of the wind.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion
-round about him were dark waters and thick clouds
-of the skies...."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Once he paused long, towards the end of a
-sermon, while the thunder withdrew with a terrible
-solemnity which he envied; and he did not hesitate
-to follow the thunder with the words, "It has been
-said," and so to end.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Poacher</span></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>One who used to come in late, years ago, was
-Gwilym Pritchard, the poacher.</p>
-
-<div id='fp72'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_191.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>BRIDGE, CWM-Y-GLO—EVENING</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>I wish to make a nice distinction between
-poachers and poachers. The man who is nothing
-but a poacher I regard as one only in the strict
-literal sense. Such a man is rare to-day. Formerly
-he went to the woods as another man went to the
-Bar. He lived like a gentleman upon other men's
-venison, and was beneath the pleasure of salt-pork
-broth. He would swagger about the hamlet with
-a deer on his back. The deer was but a carcass
-at sixpence the pound to him. He has lately
-stooped to dictate his autobiography, which may
-be bought over the counter. A less majestical
-note was never sounded. He turned gamekeeper,
-and no doubt touched his cap for half-a-sovereign,
-and stared at his palm for a crown. He is, in
-short, "one of God's creatures." But the nobler
-one I have in mind seemed to bear high office in
-the scheme of the natural world. A mighty man,
-capable of killing anything and of sparing anything
-too, he was a true scholar in his kind. The pedants
-who peep and botanise and cry "allium" or
-"cnicus" to one another in the awful woods, and
-the sublime enthusiasts who cannot see the earth
-for the flowers, were equally beneath him. He
-would give twelve hours a day at least to the open
-air, as a scholar to his books. Thus he had
-acquired a large erudition which would probably
-have exhausted a whole field of inquiry if written
-down. It is fortunate that faultless observers
-like this hand down nothing to posterity, since it
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>leaves us in these latter days free to feel ourselves
-discoverers when we come upon what hundreds
-have known during the last thousand years. In
-the case of this man, the knowledge came out not
-so much in speech—of which he was economical—as
-in infinite tact,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in12'>Wearing all that weight</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of learning lightly like a flower.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>It was shown in the way he stepped in
-the woods, in the way he laid his ear to the
-bare ground (not the grass) to ascertain a distant
-noise of footsteps. I have seen him lose a
-wood-pigeon by an interrupted aim, and, standing
-without sound or motion, shoot the bird, that
-returned to its branch, enchanted by the absence
-of hostile sounds; for his very clothes were more
-the work of nature than the tailor, and matched
-the trees like a hawk or a November moth. His
-belief in the earth as a living thing was almost
-a superstition. I shall not forget how he took
-me to a hilltop one autumn day, when the quiet
-gave birth to sound after sound as we listened
-and let our silence grow. By a process of elimination
-he set aside the wind, the birds, the falling
-leaves, the water, and tried to capture for my
-sake the low hum which was the earth making
-music to itself. And what I heard I can no more
-describe than the magic of an excellent voice when
-once it is silent. "Depend upon it, that means
-something," he said. "And now——" there was a
-sharp report and a hare that I had not noticed
-bounded as if it had fallen from a great height, and
-lay dead.</p>
-
-<div id='fp74'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_197.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>FIELD PATH, NEAR LLANRUG</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>Having been caught once, I remarked that his
-captor must have been a clever man. "A fool," he
-replied—"a fool. He'd been after me a hundred
-times, and I had fooled him all but once."
-It was at one time his practice to deliver a
-tithe of his poached game at the cottages of the
-sick, infirm, or poor, <em>as a present from the Squire</em>,
-a notoriously ungenerous man. His occupation
-had made him indifferent to the future or the past.
-None ever chattered less about past happiness and
-future pain. He seemed to owe a duty to the
-present moment of which he partook as if he were
-eating ripe fruit. Even a piece of drudgery or a
-keen sorrow never drove his intelligence backward
-or forward; pain he took as some take medicine, on
-trust. Thus he was a small, though not a poor,
-talker. Venturing once to greet him pleasantly
-with the long beginning of a story, when I found
-him seated without any visible occupation, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>noticing his irritation, I said that I had supposed
-he was not doing anything; to which he answered
-"Yes, nothing!" and continued. At one time of
-his life he heard that a considerable sum of money
-had been left to him. A year later, the foundering
-of a ship left his fortunes unchanged; and on the
-afternoon of the news, he shot every pigeon at
-which he raised his gun. Birds of prey he would
-never shoot, even to show his skill. Jackdaws were
-always spared; he used to say that there was "a bit
-of God" in that bird. It was noticeable, too, that
-here and there he spared game birds, though he
-despised the race. I have seen him raise his gun
-and drop it again, not without a sigh as the bird
-flew off, observing that there was "something in
-the bird" which stayed his hand. In men, as in
-birds and beasts, he was anxious to see individuality,
-and loved the creature that possessed and used
-it. The only time I ever saw him use contempt
-was towards a beggar who had soiled his calling by
-theft. A good beggar, a good thief, anything
-beyond which "the force of nature could no further
-go," he reverenced. And he was a good poacher,
-glorying in the name. He died polishing the white
-steel on his gun.</p>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Llewellyn, the Bard</span></h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>Of Llewelyn, the bard, I cannot decide whether
-he most loves man or men. He is for ever building
-castles in the air and filling them with splendid
-creatures, whom he calls men. Then he laments
-that he cannot find any like them on hill or in
-valley: when, straightway, he will meet some
-human being, old friend or passing stranger, on
-the road or in a shop, and away go the phantoms
-of his castles, and he is wild in adoration of the
-new thing he has found. His grandmother, by
-the way, was called a fairy's child, though the
-truth seems to have been that her mother was a
-gipsy girl. Perhaps that is why he has no creed
-but many creeds, and was looked upon with great
-favour by the Calvinists until they found that he
-liked the Church as well. Yet I think that he
-likes men truly because they remind him of something
-he has read or dreamed, or because they
-make him dream; herein somewhat resembling the
-fellow who paid much court to another because he
-reminded him of the late Duke of ——, and he
-was a lover of dukes. Or he is like some that
-have seen processions of phantoms and say that
-sometimes the phantoms are simply fairies speaking
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>an unknown tongue, but that sometimes several
-have the faces and voices of some among the dead
-whom they used to know. Why he is so glad to
-be among us at the farmhouse I have not discovered,
-but I suppose we remind him of Hebrew
-prophets or Greekish kings, for of our established
-merits he takes no thought.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I think he wastes so much pity for Annie of
-Lochroyan that other maids find him passionless,
-and he grows tender over Burd Ellen and Cynisca
-as their lovers never did. Arthur and Gwalchmai
-and Gwenhwyvar, the most unreal and unliving of
-all the persons of literature, please him most. In
-a world where all things are passing, he loves best
-those things which, having past and having left a
-ghost of fame behind, can live for ever in minds
-like his. In London he saw but a place where
-marsh and river and woods had been and might be
-again; or where</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Sometimes a lily petal floated down</div>
-      <div class='line'>From dear, remote pools to the dreary town;</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>where the gulls flew over in the mournful January
-light; where a few friends had fires and lamps and
-books—their light faintly flickering in tremendous
-gloom and making one faint reality in the place;
-where wind and rain sometimes brought the past
-again; for the very touch of rain and wind beckoned
-to him, as it is fabled that the foam driven from
-waters that cover old towns will draw the unwary
-whom it touches into the deeps.</p>
-
-<div id='fp78'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_205.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>WINDY DAY, NEAR LLANRUG</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>He himself professes to care only for his own
-childhood and youth; only he is aware, as not
-every one is, that the childhood began in Eden,
-and is ages old, so that, after all, the few years that
-make middle age do not count for much. His life
-and his way of looking at it remind me of a story
-of a young Eastern prince. Every day, from his
-early childhood, a story-teller had told him a tale.
-But, soon after he was sixteen, the story-teller
-came to him, and, falling on his knees, told him
-that he had no more stories to tell. The young
-prince fell into a rage and swore that he would kill
-the man if, in a week, he had no new story ready.
-And the story-teller, who was very old and unwilling
-to die, went into the desert and neither ate
-nor drank, and made a plan by which to save his
-life. So he returned to the young prince, who
-asked if he had a new story, and he said that he
-had. And the prince bade him tell the story; and
-he began to speak, and told the prince the story
-which he had told him first, when he was a small
-child; and the prince was pleased. And until the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>old man died, he never told a story which he had
-not told before; and the prince was always pleased.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>His poetry, if it could be understood, might be
-counted great, and perhaps it is so in a world where
-trees and animals are reverenced in a way which is
-hardly dawning here. He is a kind of mad Blake.
-He sees the world from among the stars, and those
-who see it from an elevation of five or six feet, and
-think that they see it as it really is, are not satisfied.
-He would make human the stars and seasons; he
-would make starry the flowers and the grass. He
-would have it that the world is but a shadow of
-Blake's "Real and Eternal world": that we who
-are shadows cling to the superstition that we are
-not, and have but prejudiced and fearful ears for
-his prophecies. He sees the world as a commonwealth
-of angels and men and beasts and herbs;
-and in it, horrible discords that we others scarcely
-hear seem to him to strike the stars.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Each outcry of the hunted hare</div>
-      <div class='line'>A fibre from the brain doth tear;</div>
-      <div class='line'>A skylark wounded on the wing</div>
-      <div class='line'>Doth make a cherub cease to sing.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>After all, in matters of the spirit, men are all
-engaged in colloquies with themselves. Some of
-them are overheard, and they are the poets. It is
-his fortune that he is not overheard, at least by
-men.</p>
-
-<div id='fp80'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_211.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>MORNING MISTS, NEAR TREFRIW</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>Yet how much would he sacrifice could he but
-write a few verses in the old Welsh manner,—but
-a few verses like those he repeats as lovingly as
-others would their own. First, there is the elegy on
-Gwenhwyvar by Griffith ap Meredith ap Davydd:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The wearer of white and green, of red and blue,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Is now in the painful fold of death.</div>
-      <div class='line'>The Church conceals her—she whom velvet so adorned.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wearer of velvet,</div>
-      <div class='line'>We mourn with tears now that the flush of her beauty has faded,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Now that the wearer of velvet and red is no more.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>That he praises for its clear-eyed simplicity, its
-mournfulness direct as the cry of a child, as the
-bravery of this is as direct as the laughter of a
-child (it is by a poet who was also a prince):</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>I love the time of summer, when the charger</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of the exulting chief prances in the presence of a gallant lord,</div>
-      <div class='line'>When the nimbly moving wave is covered with foam,</div>
-      <div class='line'>When the apple tree is in flower,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And the white shield is borne on my shoulder to battle.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>This, also, for its simple pride:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The men who went to Cattraeth were men of name:</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wine and mead out of gold was their drink:</div>
-      <div class='line'>Three men, and threescore, and three hundred, with golden torques.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>How often will he repeat "with golden torques"!</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>But (and here some will reconsider their opinion
-that he is a fool, or one "not wise" as the pleasant
-Welsh phrase goes) there is no one that can laugh
-more loudly than he; or sing a song more happily;
-or join more lustily than he in hunting on foot,
-over the craggy hills, some fox which the farmer
-can never shoot when he comes for the turkeys in
-November; and in the heat of the run he will
-curse the hounds for gaining on the fox, and the
-fox for running no faster, saying that the worst
-of fox-hunting is that it is so one-sided, since the
-fox is not allowed to rejoice at the end with hounds
-and men.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And here is one of his imitative songs, reduced
-to its lowest terms by a translator:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>She is dead, Eluned,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whom the young men and the old men</div>
-      <div class='line'>And the old women and even the young women</div>
-      <div class='line'>Came to the gates in the village</div>
-      <div class='line'>To see, because she walked as beautifully as a heifer.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>She is dead, Eluned,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Who sang the new songs</div>
-      <div class='line'>And the old; and made the new</div>
-      <div class='line'>Seem old, and the old</div>
-      <div class='line'>As if they were just born and she had christened them.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>She is dead, Eluned,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whom I admired and loved,</div>
-      <div class='line'>When she was gathering red apples,</div>
-      <div class='line'>When she was making bread and cakes,</div>
-      <div class='line'>When she was smiling to herself alone and not thinking of me.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>She is dead, Eluned,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Who was part of Spring,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And of blue Summer and red Autumn,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And made the Winter beloved;</div>
-      <div class='line'>She is dead, and these things come not again.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp82'  class='figcenter id006'>
-<img src='images/i_217.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>DISTANT VIEW OF BETTWS-Y-COED</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Azariah John Pugh</span></h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>One of the most inspiriting of our fire-siders at
-the farmhouse is a young schoolmaster named
-Azariah John Pugh, and called, in the Welsh
-fashion, almost invariably, Azariah John.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>He is mainly English and partly Spanish; he
-was born in England, but having a Welsh name,
-he boasts much of his country, as he has elected to
-call Wales. But in truth he belongs to no time or
-place. He cares nothing for the house he lives in,
-for the village, or for any place he ever saw. Yet
-are we never tired of hearing his rich sentiments
-about them all. If only he be far away from it,
-there is no place known to him which he will not
-magnify with words which others do not easily use
-even for their true loves. Probably he would like
-to like them; but that very liking seems to be due
-to his feverish wide reading in books that are full of
-sentiments he admires and would borrow, if he
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>could. Thus, of old cities, rivers flowing past famous
-places, mountains of beauty or story, the white
-cliffs of the south, the whin-red moorland of Wales,
-old gardens, solemn woods, all solitudes, fading
-races, sunsets, fallen greatness in men and things,
-old books, old beer, poverty, childhood ... of all
-these he will talk as if he had discovered them
-to the world, though it may be doubted whether
-he knows them at all. Yet is he a magnificent
-echo of the genuine lovers of these things, and
-he is so sorrowfully anxious to be believed
-that to some of us he has seemed to be the true
-heir, though defrauded of his inheritance, of all
-beauty and all antiquity. He is for ever speaking
-of "remembering afresh and with pleasure
-ancient matters," though he knows that even he
-cannot remember them with pleasure, and that no
-experienced man ever does so. He is so young
-that he has nothing to forget. But in his own
-esteem he is old now, and shakes his head over
-the light-heartedness of old men, saying, "If they
-were as old as I am——"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>He speaks so suavely that the plain man
-wonders that he has never felt as deeply himself.
-Before his patriotism, the patriot is abashed. The
-lover of the quiet life, in his presence, is persuaded
-that himself can hardly be said to love it. No
-lover repeats more fondly—</p>
-
-<div id='fp84'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_223.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE OLD BRIDGE, BETTWS-Y-COED</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>And I would send tales of forgotten love</div>
-      <div class='line'>Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of maids deserted in the olden time.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>He thus deceives every one but himself, and that
-one exception is the real cause of his unhappiness.
-He cannot avoid his affectations. He only finds
-them out when they are full-grown and most noisily
-and hungrily abroad in every man's ears, and then
-he has to maintain them, wearily but with an
-apparent gaiety. Pity even will not hurt him. It
-is his genial air: he rejoices in it as a pigeon, leaning
-and raising her wing to expose her tender side,
-rejoices in summer rain, and as languidly; and then
-again he is furious at it, and cultivates brutality,
-drinks much beer, and uses many oaths, of which
-he wearies and comes again to the old tap.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The ghosts of the subtle emotions which we say
-make up modernity have come into his brain, and
-they are so many that he has become, if not a
-theatre, at least a mortuary, of modernity. But the
-nervous strain of any real passion in his neighbourhood
-obliges him to be rude or to run away. Real
-passion was always scandalously ill done: he would
-have no lover die less romantically than Romeo.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>And as his thoughts, so are his acts, except
-that they are few. He has been to Rome, the Bay
-of Spezzia, Windermere; he has walked along the
-Pilgrim's Road to Canterbury. He has learned to
-work badly in metal and wood. He has had whims
-and drugs enough to win an appreciation from Mr.
-Arthur Symons. He has written poems under the
-influence of something in his stomach; but either
-he cannot read them, or they are not fit to be read.
-He wrote one, I remember, about a girl who
-worked a story in tapestry while her lover played
-on a harp the melody which told the same story.
-He wrote a sermon on the death of John Jones
-because a hundred persons of that name die every
-day, and he wished to praise the average man, out
-of a whimsical distaste for his late less fantastic
-likings. He has had friends and has been left by
-them; or, as he says, after the Welsh poet,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The brave, the magnanimous, the amiable, the generous, and the energetic</div>
-      <div class='line'>Are as stepping-stones to the bard.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>He has made love, and he has been scorned; the
-sad tunes of</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Old unhappy far off-things</div>
-      <div class='line'>And battles long ago</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp86'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_229.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SWALLOW FALLS, BETTWS-Y-COED</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>are accordingly most dear to him, and in his gayest
-moments he will murmur some sad melody like
-"The Marsh of Rhuddlan" or "My Johnny was a
-shoemaker." I have heard him repeat this strange
-poem of Taliesin's as if he were a reincarnation of
-the bard:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Primary chief bard am I to Elphin,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And my original country is the region of the summer stars;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Idno and Heinin called me Merddin,</div>
-      <div class='line'>At length every King will call me Taliesin.</div>
-      <div class='line'>I was with my Lord in the highest sphere,</div>
-      <div class='line'>On the fall of Lucifer into the depth of hell;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have borne a banner before Alexander;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I know the names of the stars from north to south....</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been with my Lord in the manger of the ass;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Ceridwen;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been on the White Hill, in the court of Cynvelyn;</div>
-      <div class='line'>For a day and a year in stocks and fetters,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin.</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I have been teacher to all intelligences,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I am able to instruct the whole universe,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth:</div>
-      <div class='line'>And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish....</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>And it falls strangely from this wandering voice
-that calls itself a man. It is comic and it is terrible.
-He alone seems to feel the true sadness of them:
-flatterers and low comic persons tell him that he is
-but a vessel come into the world to be filled with
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>all the sorrows that have been. Truly, all that has
-passed, is.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Nevertheless, we love him for his gross natural
-self, for so we think his only convincing affectation,
-the only one which he displays with some consistency
-by the fireside; and we know, as the world
-does not know, how costly and passionate affectations
-are.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><span class='sc'>Morgan Rhys and Others</span></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>I should like to win some charity for Morgan
-Rhys, the descendant of a prince, a bard and a
-tin-plater. Charity it must be; for, in truth, he is
-something of a Celt in the bad, fashionable sense
-of that strange word, and is somewhat ridiculous
-beside the landlord of the "Cross Inn." An
-orphan, he lived as the only child in the large
-house of a distant relative, reading everything,
-playing half-heartedly at games, yet now and then
-entering into them with such enthusiasm that he
-did what he liked and won a singular reputation.
-He went seldom to a chapel, and when he went,
-did something more than escape boredom, by the
-marvellous gift of inattention which enabled him
-to continue his own chain of thought or fancy
-from beginning to end of the service. He was
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>quite unhindered by hymn, prayer, or sermon, and
-accepted what he heard, as elderly persons accept
-fairies, without even curiosity. The death of
-others made him helpless for a time, but he did not
-reason about the fact: his own death he at all
-times contemplated without fear; what he feared,
-if anything, was the fear of death.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>These things would not be remarkable, if he had
-not been at the same time an impressionable, submissive
-child, incapable of listening to argument,
-indeed, but of an unsatisfied sentimentality that
-might have been made much use of by a priest.
-His abstraction from things to which he was
-indifferent was wonderful. He was delighted
-and fascinated by abstraction itself, and finding a
-thing uninteresting, he could at once withdraw
-into a sweet, vaporous, empty cave. Thus, he
-was praised at school for his calmness during
-punishment, which, he says, on many occasions he
-never felt at all.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When a child of five he had been left alone for
-half a day in a remote chamber of a great house,
-and at nightfall was found sitting at a window
-that commanded an orchard and a lawn, and when
-he did not rise to greet his friends, and was questioned,
-merely said "Look!" Nobody could see
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>anything, or rather, they saw everything as usual:
-nor could he explain. He always remembered the
-incident, and could not explain it. There was no
-fairy, no peculiar light or gloom. Yet he admitted
-that he was intoxicated by the mere trees and the
-green lawn. In the same way he was often found
-listening to silence. He did not pretend to hear
-strange music. It was the voluptuousness of
-sheer silence. At home, in the fields, at school,
-he would cry: "There!" So far as any one could
-see, there was nothing. To shut his eyes was not
-to see amply and clearly, but to see infinite purple
-darkness, which he vastly loved. He would ask
-friends whether they remembered this place or that
-on a certain day, and if they did, could never have
-them share his pleasure at the recollection; and
-for this whim he was scolded and ridiculed.</p>
-
-<div id='fp90'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_237.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>FAIRY GLEN, BETTWS-Y-COED</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>But at the age of sixteen or seventeen, poetry
-gave him a second world in which he thenceforward
-moved with a rapture which I do not
-often observe in the religious, while in religious
-matters he remains so pure a sceptic that he has
-never yet learned that there is anything about
-which to be sceptical. This so-called matter-of-factness
-in combination with a rich imaginativeness
-is perhaps a Welsh characteristic. I remember a
-farmer in Cardiganshire, with the blood of a lamb
-on his wrist, singing a fine hymn very nobly; and
-though I cannot like such a mystic, I admire him.
-In the same way will Rhys turn from ribaldry to a
-poem by Mr. Yeats. But he valued poetry not so
-much because it was full of music for ear and
-spirit, though that he loved; not so much because
-it was the first discoverer of Nature and Man,
-though that he well knew, as because it revealed to
-him the possibility of a state of mind and spirit in
-which alone all things could be fully known at
-their highest power, and that state was his most
-cherished aim, and poetry helped him to achieve it.
-Along with love of poetry went a curious study
-of appearances and illusions. He was never tired
-of considering them; of trying to elucidate the
-impressionism of the eyes and the other senses;
-of trying to know what there was in tree or face
-or flower which many measurements, scientific
-descriptions, photographs, and even pictures did
-not exhaust. So many trees he saw were scarcely
-more than nothing, though close by and in clear
-air: what were they, he asked. He had never any
-answer. "If only we could think like that!" he
-said once, pointing to a fair, straight hawthorn
-that stood, with few branches and without leaves,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>on the mountain side. And he came to hope for
-a state in which he and the trees and the great
-estuary near his house, the flowers, the distant
-white cottages, should become all happily arranged
-in as perfect a pattern as that made with iron dust
-by a magnet—all filling their places, all integral
-parts of a whole, and important because they were.</p>
-
-<div id='fp92'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_243.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>CHURCH POOL, BETTWS-Y-COED</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>One evening he came into the farmhouse in
-deep excitement because (as he said) he had been
-part of the music of the spheres. He had walked
-through village after village, over the mountains
-and along the rivers, under great motionless white
-clouds. The air had been so clear that every straw
-of the thatch gleamed separately. He had passed
-through the lonely places with a sense of passing
-through a crowd because the rich spring air had
-been so much a presence. The men labouring or
-idling in the fields had seemed to be seraphic and
-majestic beings; the women smiling or talking by
-the gates were solemn and splendid. When at
-last he descended into this valley, he saw the wood
-smoke rising gently and blue from all the houses,
-as if they had been a peaceful company smoking
-pipes together. He had looked at the sky, the
-flushed mountain sheep, the little stony lanes
-that led steeply up to farmyard and farm, the
-jackdaw making suitable music high up in the cold
-bright air, the buzzard swirling amidst the young
-bracken, and he had approved, and had been
-approved, in ecstasy. And on that day the mazes
-of human activity had been woven into a rich
-pattern with the clouds and the hills and the waters
-for the pleasure of the gods, and were certainly
-for once fitted to the beauty and harmony of the
-universe. Thus he spoke in ejaculations, to our
-great joy, though not without giving us a fear that
-he would spoil it by something inapposite. But
-merely remarking that he had seen the parson
-feeding his boar and that the harmony between
-them also was complete, he became silent, and for
-a time the whole world shimmered and darkened
-as if it had been some tapestry which Rhys had
-made. The most pious member of the party, a
-Christian if ever there was one, remarked that he
-"wished he had felt like that sometimes." To
-which Rhys replied that he could not possibly wish
-that, as he would then be damned like himself:
-and the other agreed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>On days like this, he stepped over the edge of
-the world and saw the gods leaning from the stars
-among the clouds, and perhaps the loneliness that
-followed appalled him. For these days flew fast.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>And so he tried to fortify himself by mingling
-warmly with the life of every day in the village,
-where his reputation was for generosity, hard drinking,
-and perfect latitude of speech. He stimulated
-the trade-unionist, the parson, the minister, the
-bard. But he could not live both lives. The
-worldly one was the more difficult and he gave it
-up, and only made spasmodic and gross attempts to
-return to it. He began to shrink not only from all
-men but from all outward experience, and to live, as
-only too easily he could, upon his own fantasy. He
-was "surprised" when he saw men in the street.
-A million people, all different and their differences
-so much the more difficult because they were not
-acknowledged, frightened him. So his advocacy
-of certain humane measures and his support of
-some enthusiasms sounded as if they came from
-an angel, a fiend, or a corpse. As will happen
-with men who love life too passionately, he was
-often in love with death. He found enjoyment in
-silence, in darkness, in refraining from deeds, and
-he longed even to embrace the absolute blank or
-death, if only he could be just conscious of it; and
-he envied the solitary tree on a bare plain high up
-among the hills, under a night sky in winter where
-the only touch of life and pleasure was the rain.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>And now, with his fantastic belief that the corpse
-is life's handiwork and its utmost end, he is humanised
-only by a dread of the blank to which he is
-going:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in8'>When we shall hear</div>
-      <div class='line'>The rain and wind beat dark December, how,</div>
-      <div class='line'>In that our pinching cave, shall we discourse</div>
-      <div class='line'>The freezing hours away?</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>He has made a heaven and he fears it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Once there came to him and to the farmhouse a
-ghost from the north. He was a tall, black-haired,
-white-faced man, with high curved brow, straight
-fleshy nose, perfect firm lips, and bony chin. Was he
-soldier or scholar or priest? asked one and another.
-His face was vigilant, of childlike freedom of expression,
-and yet of boundless mystery in repose.
-When he spoke, he had fire, dignity, rapidity, ease,
-fertility of ideas, and everything of the orator
-except that his speech was simple. He could move
-a Welsh multitude with politics as a wind moves
-the corn, yet he did so but once, because "it was a
-blackguard game." Distinguished from the rest
-only by his white tie, in the pulpit he looked a
-Loyola and was a Chrysostom; yet he stood there
-but once or twice, to bury a noble man. He was
-master of an English style that was like Newman's
-in simplicity, music, and weight, yet published but
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>one pamphlet that was wrung from him by a needy
-cause in a week, and never did anything to disabuse
-a public that praised him for it. His handwriting,
-in any haste, was that of a leisured and proud monk.
-His deep voice had a kind of flame-like hum of
-passion in it; he always used it in the service of the
-beautiful and the true. I heard him laugh only
-once, and then the depth which he discovered for
-a moment disturbed me so that I distrusted all
-laughter afterwards: it was like a nymph emerging
-from a deep cave. In scorn, in ignorance, in mere
-contentedness, he never uttered a word. He is
-content to be the light and the rest of a few scholars
-and a hundred miners, and to be the faithful, unhonoured
-Levite of the mighty dead, of whom not
-one, or prince or bard, had a virtue which he has
-not, except it were a strong right arm and the will
-to make a war in which to use it for the service
-of the liberty and integrity of Wales, for these
-alone of mortal things he passionately loves.</p>
-
-<div id='fp96'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_251.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>MINER'S BRIDGE ON RIVER LLUGWY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>Lastly, there is at the farmhouse still a memory
-of that poet, great discoverer of manuscripts and
-splendid human being—Iolo Morganwg—also herbalist,
-lover of liberty and of the Revolution in
-France, a mighty walker, who would ride in no man's
-coach, and having been given a horse, drove it before
-him for a long way, and complained that a horse
-was wearisome. He learned his alphabet from the
-tombstones which his father made. In his youth,
-in the middle of the eighteenth century, he thought
-of going to America to search for the Welsh colony
-left five hundred years before by Madoc ap Owen
-Gwynedd, whom Southey strove to sing. He was
-stone-mason, bookseller, land-surveyor and (in slave-owning
-days) seller of sugar "uncontaminated by
-human gore." Eighty years ago he was to be seen
-"on the highways and byways of Glamorgan—an
-elderly pedestrian of rather low stature, wearing his
-long grey hair flowing over his high coat-collar,
-which by constant antagonism had pushed up his
-hat brim into a quaint angle of elevation behind.
-His countenance was marked by a combination of
-quiet intelligence and quick sensitiveness; the
-features angular, the lines deep, and the grey eye
-benevolent but highly excitable. He was clad in
-rustic garb: the coat blue, with goodly brass
-buttons, and the nether integument good homely
-corduroy. He wore buckles in his shoes, and a pair
-of remarkably stout well-set legs were vouchers for
-the great peripatetic powers he was well known to
-possess. A pair of canvas wallets were slung over
-his shoulders, one depending in front, the other
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>behind. These contained a change of linen and a
-few books and papers connected with his favourite
-pursuits" (the study and collection of old Welsh
-manuscriptions for the illustration of Welsh history).
-"He generally read as he walked, 'with spectacles
-on nose,' and a pencil in his hand serving him to
-make notes as they suggested themselves. A tall
-staff, which he grasped at about the level of his ear,
-completed his travelling equipment." And in this
-chair, they say, he spent a night, sleeping and reading
-alternately.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Outside, by the window, is the village idiot, with
-a smile like the sound of bells ascending from a
-city buried in the sea.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>CHAPTER V<br /> WALES MONTH BY MONTH</h2>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>January</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>The road ran for ten miles between mountains
-on which the woods of oak and fir moaned, though
-there was little wind. A raven croaked with a
-fat voice. I could hear a score of streams. But
-the valley would not speak with me. The sole
-joy in it was that of walking fast and of seeing the
-summits of the hills continually writing a wild
-legend on the cloudy sky. The road curved and
-let in the poor sunlight from the south-west; and
-there were interminable oak woods ahead,—one
-moan and one dull cloud.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But, suddenly, a space of the south-west sky
-was silver white. The sun was almost visible, and,
-suddenly, a company of oak trees caught the light
-and shone, and became warm and glorious, but
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>misty and impenetrable with light. They dreamed
-of summers to come and summers past. For one
-moment they were as fine and strange and chosen
-from all the rest, as things discovered by a lantern
-on a country road at night. Not only were they
-impenetrable to the sight, but it was impossible
-to suppose oneself amongst them. They were
-holding festival, but not for me. They were
-populous, but not with men. They were warm
-and welcoming, and something was happy there.
-They were as a large, distant, and luminous house
-seen in a cold and windy night by some one hungry,
-poor, timid, and old, upon a lonely road, envying it
-with an insatiable envy that never dreams of satisfying
-itself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But, in a moment, a mist arose from the grass
-between the oaks and me: the glory departed:
-and the little, draughty farmhouse was far more
-to be desired than they, where a soft-voiced motherly
-girl of twenty gave me cheese and bread and milk,
-and smiled gently at the folly of walking on such
-a day.</p>
-
-<div id='fp100'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_259.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SUNNY FIELD, NEAR LLANBERIS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>All day I wandered over an immense, bare,
-snowy mountain which had looked as round as a
-white summer cloud, but was truly so pitted and
-scarred and shattered by beds of streams and
-valleys full of rotten oak trees, that my course
-wound like a river's or like a mouse's in a dense
-hedge. The streams were small, and, partly frozen,
-partly covered up by snow, they made no noise.
-Nothing made any noise. There was a chimney-stack
-clearly visible ten miles away, and I wished
-that I could hear the factory hiss and groan. No
-wind stirred among the trees. Once a kite flew
-over among the clouds of the colour of young
-swan's plumage, but silently, silently. I passed
-the remains of twelve ancient oaks, like the litter
-of some uncouth, vast monster pasturing, but
-without a sound.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The ruins of a farm lay at the edge of one
-valley: snow choked the chimney and protected
-the hearth, which was black with flames long dead,
-and as cold as a cinerary urn of the bronze age. I
-stumbled over something snowy near by, and
-exposed the brown fragments of a plough, and
-farther on, a heavy wheel standing askew on its
-crumbling axle.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The trees below were naked on one side of their
-boles, but above was the snow, like a stiff upright
-mane on every branch, which seemed to have
-forced them into their wild and painful curves.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>All the fallen rotten wood broke under my foot
-without a sound, and the green things disclosed
-were as some stupid, cheerful thing in a house of
-tremendous woe.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It was impossible to think of the inn to which I
-was going, and hardly of the one which I had
-left. How could their fires have survived the
-all-pervading silent snow? When one is comfortable,
-near a fire or within reach of one, and in
-company, winter is thought of as a time of activity,
-of glowing faces, of elements despised, and even a
-poetry book brings back the spring: one will run,
-or eat chestnuts, or read a book, or look at a picture
-to-morrow, and so the winter flies. But on the
-mountain there was no activity; it was impertinent:
-there was the snow. When I could remember
-anything it was these verses, which were the one
-survival from the world I had known before I began
-to cross this immense, bare, snowy mountain:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in6'>The beams flash on</div>
-      <div class='line'>And make appear the melancholy ruins</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms and spears,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of scythéd chariots, and the emblazonry</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!</div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>The wrecks beside of many a city vast,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whose population which the earth grew over</div>
-      <div class='line'>Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes</div>
-      <div class='line'>Huddled in grey annihilation, split,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The anatomies of unknown winged things,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And fishes which were isles of living scale,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And serpents, bony chains, twisted around</div>
-      <div class='line'>The iron crags, or within heaps of dust</div>
-      <div class='line'>To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs</div>
-      <div class='line'>Had crushed the iron crags; and over these</div>
-      <div class='line'>The jagged alligator, and the might</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once</div>
-      <div class='line'>Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And weed-overgrown continents of earth,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Increased and multiplied like summer worms</div>
-      <div class='line'>On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wrapped deluge round it like a cloke, and they</div>
-      <div class='line'>Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried</div>
-      <div class='line'>Be not!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>They lay beneath; the snow was over them.
-It was hard to walk while all things had thus, in
-Asiatic phrase, perfected their repose. When the
-distant chimney appeared again, it was as incredible
-as a thing seen in a dream when one knows that it
-is a dream. It interrupted the perfection of the
-whole, as I did, but only as the smell of a mouse
-may spoil the beauty of an old room which has
-been left for a dead man alone, for some time
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>after the funeral. The farther I went, the more
-immense became the extent of hills ahead and
-around. Their whiteness made the sky gloomy,
-as if with coming night. The furthest were
-grey with distance. In the cold that overtook
-my swiftest walking I could not put by the
-imagination that I could see myself travelling
-over more endless white hills, lost, to my own
-knowledge, and yet beyond my own power to
-save. And, again, I thought of all the hills beyond
-those I saw, until even the immensity before me
-became more awful, because it suggested the
-whole, as the light of one candle by the organist
-suggests the whole cathedral at midnight.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And then, though I did not know it, a change
-began, and dimly, not hopefully, as when one
-thinks one hears the double click of a latch in a
-house which strangers inhabit now, I saw that the
-sun began to set, and it was red. I knew that red:
-it belonged to the old world: it was the colour of
-the oast houses in Kent. A window, two miles off,
-caught the light and blazed. A bell told the hour
-in a church, and shook some of the snow from the
-belfry in a mist. I warmed myself in the breath
-of a flock of sheep. I knew that I heard the voice
-of a stream which had been with me for a long
-way. Borrow, I remembered, knew the stream.
-Borrow! I was at home again.</p>
-
-<div id='fp104'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_267.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>WELSH FARM, NEAR LLANBERIS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>Slowly the fire and the ale constructed the world
-again, and though I could still see the snow from
-the hearth of the inn, it was as impotent as the
-frail moon which was convoyed down among the
-moorlands by dark and angry clouds, while I read—as
-now my reader does—this passage from <cite>Wild
-Wales</cite>:—</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I suppose you follow some pursuit besides
-bardism?' said I; 'I suppose you farm?'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I do not farm,' said the man in grey. 'I keep
-an inn.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'Keep an inn?' said I.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'Yes,' said the man in grey. 'The —— Arms
-at L——.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'Sure,' said I, 'inn-keeping and bardism are
-not very cognate pursuits?'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'You are wrong,' said the man in grey; 'I
-believe the <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">awen</span></i>, or inspiration, is quite as much at
-home at the bar as in the barn, perhaps more. It
-is that belief which makes me tolerably satisfied
-with my position and prevents me from asking Sir
-Richard to give me a farm instead of an inn.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I suppose,' said I, 'that Sir Richard is your
-landlord?'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>"'He is,' said the man in grey, 'and a right
-noble landlord too.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I suppose,' said I, 'that he is right proud of
-his tenant?'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'He is,' said the man in grey, 'and I am right
-proud of my landlord, and will here drink his
-health. I have often said that if I were not what
-I am, I should wish to be Sir Richard.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'You consider yourself his superior?' said I.</p>
-
-<div id='fp106'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_273.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SNOWDON FROM CWM-Y-GLO</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>"'Of course,' said the man in grey; 'a baronet
-is a baronet, but a bard is a bard, you know.
-I never forget what I am, and the respect due to
-my sublime calling. About a month ago I was
-seated in an upper apartment, in a fit of rapture;
-there was a pen in my hand and paper before me on
-the table, and likewise a jug of good ale, for I
-always find that the <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">awen</span></i> is most prodigal of her
-favours when a jug of good ale is before me. All
-of a sudden my wife came running up and told me
-that Sir Richard was below, and wanted to speak
-to me. "Tell him to walk up," said I. "Are you
-mad?" said my wife. "Do you know who Sir
-Richard is?" "I do," said I; "a baronet is a baronet,
-but a bard is a bard. Tell him to walk up." Well,
-my wife went and told Sir Richard that I was
-writing and could not come down, and that she
-hoped he would not object to walk up. "Certainly
-not, certainly not," said Sir Richard. "I shall be
-only too happy to ascend to a genius on his hill.
-You may be proud of such a husband, Mrs. W."
-And here it will be as well to tell you that my
-name is W.—J. W. of ——. Sir Richard then
-came up, and I received him with gravity and
-politeness. I did not rise, of course, for I never
-forget myself a moment, but I told him to sit
-down, and added, that after I had finished the <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">pennill</span></i>
-(song for the harp) I was engaged upon, I would
-speak to him. Well, Sir Richard smiled and sat
-down, and begged me not to hurry myself, for that
-he could wait. So I finished the <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">pennill</span></i>, deliberately,
-mind you, for I did not forget who I
-was, and then turning to Sir Richard, entered upon
-business with him.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I suppose Sir Richard is a very good-tempered
-man?' said I.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I don't know,' said the man in grey. 'I have
-seen Sir Richard in a devil of a passion, but never
-with me. No, no! trust Sir Richard for not
-riding the high horse with me. A baronet is a
-baronet, but a bard is a bard, and that Sir Richard
-knows.'"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The which Borrovianism should as much delight
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>my hard-working reader as it did me, on that
-January night: may it console him also.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>February</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>I passed through a village where I found
-that the old-fashioned bidding marriage was not
-dead. For a printed sheet with this announcement
-(in Welsh) fell into my hands:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in4'><span class='sc'>A Bidding to a Marriage</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Inasmuch as we intend entering the</div>
-      <div class='line'>state of wedlock on ——, we invite</div>
-      <div class='line'>wedding gifts, which will be repaid</div>
-      <div class='line'>with thanks on a like occasion.</div>
-      <div class='line in10'>T. Williams.</div>
-      <div class='line in10'>Elizabeth Jones.</div>
-      <div class='line'>It is expected that gifts due to them,</div>
-      <div class='line'>and to their parents and brothers,</div>
-      <div class='line'>will be paid on the wedding day.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp108'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_279.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SNOWDON FROM LLANBERIS LAKE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>The custom was old; the village was new, and
-it stood on the edge of a strange new land. Having
-passed it, the road dipped among sublime black hills
-of refuse from furnace and pit. The streams were
-rich with yellow water, purple water. Here and
-there were dim, shining, poisonous heaps of green
-and blue, like precious stones. There were railway
-lines everywhere, and on them trucks, full of scraps
-of metal, like sheaves of scimitars and other cruel
-weapons—still cruel, but hacked, often rusty, and
-expressing something more horrible than mere
-sharpness and ferocity. There were furnaces,
-crimson and gold; and beyond all, a white-clouded
-sky which said that it was over the sea.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In the early afternoon a grey mist invested all
-things, so that even when I was close to them,
-they seemed about to pass away, and I was tempted
-to walk regardless and straight ahead as the harper
-did in the tale.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is told that a harper was asked to play and
-sing at a wedding. It was a fine day, and on his
-way he sometimes played over the melodies he most
-liked; and as he went, the fairies followed him,
-their little feet going fast and sharp like drumsticks.
-When he reached the house, the fairies were still
-behind him. They followed him in, and presently,
-since he again tuned his harp, the company began
-to dance, and the fairies with them; the house,
-which was a little one, did not impede them;
-and in no long time they all went dancing out of
-the house. The fairies, it is said, were not to be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>distinguished from the bridal party. They went on
-across well-known country, regardless and straight
-ahead, through a barn where men were threshing,
-through a hall where men were dining. Coming
-at last to a place he did not know, the harper
-ceased and became separated from the rest, and
-slept. When he awoke, he found himself in a
-pleasant place among very little people, and all
-that was asked of him was that he should play on
-the harp every night. Then one day he got leave
-to go out of the land of the fairies; but he left his
-harp there and could never get back again. He
-found that the others had returned. He could say
-nothing of the wedding day, except that he had
-never before harped so well.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And well did the mist harp. It was the one
-real credible thing among those furnaces, which
-were but as gaps in it, or as landscapes seen rapidly
-from small windows in a lofty house upon a hill.</p>
-
-<div id='fp110'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_285.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SNOWDON FROM TRAETH MAWR</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>Next day I crossed the river. At first, the
-water seemed as calm and still as ice. The boats
-at anchor, and doubled by shadow, were as if by
-miracle suspended in the water. No ripple was to
-be seen, though now and then one emitted a
-sudden transitory flame, reflected from the sun,
-which dreamed half-way up the sky in a cocoon of
-cloud. No motion of the tide was visible, though
-the shadows of the bridge that cleared the river in
-three long leaps, trembled and were ever about to
-pass away. The end of the last leap was unseen,
-for the further shore was lost in mist, and a solitary
-gull spoke for the mist. A sombre, satanic family
-of what had yesterday been the chimneys of
-factories rose out of the mist,—belonging to a
-remote, unexplored, inaccessible country over there,
-which seemed to threaten the river-side where I
-stood. But the tide was rising, and the thin long
-wavering line of water grew up over the mud, and
-died, and grew up again, curved like the grain of
-a chestnut or mother-of-pearl, and fascinating,
-persuasive. And sometimes the line of water
-resembled a lip, quivering with speech, and yet
-silent, unheard. Two swans glimmered at the
-edge; and beneath them, in the water, and beside
-them, on the polished mud, their white reflections
-glimmered.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Suddenly the tantara of a trumpet stung me
-like an enormous invisible wasp, and I looked
-down and saw a grey, drowned dog at my feet.
-His legs lay in pairs; his head curved towards his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>fore-legs, his tail towards his hind-legs. He was of
-the colour of the mud. But his very quietness
-and powerlessness and abjectness, without any consideration
-of all the play and strife and exercise
-that once led him step by step towards death,—without
-a thought of the crimson tongue that once
-flickered, after hunting or fighting, like a flame
-of pure abandoned vitality,—gave me a strange
-suggestion of power and restraint, just as the misty
-land over the water, without any consideration of
-all the men and machinery that were visible there
-yesterday, suggested a life without those things.
-The beast became a puissant part of the host of
-all the dead or motionless or dreaming things, of
-statuary and trees and dead or inefficient men, and
-was, with them, about to convince me of a state
-quite other than ours, and not worse, when once
-again the trumpet disturbed me and turned me to
-the thought that I was the supreme life-giver to
-these things, that I gave them of myself, and that
-without me they were nothing; and I feared that
-this fancied state was but suggested by my envy
-of calm things, and that, though dreams may put
-the uttermost parts of the earth into our possession,
-without the dream the dreamer is nothing more
-than naught.</p>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>III</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>Thence I went to an irregular, squalid, hideous,
-ashen town,—a large village, but noisy and without
-character, neither English nor Welsh. The
-street songs were but a week or two behind those
-of London, and they were not mixed with anything
-but an occasional Welsh hymn tune or "Sospan
-bach." But there used to be an old house there
-that spoke of old Wales, and I went to see it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When I came to the edge of its garden I heard
-a blackbird sing, and in the busy street how old
-and far away it sounded! as if it were true that
-"thrice the age of a man is that of a stag, and
-thrice that of a stag is that of the melodious
-blackbird."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Pretentious, unpicturesque, fatigued, and silent,
-the women walked to and fro, between the shops.
-Now and then an unmarried girl laughed; the
-others had no such energy.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It was more pleasant to be among the men, who
-were on the other side of the road, many of them
-standing still, packed close in a half-moon figure
-that swelled out over the pavement, and watching
-something. There was nothing gorgeous or adventurous
-or even elegant in their scrupulous dress;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>in the old faces either alcoholic or parched, in the
-waxen faces of the younger; in the voices which
-seemed to have been copied from the gramophone,
-their favourite instrument. I liked them for the
-complete lack of self-consciousness which allowed
-them to expose quite fearlessly their angular figures,
-their uninteresting clothes, their heartless, rigid
-faces that retained smiles for an incredibly short
-time. They were the equals, in everything but
-ease, of the labourers whom they were watching.
-But when I saw at last what they were watching,
-I thought that I could have rejoiced to have seen
-them, looking passionate for once, in flames.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>For, under the direction of a foreman, whose
-snub nose, bow legs, and double collar made him a
-sublime and monstrous priest or chief of what was
-most horrible among the men and women of the
-street, a band of labourers, without pity, without
-even ferocity, but mechanically, was demolishing
-"Quebec," a dignified mid-eighteenth-century
-house, where for five generations a decent, stable
-professional family had lived, loved beauty according
-to its lights, and been graceful in its leisure. The
-very house had seemed to say, amid its troubled
-neighbours, as Marlowe's Edward said,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>This life contemplative is heaven.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp114'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_293.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SNOWDON FROM CAPEL CURIG LAKE—SUMMER EVENING</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>Now it was falling in thunders and clouds of ruin;
-and I wondered that the people did not fall upon
-the enormous, red-haired, passionless men who
-wielded the pickaxes.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>For twenty years I had known "Quebec" and
-had watched the streets creeping upon it, until
-the house and great garden were surrounded and
-spied upon by houses on all sides but one. That
-one side had been protected by a lofty and massive
-wall, and through that the enemy had now broken
-an entrance.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Behind that wall, the two Alderneys had grazed
-on three acres of meadow, in the midst of which
-had been an old orchard, and in the midst of that
-the gardens and the house. Once I had seen a
-girl with the delicate Kentish rake gathering a
-little hay there. In one corner, too, had been a
-tangle of elder and bramble, which (so we used to
-fancy) might possibly have—by pure and unbroken
-descent, miraculously escaping all change—the sap
-of Eden in their veins.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But the Alderneys were gone, and the meadow
-was slashed with ruts; the trees were down; the air
-was foul with dust of mortar and brick and plaster;
-and, mocking at the disembowelled house, new
-bricks, scaffolding, and iron pillars and girders lay
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>round about, among the fallen clouds of ivy, which
-were torn and dead. Oh, Westminster, Tintern,
-Godstow, Kidwelly, you have immortality, not
-indeed in your forms, but in the hearts of men;
-but "Quebec" dies with me! So I thought and
-wondered.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Hastily broken up, without a grave, without
-ceremonial, without a becoming interval of desolation
-in which to spend its tears, and have at least
-the pleasure of regret, the house, I knew, could not
-but send forth piteous ghosts to wander up and
-down,—<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">inops, inhumataque turba</span></i>,—and round their
-heads garlands of branches with those terrible buds
-that were never to be leaves,—until their sorrows
-and ours were smoothed by time or consumed by
-death. I met them afterwards in spring, when the
-purple of the brambles should have been at last
-overcome by green, and they seemed the sole
-inhabitants of the brand-new, crowded streets,
-beneath which "Quebec" is buried.</p>
-
-<div id='fp116'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_299.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>IN THE LLEDR VALLEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>Suddenly I met Philaster, who had years ago
-rung the great bell of the house and become the
-angry coachman's willing captive, so that he might
-see the house quite close, and the flowers and the
-grass. Between us we made the power of the breaker
-and builder as naught. For a little while, indeed,
-we asked, What would other children do who lived
-in that suburb, and had no "Quebec" to provide a
-home for all their fancies,—to lend its lawns for
-bright ladies and brave knights to walk upon,—its
-borders and bowers to complete the scenery of
-Hans Andersen,—its grey walls to hide beauty and
-cruelty, misers and witches, and children crying
-because of wicked stepmothers? We had set out,
-as children, to live as if for eternity. Now we
-would live as if for annihilation to-morrow. We
-would no longer set our hearts upon anything which
-the world can destroy. We would set our hearts
-upon things of the imagination—like "Quebec."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So we went up into an attic, and drew the
-curtains, and lit the fire, and took draughts of long
-oblivion, and made our sorrows pompous by reading
-Villon and Catullus and Du Bellay, and the close
-of <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, and the thirteenth book of the
-<cite>Morte Darthur</cite>, and Goethe's "Now comes first love
-and friendship's company," and other things that
-reminded us of decay and beauty; and not one of
-them but drew a long echo from the hoary walls of
-"Quebec" (now safe within our brains). Yet not
-one of these things, however splendid or tumultuous
-or tender, was then too splendid or tumultuous or
-tender for our mood. Nor could one of them stir
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>us so potently as the picture that came often that
-evening to our minds. Here was the gaudy, dismal,
-roaring street, its roar sometimes settling into
-a kind of silence through which the heart longs
-for voice of woman or bird to penetrate; and
-there, seen over the high wall, was the old man
-who owned "Quebec," playing bowls with several
-happy children in the twilight, and half-hidden
-by the dense border of hollyhock, red-hot poker,
-blush roses, nasturtium, and sunflower; and the
-house itself, looking more distant than it was,
-in that sweet light, seemed to possess those
-calm, impregnable high places of the wise, than
-which, says Lucretius, there is no possession
-more desirable.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>March</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>Just before dawn, I came to a cleft high in
-the hills, so that I could only see a little copse of
-oak and hazel, and in the dying moonlight a
-thousand white islands of cloud and mountain</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Totus conlucens veste atque insignibus albis.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>The night had gone, and the day had not come;
-and the little copse had the serious, brooding air
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>which all things have at that hour, and especially
-when the land is tender with the first hope of spring
-and in that reverie—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in4'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cette rêverie</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Que ne pense à rien.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>For what I saw seemed but the fragments of something
-which night had built for its own delight, and
-as they became clearer and clearer they had more
-and more the appearance of being unbuilt and
-dissolved. But, gradually, the birds were let out
-and they sang. Their songs, on the wintry hill,
-which I had last visited in summer, broke upon
-the silence as in summer they never do, like the
-opening of the door of a room that is empty but
-has once been gay with fire and books and men;
-and sweet though the blackbird was, and shrill the
-missel-thrush, their songs were awful, and said
-that "a large part of the earth is still in the
-urn unto us." The grass, which had truly been
-of no colour, though my urgent memory persuaded
-me that it was green, began to awake to
-colour, and, while in the shadow of the copse
-the dusk was impenetrable, the light reached
-a knoll where there was dead bracken still.
-"Colour," said Novalis, "is an effort of matter to
-become light," and for one moment the grass
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>upon that knoll ceased to strive and was light.
-A plover that wheeled close by disappeared and
-was but a glow.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I went on, and on a lower slope the ploughman
-was beginning to plough in the shadow. Grim
-and worthless looked the work, until I looked
-round and saw the dawn that was being prepared.
-But I watched too carefully, for I saw it all. Ever,
-as it grew, statelier and richer, I said to myself,
-that in a little while it would be perfected: yet
-still I watched and I began to think of those who
-saw it, as I had seen it before, from windows of
-towns, as they rose for work, or as they douted the
-candles and put away cards or books, and paused
-for perhaps a minute, and gazed as they never
-gazed at human beauty, because, though they
-revered it, they feared it also, and though they
-feared it they were fascinated. I thought of those
-that leapt up at it; those that mourned because
-they had seen it pass so often before into a common
-day; those that, on inhospitable roads, saw it and
-neglected it, or cursed it after a night in which
-they had drunk their last poor earnings altogether.
-If it would but last ... I had been looking at
-it and had not seen it, and when I dropped these
-thoughts I knew that it was gone, the slowly
-prepared and solemn dawn which made the
-splendid spring of that year.</p>
-
-<div id='fp120'  class='figcenter id007'>
-<img src='images/i_307.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>DUFFWS MOUNTAIN</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>Then I took a path which led out of sight of
-the white crested mountain and down among larches
-and oaks.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The wind was changing the grass from green to
-silver, and back again, rhythmically. In the pallid
-herbage at the edge of the wood it produced many
-little sounds, the combination of them barely louder
-than the sound which fancy makes among tombs;
-and yet that little concert passed into the ear and
-heart, giving a sympathy with the thousand minute
-sorrows of the inanimate world and a feeling that is
-part of the melancholy so importunately intruding
-on a spring day. But there, too, was trefoil,
-delicatest herbage of the early year, with its trick
-of globing and preserving rain upon its foliage,
-so that it is more delicate still in the grey dawn.
-One stalk with all its leaf singularly fine and small
-had grown out of a scar in a teazel stem.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So I came into a valley, and there was one
-white house in it, with a green, glowing, and
-humming garden, and at the door a woman who
-might have been the Old Year. It was one of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>those white houses so fair that in the old time a
-poet compared a girl's complexion with them, as
-with lilies and foam. It held all the sun, so that
-suddenly I knew that in another valley, farther
-south and farther east, the rooks were making the
-lanes sleepy with their busy talk; the kingfishers
-were in pairs on the brooks, whose gentle water
-was waving and combing the hair of the river
-moss; the gold of the willow catkin was darkened
-by bees; over an old root of dock was a heaving
-colony of gleaming ants; perhaps the chiffchaff
-had come to the larches and the little green
-moschatel was in flower with large primroses
-among the ash stoles in wet woods; and in the
-splendid moments of the day the poplars seemed
-to come into the world, suddenly, all purple....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Yet here there was no rich high-hedged lane,
-no poplar, no noise of rooks, but only a desolate
-brown moorland crossed by deep swift brooks
-through which the one footpath ran, and this white
-house, like a flower on a grave, recalling these
-memories of other valleys; so that I forgot that
-near by the birches stood each in a basin of foam
-from the dripping of mist and rain, and that I
-had not yet seen a thrush's nest in any hawthorn
-on those hills. Therefore, I counted that house
-as lucky for me as the Welshman's hazel-stick
-in the tale that is told in Iolo Morganwg's life.</p>
-
-<div id='fp122'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_313.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>DUFFWS MOUNTAIN IN MIST</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>This is the tale.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>A Welshman, with a fine hazel-stick in his
-hand, was once stopped on London Bridge by an
-Englishman, who asked whence he came. "From
-my own country," said the Welshman churlishly.
-"Do not take it amiss," said the Englishman;
-"and if you will tell me what I ask, and take my
-advice, it will be much for your good. Under
-the roots of the tree from which came your
-stick, there are great treasures of gold and silver;
-if you can remember the place, and will take me to
-it, I will make the treasure yours."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Now knowing that the fellow was a magician,
-the Welshman, though at first unwilling to be a
-party in this strange thing, at length agreed, and
-went with him to Craig-y-Dinas and showed him
-the hazel-tree. They dug out the root and found
-a broad flat stone underneath, which covered the
-entrance to a cave. They went in, the magician
-warning the Welshman lest he should touch a bell
-that hung in the middle of their path. At the
-spacious further end of the cave, they saw many
-warriors lying asleep in a circle, with bright armour
-on, and weapons ready at hand. One of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>warriors, refulgent above all the rest, had a jewelled
-and golden crown along with the shield and battle-axe
-at his side.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>At the feet of the warriors, in the middle of
-the circle, they saw two immense heaps, the one of
-gold, the other of silver, and the magician told the
-Welshman that he might take away as much as he
-could carry from either of the heaps. So he took
-much gold. The magician took nothing. On their
-way out of the cave he again warned the Welshman
-lest he should touch the bell. But should he touch
-it, said the magician, some of the warriors would
-surely awake and ask "if it was yet day": to which
-he must at once answer: "No, sleep thou on,"
-whereupon the warriors would sleep again. And
-this the Welshman found to be truth when he
-staggered under his gold and grazed the bell; but
-remembering the other's words, he said: "Sleep
-thou on" when the warriors asked if it were day;
-and they slept.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When they had left the cave, and closed the
-entrance, the magician told the Welshman that he
-might return to the cave whenever he wished;
-that the warriors were the knights of King Arthur,
-and the warrior with the jewelled and golden
-crown was King Arthur; that they were awaiting
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>the day when the Black Eagle and the Golden
-Eagle should go to war; for on that day the
-trembling earth would toll the bell, and at that
-sound the king and the knights of the king would
-awake, take their weapons, overthrow the Saxon,
-recover the island of Britain, and again establish
-their king at Caerlleon, in justice and in peace and
-for ever. But the Welshman spent his gold. He
-went again to the cave; he overloaded his back
-with gold; he stumbled and the bell rang; he
-forgot the password. And the knights rose and
-leaned upon their elbows, and one of them stood
-up and took away his gold and beat him and thrust
-him out and closed the mouth of the cave; and
-though he and many others made all the hill sore
-with their digging, the cave was not found again.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>April</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>For half a day there was now a world of snow,
-a myriad flakes falling, a myriad rising, and nothing
-more save the sound of rivers; and now a world of
-green undulating hills that smiled in the lap of the
-grey mountains, over which moved large clouds,
-sometimes tumultuous and grey, sometimes white
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>and slow, but always fringed with fire. When the
-snow came, the mountains dissolved and were not.
-When the mountains were born again out of the
-snow, the snow seemed but to have polished the
-grass, and put a sharper sweetness in the song of the
-thrush and the call of the curlew, and left the
-thinnest of cirrus clouds upon the bare field, where
-it clung only to the weeds. So, in this dialogue
-of mountain and snow, nothing was easily remembered
-or even credible, until I came to the
-foot of a hill which hazels and oak trees crowned.
-The snow was disappearing and the light came precipitately
-through it and struck the hill. All the
-olive and silver and leaden stems of oak and hazel
-glowed together and made a warm haze and changed
-the hill into an early sunset cloud out of which
-came the cooing of wood-pigeons. The mountains
-lay round, grey, faint, unimportant, about to pass
-away; the country that lay between them and the
-hill was still in mist. So the hill rose up crowned
-and garlanded like a statue in a great hall of some
-fair woman of whom one wonders what art can persuade
-her to stay on that cold pedestal for ever. The
-wood-pigeons cooed continually; and there was the
-hill, using all the sunlight, as a chrysanthemum will
-do in a London street. It lived; it appealed to all
-the sense and brain together; it was splendid; it
-was Spring's, and I do not know of anything else
-that mattered or was, for the time. Very sweet it
-was to see the world as but a shining green hill
-and a shining brown wood, with a wood-pigeon for
-a voice, while all other things that had been were
-gone like the snow. That there was also a wind I
-knew only because it brought with it the scent of a
-farmyard behind: for it had motion but no sound.
-Something in me was content to see the hill as a
-monument of Spring that might endure for ever,
-that the wood-pigeons might coo their song; and
-saw that it made possible the sound of bells in an
-evening landscape, of wheat in sheaves, and quiet
-beeches and doves among them. Yet I climbed to
-the wood, and saw that last year's leaves were too
-thick yet for a flower to pierce them; and that
-same wind had found a brittle, dead ash-tree in
-which to sing a cold November song; and the
-pigeons clapped their wings and flew away. And
-that cold November song made me remember
-against myself the old legend of the child who
-played with fairies, but came once with her mother
-and saw them no more.</p>
-
-<div id='fp126'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_321.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>COMING NIGHT, NEAR BEDDGELERT</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>There were, says the story, at a small harbour
-belonging to Nefyn, some houses in which several
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>families formerly lived; the houses are there still,
-but nobody lives in them now. There was one
-family there to which a little girl belonged; they
-used to lose her for hours every day; so her mother
-was very angry with her for being so much away.
-"I must know," said she, "where you go for your
-play." The girl answered that it was to Pin-y-Wig,
-"The Wig point," which means a place to
-the west of the Nefyn headland; it was there, she
-said, she played with many children. "They
-are very nice children,—much nicer," said the child,
-"than I am." "I must know whose children
-they are," was the reply; and one day the mother
-went with her little girl to see the children. It
-was a distance of about a quarter of a mile to Pin-y-Wig,
-and after climbing the slope and walking a
-little along the top they came in sight of the Pin.
-It is from this Pin that the people of Pen-yr-Allt
-got water, and it is from there they get it still.
-Now after coming near the Pin the little girl raised
-her hands with joy at the sight of the children.
-"Oh, mother," said she, "their father is with them
-to-day; he is not with them always; it is only sometimes
-that he is." The mother asked the child
-where she saw them. "There they are, mother,
-running down to the Pin, with their father sitting
-down." "I see nobody, my child," was the reply,
-and great fear came upon the mother; she took
-hold of the child's hand in terror, and it came to
-her mind at once that they were the <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Tylwyth Teg</span></i>.
-Never afterwards was the little girl allowed to go
-to Pin-y-Wig: the mother had heard that the
-<span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Tylwyth Teg</span> exchanged people's children with
-their own.</p>
-
-<div id='fp128'  class='figcenter id008'>
-<img src='images/i_327.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>ABERGLASLYN</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>Yesterday, the flower of the wood-sorrel and
-the song of the willow-wren came together into the
-oak woods, and higher up on the mountain, though
-they were still grey, the larches were misty and it
-was clearly known that soon they would be green.
-The air was full of the bleating of lambs, and though
-there was a corpse here and there, so fresh and
-blameless was it that it hardly spoiled the day.
-The night was one of calm and breathing darkness;
-nor was there any moon; and therefore
-the sorrowful darkness and angularity of early
-spring valleys by moonlight, when they have no
-masses of foliage to make use of the beams, did
-not exist. It was dark and warm, and from the
-invisible orchard, where snow yet lay under the
-stone wall, came a fragrance which, though it was
-not May, brought into our minds the song that
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>was made for May in another orchard high among
-hills:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Have you ne'er waked in the grey of the day-dawn</div>
-      <div class='line'>Whitely to stand at the window scarce seen,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Over the garden to peer in the May-dawn</div>
-      <div class='line'>Past to the fruit-close whose pale boughs not green</div>
-      <div class='line'>Slowly reveal a fresh faintness a-flutter</div>
-      <div class='line'>White to the young grass and pink to the sky?</div>
-      <div class='line'>O, then a low call to waking we utter:</div>
-      <div class='line'>"Bluth, lasses, apple-bluth spirts low and high."</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Out, lasses, out, to the apple-garth hasten—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Nay, never tarry to net your glad hair—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Here are no lovers your kissed shoes to fasten</div>
-      <div class='line'>(O, for the days when girls' feet may go bare).</div>
-      <div class='line'>O'er the dim lawn the may-rime yet lingers,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Pallid and dark as the down of the dawn—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Gather your skirts in your delicate fingers,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Stoop as you run o'er the almond-hung lawn.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Look through the trees ere dawn's twilight is over—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Lo, how the light boughs seem lost in the stars;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Everywhere bluth the grey sky seems to cover</div>
-      <div class='line'>Quivering and scented, new spring's kisses' scars.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Wet are the blossoms to wash your faint faces—</div>
-      <div class='line'>Bury your faces cheek-deep in their chill;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Press the flushed petals and open your dresses—</div>
-      <div class='line'>So—let them trickle your young breasts to thrill.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Winter has wronged us of sunlight and sweetness,</div>
-      <div class='line'>We who so soon must be hid from the sun;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Winter is on us as summer's completeness</div>
-      <div class='line'>Faint-hearted drops down a tired world undone;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Brief is the bloom-time as sleepy maids' laughter</div>
-      <div class='line'>Who know not one bed-time 'tis summer's last day.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Though from the heart of the rose they have quaffed her.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Come, lasses, come, ere our rose world falls grey.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>We had talked long into the night, and then as
-sleep came, out of this darkness peered the early
-timorous warble of a blackbird, and gradually all
-the birds in orchard, hedge, and wood made a thick
-mist or curtain of innumerable and indistinguishable
-notes through which still crept the bolder note of
-that same nearest blackbird. As the night lost its
-heaviness, though not its stillness, the continuous
-mist of songs grew thicker and seemed to produce
-or to be one with the faint darkness which so
-soon was to be light. It seemed also to be making
-the landscape which I saw being made, when I
-looked out. There, was the side of the hill; there
-the larches, the dark hedges, and the lingering snow
-and the orchard: they were what I had seen before,
-but changed and increased; and very subtle, plaintive,
-menacing, vast, was the work, though when
-the light had fully come, once more the larches,
-the hedges, and the orchard were as if they had
-never been sung to a new order of beauty by the
-mist of songs, and yet not the same, any more than
-a full coffin is the same as the lips and eyes and
-hands and hair, of which it contains all that we
-did not love. And still there were many songs;
-but you could tell who sung each of them, if you
-wished.</p>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>III</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>At the end of the month, when already the
-cuckoo had come and the blackthorn flowers among
-hawthorn branches were deceiving those who desired
-May, I went again to the hill where the wood-pigeons
-had cooed. I sat in a room in sight of it,
-during a cloud-gathering sunset. The white houses,
-which had earlier been like remnants of winter
-snow, were now like flowers. They and the misty
-larches and the birches gave a nuptial splendour to
-the old hills. Once more the land stood in preparation,
-as it stands year after year, so that one might
-think it expected a new dynasty of gods to come
-on May day, as often happened in the old time.
-And in the oaks and hazels the wood-pigeons cooed
-again. But when the sunset was perfect, they
-ceased as if they also feared and loved the white
-and green lines of cloud that lay over the hills—of
-a white and green which I had only seen together
-before in a crimpled, tender cabbage cut in two
-and lying half in bright water for the cook. Then
-the silence grew and grew, exciting and paining
-and pleasing and never satisfying the ear; so that
-I knew not whether the silence or the speech that
-preceded it was the more mysterious. For him
-that has ears there is nothing more expressive than
-speech; but it is never unequivocal as silence is.
-The two are perhaps handmaidens to one another
-and inseparable parts in the universal harmony,
-although Maeterlinck says that a silent child is
-wiser than Plato eloquent.</p>
-
-<div id='fp132'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_335.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VIEW OF MOELWYN</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>A cuckoo had been singing, but now I heard it
-not; no longer did the yellow-ammer insist, the
-thrush gossip, the blackbird muse; the sounds of
-the house were dead: and I saw a hundred
-cows, some lying down, some moving so lazily—like
-sailing ships on a wide sea—that I could
-not see the changing of their pattern on the
-grass, and I was entangled in the unfathomable
-dream of the unending hills and the unending
-valleys.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In the room hung a landscape of savage hills,
-cloven by dark shadows and bright streams, and
-the glass reflected the calm grass and the hill
-and the oak and hazel woods which thus mingled
-with the picture at times and made a strange
-palimpsest of winter and spring. Now one and
-now the other predominated, until some one
-came in, as three cuckoos flew crying overhead,
-and sang this song, which gave the victory to
-spring:—</p>
-
-<div>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_338.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE MAIDS OF CAERMARTHENSHIRE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>1st verse.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Mo-li merch-ed Cym-ru lân A fyn y gân a'r de - lyn</span></div>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Nid oes de-styn yn un man Mor anwyl gan y bech-gyn,</span></div>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Ac nid oes ferch-ed yn y tir Fel merch-ed Sir Gaer-fyrdd-in.</span></div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>2nd verse.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Mae eu gruddiau glân i gyd Yn ca-rio gwrid y rho-syn,</span></div>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Ac mae lliw y li-li gun Ar wedd pob un o ho-nyn';</span></div>
-      <div class='line in2'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Mae rhos a li - li hardd-a'r tir Ar rudd-iau Sir Gaer-fyrdd-in.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>And something like these were the Welsh
-words, which were by Watcyn Wyn:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Song and the harp desire to raise</div>
-      <div class='line'>To sweet Wales praise for its women;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Lads and their hearts have not one theme</div>
-      <div class='line'>So dear, no dream so clinging;</div>
-      <div class='line'>There are no maidens in the land</div>
-      <div class='line'>Like the maiden band of Caermarthen....</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Of modest looks and nimble feet,</div>
-      <div class='line'>They are just as fleet as the wind's wings;</div>
-      <div class='line'>Dearly and lovesomely each floats</div>
-      <div class='line'>Red petticoats out farther;</div>
-      <div class='line'>They dance it swiftly through the earth,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The maids who had birth in Caermarthen....</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>When men would love they desire the way</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of these; for, I say it in earnest,</div>
-      <div class='line'>One is worth two or even three</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of the usual free brave women.</div>
-      <div class='line'>If I take a wife I shall kiss the braids</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of one of the maids of Caermarthen.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp134'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_341.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A HAYFIELD NEAR PORTMADOC</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><em>May</em></h3>
-</div>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>All the morning I had walked among the
-mountains, and snow had fallen; but gradually I
-descended, and found a hawthorn standing all white
-and alone; and, at first, the delicacy of the country
-had an air of unreality, as if it were but a fancy
-provoked by the grim, steep, cold heights. Nor,
-at first, were the small farmhouses quite so real as
-the crags I remembered. As I approached them,
-I seemed to be revisiting lands that belonged to a
-fictitious golden past; but as I came up to them,
-I was not undeceived, as I should have expected to
-be. How sweet and grave were the young larches!
-The brooks were not running as I had heard them
-up among the hills, but as brooks would run if I
-read of them at home and at ease in the verses of
-some tender poet, or as they will when I remember
-them many years hence. The sound of the world
-was heard only as the laughter of youthful voices
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>by the trout pools, or again as the pealing of bells
-that presently grew and swelled and bubbled until
-the valley in which they pealed overflowed with
-the sound, and the moment of their ceasing was
-not marked. So at last I gave up some of the
-pleasure of sight and hearing and smell under the
-influence of those very senses. For a fancy came of
-a kind that is not easily avoided when spring and
-our readiness for it come together. And the fancy
-was that I was coming into a land whither had
-fled the transient desirable things of childhood
-and early youth. Especially was it the land to
-which had fled the acquaintances of that time, who
-were known, perhaps, only for one day—one spring—with
-whom intimacy began to flower, and then
-death or some less perfect destroyer intervened and
-"slit the thin-spun life" and gave an unwithered
-rose into our keeping—the memory of a laugh, a
-revelation, a catch of fish. We did not know them
-long enough to have doubts, self-questionings, the
-egotistical indulgences in letters and conversations
-of which we sometimes drink so deep that we taste
-the lees and know futility. Or they passed away
-as childish games do: we made an appointment
-and never kept it, and so we never knuckled the
-marble or saw the child again. We knew them
-once, golden-haired, and with laughter which no
-sigh followed, with clear voices in anger or love.
-These grow not old! And with them are some of
-those who were once as they, the friends who were
-once acquaintances: for who does not pleasantly
-(or bitterly) remember the first fresh moments
-when, like a first glass, our friends, with all their
-best qualities perhaps unknown, were tasted carelessly,
-the palate quite unsoiled and in no need of
-the olives of charity; or the moments when, with
-tastes and aims not yet mutually discovered, we
-were yet dimly conscious of the end, seeing the
-whole future under vague light? Some of these
-we can—and I did—recall as if the happy voices
-had not died, but had simply made way for harsher
-or sadder tones, and had fled here to keep an
-immortality. I heard them on the fresh warm
-air. And with them hovered those I saw but once—in
-a crowd, at a wayside inn—and desired; and
-at my evening inn some empty chairs were not
-wholly in vain. Thus did the shadow of the
-mountain fall far over the soft lands below.</p>
-
-<div id='fp136'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_347.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>All sign of snow had left the hills, when
-long before sunrise, but not before the east had
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>begun to grow serious with thoughts of dawn, I
-came upon a rough meadow, where a solitary thorn
-was white with flower—or of that colour which
-white is in the dusk. It reminded me of snow,
-but prettily defying the mountains, it meant all
-May. And it happened that the day then being
-born was perfect May. The east opened, and the
-close-packed, dwarfed hills were driven out of it
-like sheep, into the gradual light. From that
-moment until the day passed in a drift of purple
-and dim cloud, all things were marvellously clear.
-In the hedges, on the rough meadows, and in the
-steep wastes under the cliffs, there were hundreds
-of hawthorns flowering, and yet they were not
-hundreds, but one and one and one.... They
-were as a crowd of which we know all the faces,
-and therefore no crowd at all; and one by one
-these were to be saluted. Not only the white
-thorns, but the oaks in the large fields, and even the
-ashes and alders by the brooks were each distinct.
-If I had raised my head, I should have seen, indeed,
-that the mountains were in haze, and that what I
-had just passed was in haze. But I never saw, or
-wished to see, for more than a quarter of a mile,
-and within that distance all things were clear and
-separate, like books which oneself has handled and
-known, every one. Even the daffodils under a
-hazel hedge never became a patch. The women,
-at gateways or among the cows, stood out like one
-or two statues in a large vacant hall. One field
-had in it twelve isolated oak trees, and that they
-were twelve I saw clearly, and wondered and
-admired, and never dreamed of thinking of them as
-just a number of oaks. One by one the footpaths,
-to left or right, went up to one of the oaks or
-thorns, and, untrodden, disappeared suddenly. And
-I could not but recall the lovely clear pictures in
-old Welsh poetry and story which had on winter
-nights reminded me of May. And chiefly this,
-from the <cite>Mabinogion</cite>, was in my mind.</p>
-
-<div id='fp138'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_353.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VIEW OF LLANGOLLEN</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>"'I was,' said Kynon, 'the only son of my
-mother and father, and I was exceedingly aspiring,
-and my daring was very great. I thought there
-was no enterprise in the world too mighty for me,
-and after I had achieved all the adventures that
-were in my own country, I equipped myself and
-set forth through deserts and distant regions. And
-at length it chanced that I came to the fairest
-valley in the world, wherein were trees of equal
-growth; and a river ran through the valley, and a
-path was by the side of the river. And I followed
-the path until mid-day, and continued my journey
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>along the remainder of the valley until the evening;
-and at the extremity of an plai I came to a
-large and lustrous castle, at the foot of which was
-a torrent. And I approached the castle, and there
-I beheld two youths with yellow curling hair, each
-with a frontlet of gold upon his head, and clad in a
-garment of yellow satin, and they had gold clasps
-upon their insteps. In the hand of each of them
-was an ivory bow, strung with the sinews of the
-stag; and their arrows had shafts of the bone of the
-whale, and were winged with peacock's feathers;
-the shafts also had golden heads. And they had
-daggers with blades of gold, and with hilts of the
-bone of the whale. And they were shooting their
-daggers.</p>
-
-<div id='fp140'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_359.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A LONELY SHORE NEAR PENRHYN DEUDRAETH</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>"'And a little way from them I saw a man in
-the prime of life, with his beard newly shorn, clad
-in a robe and a mantle of yellow satin; and round
-the top of his mantle was a band of gold lace. On
-his feet were shoes of variegated leather, fastened
-by two bosses of gold. When I saw him, I went
-towards him and saluted him, and such was his
-courtesy that he no sooner received my greeting
-than he returned it. And he went with me towards
-the castle. Now there were no dwellers in the
-castle except those who were in one hall. And
-there I saw four-and-twenty damsels, embroidering
-satin at a window. And this I tell thee, Kai, that
-the least fair of them was fairer than the fairest
-maid thou hast ever beheld in the Island of Britain,
-and the least lovely of them was more lovely than
-Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, when she has
-appeared loveliest at the Offering, or on the day
-of the Nativity, or at the feast of Easter. They
-rose up at my coming, and six of them took my
-horse, and divested me of my armour; and six
-others took my arms, and washed them in a vessel
-until they were perfectly bright. And the third
-six spread cloths upon the tables and prepared
-meat. And the fourth six took off my soiled
-garments, and placed others upon me; namely, an
-under vest and a doublet of fine linen, and a robe,
-and a surcoat, and a mantle of yellow satin with
-a broad gold band upon the mantle. And they
-placed cushions both beneath and around me, with
-coverings of red linen; and I sat down. Now the
-six maidens who had taken my horse unharnessed
-him, as well as if they had been the best squires in
-the Island of Britain. Then, behold, they brought
-bowls of silver wherein was water to wash, and
-towels of linen, some green and some white; and
-I washed. And in a little while the man sat down
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>to the table. And I sat next to him, and below
-me sat all the maidens, except those who waited on
-us. And the table was of silver, and the cloths
-upon the table were of linen; and no vessel was
-served upon the table that was not either of gold
-or of silver or of buffalo horn. And our meat was
-brought to us. And, verily, Kai, I saw there every
-sort of meat and every sort of liquor that I have
-ever seen elsewhere; but the meat and the liquor
-were better served there than I have ever seen
-them in any other place....'"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Only the brain of the man who saw things thus
-could describe that clear day in May.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>June</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>It was a country of deep, calm pastures and
-slow streams that might have been in England,
-except that smiling women at the last farm I had
-passed were talking in Welsh and calling one another
-Mary Margaret, or Blodwen, or Olwen; and that far
-off, like a dim thought or a half-forgotten dream,
-a mountain conversed with the most distant clouds.</p>
-
-<div id='fp142'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_365.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE SHORE NEAR HARLECH—AFTERNOON</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>Along my path there had been many oaks and
-doves among their leaves; and deep hedges that
-sent bragging stems of briers far out over the footpath,
-and hid delicate single coils of black bryony
-in their shadows; and little bridges of ferny stone,
-and beneath them quiet streams that held flower
-and tree and cloud in their depth, as if in memory;
-and great fields where there was nothing, or perhaps
-a merry, childlike, scampering stoat that pursued a
-staring, trotting rabbit. I had walked for ten miles
-and had not seen a man. But it would be more
-just to ignore such measurements, since the number
-of milestones was unimportant; so also were the
-hours. For the country had given me the freedom
-of time. Dreams of brains that had long been dead
-became stronger than the strong right hand of to-day
-and of yesterday. And without asking, these
-verses sang themselves in my head:—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Midways of a walled garden,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>In the happy poplar land,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Did an ancient castle stand,</div>
-      <div class='line'>With an old knight for a warden....</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Across the moat the fresh west wind</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>In very little ripples went;</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>The way the heavy aspens bent</div>
-      <div class='line'>Towards it, was a thing to mind.</div>
-    </div>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The painted drawbridge over it</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Went up and down with gilded chains;</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>'Twas pleasant in the summer rains</div>
-      <div class='line'>Within the bridge-house there to sit.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>There were five swans that ne'er did eat</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>The water weeds, for ladies came</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Each day, and young knights did the same,</div>
-      <div class='line'>And gave them cakes and bread for meat.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>I remembered them with a curious sense of
-being uncontrolled, or, if you will, of being controlled
-as one is in sleep, and not by friends, railways,
-clothes, and meals, as one usually is. I had
-entered that golden age that is always with us,
-where there are no wars except in the <cite>Iliad</cite> and
-<cite>Paradise Lost</cite>. At one stile, I saw Aeneas,—in
-mediæval mail,—revealing a blue-eyed, confident
-face, with a slippery mouth set firm by his destiny.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The country was without obvious character.
-An artist could have made nothing of it. Nothing
-in the arrangement of meadow and corn-land, wood
-and reedy water, made a clear impression on the
-mind: they might, perhaps, have been rearranged
-without attracting attention. So the landscape
-occupied the eyes little and the mind not at all.
-Wandering over it with no emotion but rest, I
-made of it what I would. In different moods I
-might have met there Proserpina, or Camilla, or
-Imogen. But chiefly I met there the vague
-persons of poetry, like Shelley's Ione, which are
-but as large eyes or eloquent lips discerned in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>fleeting darkness. And I was too deeply lost to
-be at once rescued by the sight of a dignified,
-untenanted house, whose shrubberies I wandered
-into, along a rabbit run as deep as a footpath
-in the short, hawk-weedy grass. Docks and
-milk-thistles had not yet overpowered lupin
-and phlox in the deep borders that still had a
-tinge of race in their order and luxuriance. The
-martins of the eaves had added to the pompous
-portico of the house, so that it had the look of
-wild rock. The roses had sent up enormous
-talons from their roots and tyrannised everywhere.
-There were no flowers in the garden more delicate
-than the enchanter's nightshade and nipplewort of
-the shrubbery, and the short wild poppies that
-could just flower in the old gravel of the paths.
-For this one moment the wild and the cultivated
-were at peace together, and the harmony gave the
-place an unreality,—so that even at the time I had
-a dim belief that I was in a garden out of a book,—which
-made it a fit haven for my mood. Then, in
-a corner, among ruined, ivy-covered elms, I found
-a stupid, mournful grotto of wildly-shaped stones
-wildly accumulated: at the threshold lay a penny
-doll that played a part between comedy and tragedy
-very well. Going near, I saw, not quite so clearly
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>as I see it now, a long-bearded, miserable man,
-reclining, with fair, unwrinkled brow and closed
-eyes and shining teeth. On his long sloping forehead
-a high-mounted spider dreamed; yet he did
-not stir. A snake, in a fold of his coat beneath his
-beard, disregarded the heaving of his chest. His
-breath filled the grotto as a cow's would have done,
-and it was sweet. And I turned away suddenly,
-put to shame by what my soul, rather than my eyes,
-had recognised as Pan. For I ought to have been
-prepared and I was not.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>And as I walked home in an embowered lane,
-some floating, clashing insects troubled me, and
-that night, whilst I enjoyed the coming on of sleep,
-I could not but fancy that I heard the whisper of
-a god's garment, and wondered had I troubled a
-god's meditation and walk.</p>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>To-day, it is another country, as different
-from the last as old age from maturity. No
-longer does the greenfinch in the hawthorn say a
-hundred times that it has five young ones and is
-happy. No longer does the perfect grass, seen
-betwixt the boles of beeches, burn against the
-sky. For that dream of mountains has come true,
-and so many and so great are they that I can
-compare my loneliness only with what I have
-fancied to be the loneliness of one planet that now
-is and again is not in a tumultuous, grey, midnight
-sky, or of a light upon a ship between clouds and
-angry sea, far off.</p>
-
-<div id='fp146'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_373.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>IN THE WOODS, FARCHYNYS, BARMOUTH ESTUARY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>The thought of steam and electricity never
-truly touches the primitive sense of distance; and
-here, even the milestones among the foxgloves are
-somewhat insolent, when they say that the town
-under that farthest hill is thirty miles away; for
-the hill, unknown to me, is farther away than any
-place I have ever seen, and I would rather say
-that it is thirty years away and in the dim future
-or the dim past.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In their shape, there is something human, or
-suggesting human work, in these hills. Castles, or
-less noble masonry, noble when fallen, look thus
-in their ruins, and become thus tricked with delicate
-verdure and flowers. A great plough driven at
-random through frosty country would have turned
-up half-mile clods like these. And at twilight there
-is a ridge like an extended giant with raised knees
-and chin thrown back; and often I have seen a
-horned summit, like a Pan, capture the white
-moon.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>This mountain ahead is not only old, but with
-its uncovered rock and broken boulders and hoary
-streams and twisted trees, that look as if a child
-had gathered garlands and put them in play upon
-the ancient stems, it declares mightily, if vaguely,
-the immense past which it has seen. There are
-English hills which remind us that this land also
-was once in Arcady: they are of a golden age,—the
-age of Goldsmith, of Walton, of Chaucer if
-you like, or of Theocritus; but they speak of
-nothing since; they bear no wrinkles, no wounds,
-no trophies. But by this mountain you cannot be
-really at ease until in some way you have travelled
-through all history. For it has not been as nothing
-to it that Persia, Carthage, Greece and Rome, and
-Spain have been great and are not. It has been
-worn by the footprints of time which have elsewhere
-but made the grass a little deeper or renewed
-the woods. It has sat motionless, looking
-on the world; it has grown wrinkled; it is all
-memory. Were it and its fellows to depart, we
-should not know how old we were; for we should
-have only books. Therefore I love it. It offers
-no illusions. Its roads are winding and rough.
-The grass is thin; the shelter scarce; the valley
-crops moderate; the cheese and mutton good;
-the water pure; the people strong, kind, intelligent,
-and without newspapers; the fires warm and bright
-and large, and throwing light and shadow upon
-pewter and brass and oak and books. It offers
-no illusions; for it is clear, as it is not in a city or
-in an exuberant English county, that the world
-is old and troubled, and that light and warmth and
-fellowship are good. Sometimes comes a thought
-that it is a huge gravestone, so is it worn, so
-obscure and brief its legend. It belongs to the
-past, to the dead; and the dead, as they are more
-numerous, so here they are greater than we, and
-we only great because we shall one day be of their
-number. You cannot look at it without thinking
-that the time will come when it may be, and we
-are not, nor the races of men—</p>
-
-<div id='fp148'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_379.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>INCOMING TIDE, NEAR BARMOUTH</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">senet quiete.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>And hearing an owl among its oak trees, its age
-was quaintly expounded to me by that passage in
-the <cite>Mabinogion</cite> where the Eagle of Gwernabwy
-seeks a wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"The Eagle of Gwernabwy had been long
-married to his wife, and had by her many children.
-She died, and he continued a long time a widower;
-but at length he proposed a marriage with the Owl
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>of Cwm Cawlwyd. But afraid of her being young,
-so as to have children by her, and thereby degrade
-his own family, he first of all went to inquire about
-her age amongst the aged of the world. Accordingly
-he applied to the Stag of Rhedynfre, whom
-he found lying close to the trunk of an old oak,
-and requested to know the Owl's age.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"'I have seen,' said the Stag, 'this oak an acorn,
-which is now fallen to the ground through age,
-without either bark or leaves, and never suffered
-any hurt or strain, except from my rubbing myself
-against it once a day, after getting up on my legs;
-but I never remember to have seen the Owl you
-mention younger or older than she seems to be at
-this day. But there is one older than I am, and
-that is the Salmon of Glynllifon.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"The Eagle then applied to the Salmon for the
-age of the Owl. The Salmon answered, 'I am as
-many years old as there are scales upon my skin,
-and particles of spawn within my belly; yet never
-saw I the Owl you mention but the same in
-appearance. But there is one older than I am,
-and that is the Blackbird of Cilgwri.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"The Eagle next repaired to the Blackbird of
-Cilgwri, whom he found perched upon a small
-stone, and inquired of him the Owl's age.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>"'Dost thou see this stone upon which I sit,'
-said the Blackbird, 'which is now no bigger than
-what a man can carry in his hand? I have seen
-this very stone of such weight as to be a sufficient
-load for a hundred oxen to draw, which has suffered
-neither rubbing nor wearing, save that I rub my
-bill on it once every evening, and touch the tips
-of my wings on it every morning, when I expand
-them to fly; yet I have not seen the Owl either
-older or younger than she appears to be at this
-day. But there is one older than I am, and that
-is the Frog of Mochno Bog; and if he does not
-know her age, there is not a creature living that
-does know it.'</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"The Eagle went last of all to the Frog, and
-desired to know the Owl's age. He answered, 'I
-never ate anything but the dust from the spot
-which I inhabit, and that very sparingly; and
-dost thou see these great hills that surround and
-overawe this bog where I lie? They are formed
-only of the excrements from my body since I have
-inhabited this place; yet I never remember to
-have seen the Owl but an old hag, making that
-hideous noise Too-hoo-hoo, always frightening the
-children of the neighbourhood.'"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Farther along the road, and not wholly cut off
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>from a world of richer fields, there is the ruin of
-an abbey, which, being the work of human hands,
-says the same thing more clearly. It is but a cave
-of masonry topped by umbrageous ivy that swells
-over its edge like froth over a tankard. Altar
-and bells and books and large abbatic oven are
-gone. Only the jackdaw remains. The winds
-blow through and through the ruins. There is
-moss; here are flowers,—yellow cistus and cinque-foil,
-purple fumitory, pearly eyebright, and still
-some white stitchwort stars. But nothing dies
-save what we let die, and here, as in a library, on
-this once consecrated ground, meet all religions.
-It has room for the Druid. Its ivy leaves repeat
-the praises of moon and sun. It will deny no
-fairy and no god an altar and a place for dancing.
-I have gone there with many fancies and many
-memories of books, and there they find a home.
-And if, as some have done, you go there with
-willingness and an inability to accept what dreams
-have hitherto been dreamed, you may seem there,—in
-favourable hours, when the casements of all the
-senses are opening wide upon eternity, and all
-things are silent as fishes, and the curves of bramble
-and brier among the masonry seem to be thinking,—to
-be on the edge of a new mythology and to
-taste the joy of the surmises of him who first saw
-Pan among the sedges or the olives.</p>
-
-<div id='fp152'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_387.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>BARMOUTH BRIDGE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><em>July</em></h3>
-</div>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>For three days I walked and drove towards
-Llyn-y-Fan Fach. On the first day I passed through
-a country of furnaces and mines, and the country
-had been exquisitely made. The gently swirling
-lines of hill and valley spoke of the mountains far
-off, as the little waves and the foam coming up
-the shore like chain-mail speak of the breakers out
-in the bay. Every large field that was left unburdened
-by house or factory had a fair curve in it,
-and even the odd pieces of land were something
-more than building sites and suggested their context.
-But as we passed through, only the highest
-points gave the curious eye any satisfaction, since
-the straight lines of houses, the pits and the heaps
-of refuse, and the enormous factories, obscured
-the true form of the land. Even so might some
-survivor of a deluge look upon the fair land he
-knew; for we lacked the courage to think of hill
-and valley as having undergone an inevitable
-change, which in a century might be known to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>have brought beauty with it, as changes do.
-Everything was brand-new, but not fresh. A
-wanton child might have done it all, had he been
-large and rich and careless enough to do it thus,
-<i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">nec numero nec honore</span></i>. Or had it been all built to
-the music of the organ-grinder whom I met playing,
-for the joy of playing, "The Absent-minded
-Beggar"? The staring, mottled houses of various
-stone and brick, which had no character save what
-comes of perfect lack of character, might have been
-made by some neglected boy who had only played
-with penny trains and motor cars and steamers and
-bicycles. Phlox and foxglove, and sweet-william
-and snapdragon, and campanula and amber lilies
-could not make sweet the "rockeries" of hot-looking
-waste. The streets, named after factory magnates,
-had been made in long blocks and broken up by
-the boy, thoughtlessly. The factories themselves,
-noble as some of the furnaces were by day and
-night when sweating men moved to and fro before
-them, were of the same origin. They were mere
-cavities, and one marvelled that the smoke from
-their chimneys was permitted to waver and roll in
-the same way as clouds the most splendid and
-august. Many were already in places decayed.
-That they had been glazed only to have the
-windows pierced by the stones of happy children
-was all in their favour that could be seen. Their
-roofs had fallen in, and neither moss nor ivy had
-had time to grow thereon; the splintered wood
-was still new and white. Middle-aged men of
-fifteen and aged men of thirty were in keeping
-with their ludicrous senility. A millionaire playing
-at imitating antiquity could have done no
-worse. The decay was made in Birmingham.
-Time had been sweated and had done its work
-very ill. Here and there, indeed, there were
-scenes which perhaps an unprejudiced mind would
-have found sublime. There were pools, for example,
-filled with delicate grass and goldfish
-amongst it. They were made yesterday, and yet
-had they fed little brooks for ages they could not
-have been more shining and serene as sunset poured
-all its treasury into their depths. Passing one,
-soon after dawn, and before the night-workers had
-left the factory, the reeds in it stood up just so that
-no storied pool had more the trick of antiquity.
-Near by, one green field, set amidst houses and a
-factory, was enclosed by abundant but ill-stretched
-barbed wire, without gate or possible entrance of any
-kind. In the middle was a tattered notice, warning
-trespassers. No cloister was ever more inviolate.
-The grass grew as it liked, and all whom the heavy
-headstones of the buildings had spared in the rash
-burial of rural divinities must there have danced;
-and the grass shone as if with recent festival, and
-its emptiness hinted at a recent desertion. All the
-other fields had been carelessly defaced by broken
-cheap china and tin kettles and rags, and like cattle
-that have a day to live and are insulted with the
-smell of their lucky companions' blood, they were
-dreary and anxious. Footmarks, but not one
-footpath, crossed them in all directions.... A
-Battersea kitchen after Christmas is adorned like
-this land with similar spoiled toys. Their pathos is
-the same in kind; but here it is worse, because
-a grown-up person—the original grandeur and
-antiquity of the land as shown in the one green
-field—has burst in and marred the completeness of
-the children's play.</p>
-
-<div id='fp154'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_393.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>MISTY MORNING, NEAR BARMOUTH</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>At the edge of one village in this country
-there was a new public-house, the worst of the
-buildings in the place, because the most impudent.
-It glittered and stank and was called "The Prince
-of Wales." Inside, English and some Welsh voices
-were singing together all of Britain's most loved
-songs; perhaps "Dolly Gray" predominated, and
-in its far-floating melody the world-sorrow found
-a voice; for a harper played on the harp while
-they sang. The landlord liked to have the harper
-there, because he drew customers and kept them,
-and it was clear that he himself, when he had time,
-loved music, since he took his pipe out of his
-mouth to hum the last words of a song about a
-skylark, a dead mother, and some angels. The
-next song was "The Rising of the Lark," which
-begins thus:</p>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_401.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp156'  class='figcenter id009'>
-<img src='images/i_399.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A LONELY SHORE, BARMOUTH ESTUARY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>No one sang except the harper; the landlord
-frowned, remarked that "Evan was very drunk tonight,"
-and offered to stop the song if we objected,
-and then began to talk. He said that the harper
-was a poor sort of man; had been a schoolmaster
-and was a "scholar"; had been to prison for an
-unmentioned crime; and was now a man with a
-wife, whom he supported by odd jobs and by "my
-own charity, for," explained the host, "I let him
-have his drinks free." He was fond of his harp,
-as if it had been a horse or a barrel of beer; and
-boasted, when drunk, that he knew that he was
-the sixth of his family who had played the harp,
-and that same harp, and that he was the last of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>true harpers. So we went into the taproom and sat
-down with fourteen miners and the harper, who was
-doing his best with "God bless the Prince of Wales."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>"You are fond of your National Anthem," said
-a voice which might have cut glass and perhaps
-came from Glasgow.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Whereupon, with sublime, gentle anger the
-harper played and sang the National Anthem of
-Wales:—</p>
-
-<div>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_402.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-</div>
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">Mae hen wlad fy Nhadau yn anwyl i mi, Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, en-</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">wogion o fri; Ei gwrol ry - fel - wyr, gwlad-garw-yr tra</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">mad, Dros ryddid goll-a-sant eu gwaed. Gwlad! Gwlad!</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">pleid - iol wyf i'm Gwlad, Tra môr yn fur i'r</span></div>
-      <div class='line'><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">bur hoff bau, O bydded i'r hen-iaith ba - rhau.</span></div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp158'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_405.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VIEW FROM BONTDDU, DOLGELLY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>The words cannot, of course, be translated, but
-the following are as much like them as a photograph
-of Snowdon is like Snowdon. "Dear to me
-is the old land of my fathers, a land of bards and
-minstrels of great name. Her brave warriors, best
-of patriots, poured out their blood for freedom.
-Ancient and mountainous Wales, Paradise of the
-bard, every valley and cliff is lovely in my sight;
-through the feeling of patriotism, how alluring is
-the ripple on her rivers and brooks. If the enemy
-treads my country under foot, the old language of
-the Welsh lives as it used to live; the Muse suffers
-not, in spite of the horrid hand of the traitor, nor
-yet the melodious harp of my country." And the
-chorus says: "My country, my country, I am
-bound up with my country. While the sea is a
-boundary to the fair and well-loved place, may the
-old language last." ...</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>While he sang, we saw that the harper was a
-little, pale, snub-nosed, asthmatic man, with red
-hair and a delicate, curved mouth and heavy-lidded,
-pathetic, sentimental, but unsympathetic grey eyes,
-and glowing white fingers. He leaned over his
-instrument as a mother over her child when she is
-bathing it, or as a tired man reaping with a reaping-hook.
-He evidently knew what he liked; yet, as
-the evening wore out, he lost himself sentimentally
-over the poorest tunes. He seemed to love listening
-at least as well as playing. Slowly we emptied
-the house of all its Englishmen by encouraging
-him to play the airs which the harp had known
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>through all its life. He played the plaintive best.
-Such quick happiness as "New Year's Eve," which
-begins—</p>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_408.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>moved his sorrow more and his sentiment less, and
-his white fingers stuck among the strings.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When he rose at 11 <span class='fss'>P.M.</span> to go, he could carry
-the harp, but hardly himself; and we led him home,
-murmuring sad ditties lovingly. As he stumbled
-in, he cursed his wife, a frail burden of middle age,
-singularly like himself, and then continued to
-murmur.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The light of one candle and the beauty of the
-harp almost made beautiful the room in which we
-stood, while he sat with his instrument. The
-garish wall-paper was mildewed with lovely gleaming
-white fur, near the windows; elsewhere it was
-decorated by a large tradesman's photograph of Mr.
-Chamberlain, a copy of "The Maiden's Prayer,"
-and the usual framed mourning verses on relatives;
-there was, too, a plush mandoline, and in the
-hearth a frond of the royal fern, and over it photographs
-of two generations of big consumptive men.</p>
-
-<div id='fp160'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_411.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THUNDERY WEATHER, NEAR DOLGELLY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>For a time the harper hesitated between the
-English tunes which were most in favour at "The
-Prince of Wales" and the songs for which the harp
-was made, when it was made for a bard who could
-string a harp, make a song for it, and accompany
-himself on the strings. We praised the Welsh airs,
-and though he seemed to ignore us, he played
-nothing else. We saw only his eyes, his white flickering
-fingers, and the harp, and as the triumphant,
-despairing, adoring melodies swept over it, this
-foolish casket of a man seemed to gather up all
-that could live of the lovers and warriors of a thousand
-years. No epitaph could be so eloquent of
-transient mortality. He had but to cloud or
-brighten those cruel, sentimental eyes, and to
-whisper to the dead instrument, to utter all that
-they had ever uttered. To this heir had come the
-riches of many hearts and he squandered them in a
-taproom for beer, and here for our amusement, as if
-they had been no better than gold and he a spendthrift.
-When sometimes he paused and silence
-came, or only the bark of a pump was heard, we
-seemed to have been assisting at the death and the
-last carouse of the souls for whom the music spoke.
-They lived only in his fingers and the harp, and with
-these they must die. They were as fleeting as pale
-butterflies in storm or as the Indian moonflower
-that blossoms only after sunset in May. Yet again
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>and again the fingers and the harp consented to
-their life, and reassured, and half-believing that,
-because he had so much in trust, he could not die,
-we sat down and fell asleep, and waking again, were
-not surprised to find, as the July dawn approached,
-that the harper was harping still. For in that holy
-light that twittered among the strings, he was an
-immortal harper, doomed for ever to go on, because
-there was so much to be done, and because, as the
-landlord had said, he was the last of his race.</p>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>III</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>I went on, and was over the edge of this
-country, "built to music and so not built at all,"
-when the sun began to rise behind me. Before, a
-range of hills stood up against the cold sky with
-bold lines such as a happy child will draw who has
-much paper and a stout crayon, and looked so that
-I remembered the proverb which says, that if a man
-goes up Cader Idris at night, by dawn he is dead,
-or mad, or a poet. They were immense; they filled
-half the sky; yet in the soft light that felt its way
-glimmeringly, and as if fearfully, among their vast
-valleys and along their high crags, they looked like
-ruins of something far more mighty; the fields also,
-on this side of them, and all the alder-loving streams
-and massy woods, were but as the embers of something
-which the night had made and had only half
-destroyed before its flight. And it was with surprise
-that, as I took my eyes off the prospect and looked
-down and in the hedge, I saw that I was in a place
-where lotus and agrimony and vetch were yellow,
-and the wild rose continued as ever to hesitate
-between red and white.</p>
-
-<div id='fp162'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_417.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>NEAR PENMAEN POOL—NOON</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>It was not long possible to turn my back upon
-the rising sun, and when I looked round, I saw
-that the country I had left had been taken into the
-service of the dawn and was beautiful two miles
-away. Factory and chimney and street were bent
-in a rude circle round the sun, and were as the
-audience of some story-teller, telling a new tale—silent,
-solemn, and motionless, round a fire; and
-over them the blue clouds also were silent, solemn,
-and motionless, listening to the same tale, round
-the sun.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When I went on towards the hills, they by
-that time looked as if they had never known the
-night; and sweet it was to pass, now and then, a
-thatched, embowered cottage, with windows open
-to the scented air, and to envy the sleepers within,
-while I could see and recognise the things—the sky
-and earth and air, the skylarks singing among the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>fading stars, and the last cuckoo calling in the silent,
-vast and lonely summer land—which make dreamless
-sleep amidst them so divine, I had long not
-known why. For half the day there was nothing
-to remember but sudden long views that led,
-happily, nowhere, among the clouds or the hills,
-and farms with sweetly smiling women, and jutting
-out of every hedge-bank a little <i><span lang="cy" xml:lang="cy">pistyll</span></i> of fair water,
-curving and shining in the heat, over a slice of stone
-or through a pipe, into the road. These things the
-memory has to work to remember. For, in truth,
-the day was but as a melody heard and liked. A
-child who, in the Welsh story, went to the land of
-the fairies, could only say that he had been listening
-to sweet airs, when he returned after a long stay.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>But at length, when I was among the hills, the
-ferns whispered all along the stony hedges, and on
-a cold stream of wind came the scent of invisible
-hay, and a great drop of rain shook all the bells on
-a foxglove stalk, and the straight, busy rain came
-down, and the hills talked with the heavens while it
-thundered heavily. The doves and jays only left
-the hedge as I passed within reach of them. The
-crouching partridge did not stir even after her eye
-caught mine. The lightning was as a tree of fire
-growing on the northern sky. The valley below
-was a deep and tranquil mere, in which I saw a
-church and trees and fields, as if they were reflections
-of things in the sky, and, like reflections in
-water, they were reverend in their beauty. The
-rain in my face washed off more than the weariness
-of a long day's walk, and I rejoiced, and found it
-easy to catch a train six miles off, which had seemed
-impossible.</p>
-
-<div id='fp164'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_423.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VIEW OF CADER IDRIS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>
-  <h4 class='c013'>IV</h4>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>On the next day I was near the lake, Llyn-y-Fan
-Fach, and high up among hills, which had in
-many places outgrown their grassy garments, and
-showed bare cliffs, senates of great boulders, and
-streams of sliding fragments of stone like burnt
-paper. The delicate mountain sheep were panting
-in the heat, or following the shifting oasis of a
-shadow that sometimes moved across the hill; a
-horse stood nervously still, envying the shadow
-which he cast upon the ground. The world, for
-hours, was a hot, long road, with myself at one
-end and the lake at the other, when gradually I
-descended into a gentle land again.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Far off, church bells were celebrating the peace
-and beauty of the morning as I turned into a lane
-of which more than twenty yards were seldom
-visible at one time; and I lost sight of everything
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>else. Tall hedgerow elms and orchard trees held
-blue fragments of the sky among their leaves and
-hid the rest. Here and there was a cottage among
-the trees, and it seemed less the work of human
-hands than the cordon and espalier trees, apple and
-pear, and the fan-shaped cherry on the wall, with
-glowing bark. July, which had made the purple
-plum and the crimson bryony berry, had made it
-also, I thought. The lane was perhaps long enough
-to occupy an hour of the most slow-paced tranquil
-human life. Even if you talked with every
-ancient man that leaned on his spade, and listened
-to every young linnet that was learning to sing in
-the hazels, you could not spend more than two hours
-in passing along it. Yet, more than once, as I was
-pausing to count the white clusters of nuts or to
-remind myself that here was the first pale-blue
-flower of succory, I knew that I took up eternity
-with both hands, and though I laid it down again,
-the lane was a most potent, magic thing, when I
-could thus make time as nothing while I meandered
-over many centuries, consulting many memories
-that are as amulets. And even as I walked, the
-whole of time was but a quiet, sculptured corridor,
-without a voice, except when the tall grasses
-bowed and powdered the nettles with seed at my
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>feet. For the time I could not admit the existence
-of strident or unhappy or unfortunate things. I
-exulted in the knowledge of how cheaply purchased
-are these pleasures, exulted and was yet humiliated
-to think how rare and lonely they are, nevertheless.
-The wave on which one is lifted clear of the foam
-and sound of things will never build itself again.
-And yet, at the lane's end, as I looked back at the
-long clear bramble curves, I will confess that there
-was a joy (though it put forth its hands to an
-unseen grief) in knowing that down that very lane
-I could never go again, and was thankful that it
-did not come rashly and suddenly upon the white
-highroad, and that there is no such thing known
-to the spirit as a beginning and an end. For not
-without cool shadow and fragrance was the white
-highroad.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then, after some miles up a hot and silent hill, I
-came to the lake under the chin of a high summit,
-and it was cool....</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>At the end of the twelfth century, when Owen
-Gwynedd in the north and Lord Rhys in the
-south made little of English kings, a farmer's
-widow lived with one son at Blaensawdde, near
-the lake. She sent her cattle on to the Black
-Mountain under the care of her son. And the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>cattle liked Llyn-y-Fan because the great stones on
-its shore gave them shade, and because the golden
-stony shallows were safe and sweet, and no water
-was finer than that in the little quiet wells of the
-Sawdde brook.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Watching his cattle there one day, the youth
-saw a lovely girl, with long, yellow hair and pale,
-melancholy face, seated on the surface of the lake
-and looking down into the mirror of the water, for
-she was combing her hair. Some say that she was
-rowing with golden sculls up and down the lake in a
-golden boat, so ample was her hair. The young
-man was moved by her loveliness to hold out to her
-his own barley-bread and cheese, which was all
-that he had with him. And she came near, but
-she would not accept the food; when he tried to
-touch her, she slid away, saying—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>"O thou of the crimped bread,</div>
-      <div class='line'>'Tis not easy to catch me";</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and so disappeared, as a lily when the waves are
-rising.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The youth told his adventure to his mother,
-who advised him to take unbaked dough for the
-girl, instead of his crisp barley bread.</p>
-
-<div id='fp168'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_431.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>MIST ON CADER IDRIS</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>The next morning he was at the lake before
-dawn, and saw cold ripples on the water and a
-cloud on the highest of the hills. But as the light
-overcame the cloud and began to warm the ripples,
-he saw some of his cattle in danger on the steep
-side of the lake, where the rains run almost perpendicularly
-down to the margin and cut weals of
-naked red earth in the mountain-side. And as he
-was running round to the cattle, he saw the girl
-upon the water, and again held out his hand to offer
-his unbaked dough. Again she refused, and said:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>"O thou of the moist bread,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I will not have thee."</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then, with smiles, she disappeared.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The youth told his second adventure to his
-mother, and she advised him to take slightly baked
-bread. The Welsh have a proverb: "Better is
-cookery than kingship"; and she being skilled
-with the oven, baked him the bread.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The next morning he was again at the lake.
-The cold ripples turned to gold and then to silver,
-and the cloud left the mountain; and he saw the
-wind making grey O's and V's on the water, until
-it was almost evening, and behind him the oak
-trees in the Sawdde valley gleamed where his
-homeward way would be, when he saw several
-cows walking on the water, and then the girl
-moving towards him. He ran forward into the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>water; he held out the bread, and she took it, and
-promised to marry him on the condition that he
-should not give her three causeless blows; if he
-did, she would disappear. Suddenly she left him,
-and he would have cast himself in with despair, if
-she had not returned with another as beautiful and
-in the same way, together with a majestic, tall,
-and hoary man, who promised to bestow the girl
-upon him if he could distinguish her.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>So the two girls stood before him; and the
-youth, casting down his eyes in thought and perplexity,
-saw one thrust her little foot forward, and
-he noticed how her sandals were tied, because he
-had before studied the beauty of her ankles and
-feet; and he chose rightly. The old man promised
-that they should have as many cattle, horses, sheep,
-and goats as she could count of each without
-drawing breath. The girl counted quickly, 1, 2,
-3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on, and all the beasts
-came up from the lake; and the young man went
-with the girl and married her, and lived at Esgair
-Llaethdy beyond Blaensawdde, and there she bore
-him three sons.</p>
-
-<div id='fp170'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_437.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>IN THE WOODS, BERWYN</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>But one day, when they were to go together to
-a christening, she was reluctant, saying that it was
-too far to walk; and he bade her take a horse. She
-asked for her gloves, and when he returned with
-them, he found her still delaying, and flicked her
-shoulder with one and said pettingly, "Go, go."
-And she reminded him that he had given her a
-causeless blow.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>On another day, at a wedding, she gave way
-to tears, and he tapped her shoulder to admonish
-her. And she reminded him that he had given
-her two causeless blows.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Many years later, at a funeral, she laughed, and
-again he tapped her shoulder. And she turned, and
-called her cattle and horses and sheep and goats
-by name—the brindled cow, the white speckled,
-the mottled, the white-faced cows;</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>"And the grey Geingen</div>
-      <div class='line'>With the white bull</div>
-      <div class='line'>From the court of the king;</div>
-      <div class='line'>And the little black calf</div>
-      <div class='line'>Though suspended on the hook,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Come thou also quite well home";</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and the four grey oxen ploughing in the fields.
-They followed her to the lake, and behind them
-grew the furrow made by the plough which the
-four oxen still drew, and they all entered the lake.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Her sons desired to see her, and she appeared
-again to her son Rhiwallon, and told him that he
-was to be a healer of men, and gave him prescriptions,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>and promised that if he needed her, she
-would come again. So she often met them near
-the lake, and once walked with them towards
-Myddfai, as far as Pant-y-Meddygon, where she
-showed them herbs and their virtues. And they
-became famous, and good physicians. They were
-physicians to Rhys Gryg of South Wales; and the
-last of their descendants who practised at Myddfai
-was buried in 1739 at Myddfai church.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>August</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>On a fine, very hot day I had to wait three
-hours for a train, and should have left the bald
-junction for that time, if I had not seen there
-a poet of my acquaintance, contentedly reading
-Spenser on the central platform. I sat down with
-him, but he preferred reading to talking, and I
-looked over his shoulder to read:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Begin then, O my dearest sacred Dame!</div>
-      <div class='line'>Daughter of Phœbus and of Memorye....</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div id='fp172'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_443.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>ABERDOVEY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>And I could not sufficiently admire his fortitude,
-until, on the arrival of a train, he left the book on
-the seat, and walked down alongside the train. It
-stopped ten minutes, and he talked with persons
-in three different carriages before it left. He came
-back unperturbed, and told me briefly that —— from
-Patagonia was in the train, with —— the bard from
-North Wales, and a friend from London. Seeing
-me surprised, he explained that every Saturday in
-the summer he spent entirely on the platform, waiting
-for surprises of this kind. Four trains stopped
-there before I left, and each seemed to be laden
-with friends and acquaintances,—some who lived
-in distant parts and even overseas, and some
-whom he had not seen for years. And some of the
-persons whom he greeted he had never seen before,
-which was a good reason for greeting them; he
-had perhaps heard of them, or they of him; and so
-they talked.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The liking of Welshmen for Welshmen is very
-strong, and that not only when they meet on
-foreign soil, as in London, but in their own land.
-They do not, I suppose, love their neighbours more
-than other men do, but when they meet a fellow-countryman
-for the first time they seem to have
-a kind of surprise and joy, in spite of the commonness
-of such meetings. They do not acquiesce in
-the fact that the man they shake hands with is of
-their race, as English people do. They converse
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>readily in trains: they are all of one family, and
-indeed if you are Welsh, not only can you not avoid
-meeting relatives, but you do not wish to. Small
-news about the coming and going of people travels
-among them rapidly, and I have never got out of
-a train in Wales without feeling that I shall meet
-some one whom I should like to meet, on the
-platform or in the first street. They like their own
-land in the same way. I do not easily believe in
-patriotism, in times of peace or war, except as a
-party cry, or the result of intoxication or an article
-in a newspaper, unless I am in Wales.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I did not know before that any save sellers of
-newspapers were happy in railway stations, and as
-my train went out, I passed the poet at his Spenser
-again and recalled the poem called "Howell's
-Delight," which was written by a young, unfortunate
-prince of North Wales in the twelfth
-century:—</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>A white foam-crowned wave flows o'er the grave</div>
-      <div class='line'>Of Rhuvawn Bevyr, chief of Rulers.</div>
-      <div class='line'>I this day hate England, a flat and inactive land,</div>
-      <div class='line'>With a people involved in every wile;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love the land where I had the much-desired gift of mead,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Where the shores extend in tedious conflict;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love the society and the numerous inhabitants</div>
-      <div class='line'>Therein, who, obedient to their Lord,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Direct their views of peace;</div>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>I love its sea-coast and its mountains,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Its cities bordering on its forests, its fair landscapes,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Its dales, its waters, and its vales,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Its white seamews, and its beauteous women;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love its warriors, and its well-trained steeds,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Its woods, its strongholds, and its social domicile;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love its fields clothed with tender trefoil,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Where I had the glory of a lasting triumph;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love its cultivated regions, the prerogative of heroism,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Its far extended wilds, and its sports of the chase,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Which, Son of God! are great and wonderful.</div>
-      <div class='line'>How sleek the majestic deer, and in what plenty found;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I achieved with a push of a spear the task of honour</div>
-      <div class='line'>Between the Chief of Powys and fair Gwynedd;</div>
-      <div class='line'>And if I am pale in the rush of conflict,</div>
-      <div class='line'>'Tis that I know I shall be compelled to leave my country,</div>
-      <div class='line'>For it is certain that I cannot hold out till my party comes,</div>
-      <div class='line'>A dream has revealed it, and God says 'tis true.</div>
-      <div class='line'>A white foam-crowned wave flows o'er the grave,</div>
-      <div class='line'>A white bright-foaming wave boldly raves against the towns,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Tinted the time it swells like glittering hoar.</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love the marches of Marioneth,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm;</div>
-      <div class='line'>I love the nightingale on the privet wood</div>
-      <div class='line'>In the famous vale of Cymmer Deuddwfr,</div>
-      <div class='line'>Lord of heaven and earth, the glory of Gwyneddians.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Though it is so far from Keri to Caerliwelydd,</div>
-      <div class='line'>I mounted the yellow steed, and from Maelienydd</div>
-      <div class='line'>Reached the land of Reged between night and day.</div>
-      <div class='line'>Before I am in the grave, may I enjoy a new blessing</div>
-      <div class='line'>From the land of Tegyngyl of fairest aspect!</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>The flowers by the road, wood-betony, sage,
-mallow, ragwort ... were dry; the larches, that
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>were fitted to the hillside like scales or breast
-feathers, were dry; but a mountain stream, which
-many stones tore to ribbons, was with me for miles,
-and to the left and to the right many paths over the
-hills ran with alluring courses for half a mile,
-like happy thoughts or lively fancies, and ended
-suddenly. The mountains increased in height as
-the sun sank, and their sides began to give a home
-to enormous, still shadows and to rich, inaccessible
-groves among the clefts. And in the end of the
-afternoon I came to a village I knew, which grew
-round an irregular lawn.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>From the inn, I could see the whole village.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The limes before me were full of light; the
-green grass beyond was tending to be grey. There
-were not far fewer people than usual in the neighbourhood,
-yet the calm was great. It seemed to
-have something to announce and to call solemnly
-for silence; the voice of a child crying, a man with
-shining cuffs, was an extraordinary impertinence.</p>
-
-<div id='fp176'  class='figcenter id010'>
-<img src='images/i_451.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>SUNNY AFTERNOON, CARDIGAN BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>But two reclining cows were calm enough,
-and in the middle distance an oak was stately
-enough. A tramp, his wife, and five children spoke
-with quiet, husky voices that were sad enough.
-A passage from <cite>Hyperion</cite> which I recalled was
-noble enough. Six bells that rang three miles off
-and some white downs of cloud on the horizon
-were in harmony. It was a time when the whole
-universe strove to speak a universal speech, the
-speech of the stars in their courses, of the flower
-that is beautiful, of the soul that aspires, of the
-mind that thinks. But, as it seemed, owing to
-my fault, the effort was unsuccessful, and I rose
-hurriedly and left the village behind.</p>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>III</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>And while the hedgerows on one side of
-the road were in places rich with the heavy, horizontal
-sunshine that came through gateways on
-the other side, I saw the star-like shining of the
-windows of an old house on a hill. A difficult
-winding lane led up to it, and so long was the lane
-that between the road and the house a badger and
-a raven had their homes. When I came near the
-house one pallid angle of it glowed, and only where
-it glowed was it visible.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The house was perhaps two hundred years old—stately,
-grey as the old blackthorns in the hedge,
-and it was, perhaps because I knew of the fading
-race that had lived within it, the oldest thing
-among those old hills. It was more unchangeable
-than the most grim crag on the hills which had its
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>milkwhite harebell on that day. It was a survival
-from winter, from hundreds of winters, and therefore,
-though young in years, it spoke a language
-which time, knowing that the unchangeable is
-dead, had forgotten:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>A spirit calling in an old old tongue</div>
-      <div class='line'>Forgotten in lost graves in lonesome places;</div>
-      <div class='line'>A spirit huddled in an old old heart</div>
-      <div class='line'>Like a blind crone crouched o'er a long-dead fire....</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>Nothing ever happened among the Powells at
-——. The lawn was mowed; the fern from the hill
-was carted down; the little red apples ripened; the
-Powell hair turned from gold to grey. A stranger,
-indeed, heard much of them, but when he asked
-where they lived, he was told that there were
-thirty of them in the church and one at —— on
-the hill. Five generations of them had lived there,
-since the only conspicuous one of the family had
-died in the first war with Napoleon. Of those
-five, the last could only say that theirs had been
-the most desperate of quests, for they knew not
-what they sought. They had lived in dignity and
-simplicity, neither sporting nor cultured, yet loving
-foxhounds and books. Generation after generation
-of the children had learned "L'Allegro" and
-"Il Penseroso" from their fathers, and with all
-their happiness in that dim house, they learned to
-love "Il Penseroso" best....</p>
-
-<div id='fp178'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_457.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>A SUDDEN SQUALL, CARDIGAN BAY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><em>September</em></h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>In the afternoon I climbed out of a valley,
-descended again, and came on to a road that rolled
-over many little hills into many little valleys, and
-at the top of each hill grew the vision of a purple
-land ahead. But, for some miles, the valleys were
-solitary. There were brooks in them with cold,
-fresh voices, and copses of oak, and sometimes
-the smoke or the white wall of a house. There
-sang the latest of the willow-wrens, and among the
-blackthorns a bullfinch, with delicate voices. The
-air was warm and motionless; the light on oak
-and grass was steady and rich; the sky was low and
-leaning gently to the earth, and its large white
-clouds moved not, though they changed their
-shapes. But these things belonged to the brooks,
-the copses, the willow-wrens; or so it seemed,
-since that warm day, which elsewhere might have
-seemed so kind with an ancient kindness as if to one
-returning home after long exile, was not kind, but
-was indifferent and made an intruder of me. And I
-should have passed the stony hedges and the little
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>brooks over the road and the desolate mine, in the
-indifferent little worlds of the valleys, one by one,
-as if they had been in a museum, or as if I had been
-taken there to admire them, had it not been that on
-the crests of the road between valley and valley,
-I saw the purple beckoning hills far away, and that,
-at length, towards the last act of the dim, rich,
-long-drawn out and windless sunset, the road took
-me into a small valley that was different. Just
-within reach of the sunset light, on one side of the
-valley lay a farm, with ricks, outhouses, and two
-cottages, all thatched. In the corner of the field
-nearest to the house, the long-horned craggy cattle
-were beginning to lie down. Those cattle, always
-vast and fierce, seemed to have sprung from the
-earth—into which the lines of their recumbent
-bodies flowed—out of which their horns rose coldly
-and angrily. The buildings also had sprung from
-the earth, and only prejudice taught me that they
-were homes of men. They enmeshed the shadows
-and lights of sunset in their thatch, and were as
-some enormous lichen-covered things, half crag,
-half animal, which the cattle watched, together
-with five oaks.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There was not a sound, until a child ran to a
-pump, and sang a verse of some grave hymn lightheartedly,
-and filled a shining can with dark water,
-and disappeared.</p>
-
-<div id='fp180'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_463.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>ST. DAVID'S—BISHOP'S PALACE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>Then I raised my eyes, so that they crept swiftly,
-though not without feeling the weariness of the
-distance, over hill after hill to the one upon which
-the last, mild, enormous, purple dragon of the sunset
-was pasturing; yet I saw nothing in earth or
-sky which did not belong to those things, half crag,
-half animal, in the small valley, in happiness and
-peace that consented to the voice of the child.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then I passed the farm and saw a crimson fire
-casting innumerable arms about a room; I heard
-the rattle and click of the pump; and I knew that
-it was cold, that I had far to go, and that the
-desolation beyond the farm was illimitable.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>For such moods of the world are easily shut
-against us for some small thing, as the world of the
-little people was shut against the man in the tale
-which Gerald of Wales repeats:—</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>A priest of Gower, named Elidorus, told Gerald
-that when he was a schoolboy he was often beaten
-by his master. So one day he ran away and hid
-himself in a hollow among the alder roots at the
-edge of a stream. There he was safe, but had no
-food. And on the third day two wonderfully
-little men came to him and said that if he would
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>come with them, they would lead him to a happy
-and pleasant country. He therefore left his hiding-place
-and went with the little men through a
-country of wood and field and water that was
-beautiful, although they saw neither sun nor moon.
-At last they came to the court of the king, and
-Elidorus was presented to him; and, after looking
-at him carefully, the king gave him over to his
-young son. And the people of that country,
-though they were wonderfully little, were beautiful
-in shape and of a fair complexion, and they wore
-long hair that fell over their shoulders in the
-manner of women. Their horses and hounds were
-of a suitable size. The little people ate neither flesh
-nor fish, but lived on milk, which they concocted
-with saffron. They never took an oath; they
-always spoke the truth. Nor had they any kind of
-public worship, but simply kept and loved good
-faith. And their language was very much like
-Greek, as he afterwards said.</p>
-
-<div id='fp182'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_469.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>THE STACKS, NEAR TENBY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>The little people often went up into our world,
-and never returned without speaking harshly of
-men for their ambition and want of faith and constancy.
-Sometimes Elidorus went up with them.
-Sometimes he went up alone, but revealed himself
-to his mother only, telling her of his life and
-of the little people and their country. When he
-told her that gold abounded there, she asked him to
-bring her some golden thing as a gift. So he stole a
-golden ball from the son of the king and ran to his
-mother with it. But the little people pursued him,
-and in his haste he stumbled over the threshold
-of his mother's door and fell. He lost hold of
-the ball, and the little people picked it up and went
-away, laughing at him and taunting him. And
-when he rose up, he was ashamed and angry because
-he had stolen the ball. Then he would have gone
-back to the country of the little people, but,
-although he searched for a year, he could never
-discover the true path. In course of time he gave
-up the search and the hope of returning. He even
-went back to school and became a priest. But
-long afterwards, when he was an old man, he could
-never speak of his strange truancy without tears.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>October</em></h3>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>I</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>The rain and the wind had ceased, and in
-the garden the Painted Lady butterflies were
-tremulously enjoying the blue Michaelmas daisies,
-and an old man was gathering seeds of hollyhock,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>evening primrose, and foxglove, and putting
-them into white cups on the garden paths. In
-the hedges the bryony coils were crimson and
-green among thorn and hazel; the sparrows were
-thick in the elms, whose branches had snatched
-straws from passing waggons; one bare ash tree
-was all in bud with singing linnets. Over all was
-a blue sky, with throbbing clouds of rooks; and
-beyond all, over leagues of rocky pastures and
-grim oaks, the mountains,—and upon one of them
-a white flower of cloud or snow, above which
-presently rose many clouds, and in the midst of
-them a narrow pane of sky full of misty golden
-light, and behind that a land where Troy is still
-defended,—where still Camilla, loving war and
-maidenhood eternally, bounds over the unbending
-corn,—and where, in the hall of a castle, four-and-twenty
-damsels are embroidering satin, and the
-least lovely of them is lovelier than Gwenhwyvar,
-the wife of Arthur, "when she has appeared
-loveliest at the Offering, or on the day of the
-Nativity, or at the feast of Easter."</p>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>II</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>The last village was far behind. The last happy
-chapel-goer had passed me long ago. A cock
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>crowed once and said the last word on repose.
-The rain fell gently; the stems of the hazels in
-the thickets gleamed; and the acorns in the grassy
-roads, and under the groups of oaks, showed all
-their colours, and especially the rosy hues where
-they had but just before been covered by the cup.
-One by one I saw the things which make the
-autumn hedges so glorious and strange at a little
-distance: the yellow ash trees, with some green
-leaves; the hoary and yellow willows; the hawthorns,
-purple and crimson and green; the briers,
-with most hips where there were fewest leaves;
-the green brambles with red fruit and black; tall,
-grey, and leafless thistles with a few small crimson
-flowers; the grey-green nettles with purple stems;
-the ragwort flowers; and on the long, green, wet
-grass the fallen leaves shining under red and
-yellow oaks; and through the olive lances of hazel
-the fields shining in patines of emerald. Doves
-cooed in the oaks, pheasants gleamed below. The
-air was full of the sweetness of the taste of blackberries,
-and the scent of mushrooms and of
-crumbling, wild carrot-seeds, and the colour of
-yellow, evening grass. The birches up on the hills
-above the road were golden, and like flowers.
-Between me and them a smouldering fire once or
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>twice sent up dancing crimson flames, and the
-colour and perfume of the fire added themselves to
-the power of the calm, vast, and windless evening,
-of which the things I saw were as a few shells and
-anemones at the edge of a great sea. The valley
-waited and waited.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Then by the roadside I saw a woman of past
-middle age sitting silently. Her small head was
-poised a little haughtily on a blithe neck; her fine,
-grey, careful hair spared gloomy white forehead and
-round ears, which shone; her full, closed lips spoke
-clearly of both the sadness of to-day and the voluptuousness
-of yesterday. She was beautiful, and not
-merely because she had once been a beautiful girl.
-She had become mortal through grief, and though
-I could not see her crown, yet crowned she was.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Will you always, O sad and tranquil Demeter,
-sit by the wayside and expect Persephone?</p>
-
-<h4 class='c013'>III</h4>
-
-<p class='c012'>It was the last day of the month, and in a
-gently heaving land, which was broken every three
-or four miles by a sudden, castled crag, Autumn
-was perfect, but with just a touch of sublimity
-added to its beauty by the thought that, on the
-next day or the next, winter would fall upon her
-unsuspected, as Pizarro and the Spanish cavalry fell
-upon that noble Indian, Atahualpa, who had come
-up to them in peace and meekness and pomp, upon
-a golden litter, among thousands of his gentle
-subjects, making music and decorated with gold,
-and expecting to meet the gods.</p>
-
-<div id='fp186'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_477.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>ST. CATHERINE'S ROCK, TENBY</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>The bells of the cattle on broad, yellow lawns
-were ringing. Squirrels glowed in the road; the
-heavy rooks let fall the acorns among the leaves
-continually. The last beams of the sun reached
-now a circle of high bracken on a far-off hill, and
-reached it alone and transfigured it with strong,
-quiet light; and then made one brown hill seem to
-be consumed in a golden glow, while the next hill
-was sombre; and again devoted themselves to a
-group of beeches that shone ruddy, branch and leaf
-and bole, and divine and majestic and unrelated to
-the cattle passing underneath.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The sun went down; wild-duck and moorhen
-cried and scudded on the calm, winding, silver river
-at my feet; and in a field beyond, that retained so
-much liquid and lugubrious light as to seem a
-green water, some laughing boys in white and
-yellow played football, without regarding the silver
-and purple, frosty sky, to which, nevertheless, their
-shrill voices added something, from which their
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>movements took something, that was glorious and
-pathetic. And near by, dark oxen with rocking
-gait thrust their horns up into the sky as they
-approached the bridge.</p>
-
-<div id='fp188'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_483.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, NEAR SWANSEA</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>
-  <h3 class='c011'><em>November</em></h3>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c012'>The night had almost come, and the rain had
-not ceased, among the hills of an unknown country.
-Behind me, twelve desolate miles of hill and sky
-away, was a village; and on the way to it, half-a-dozen
-farms; and before me were three or four
-houses scattered over two or three miles of winding
-lanes, with an inn and a church. The parson had
-just come away from his poultry, and as his wife
-crossed the road with her apron over her head, I
-asked where the inn was, and whether it had a room
-ready in the winter. Two minutes after she had
-seen me—if she could see me in the dark lane—she
-had told me that if the inn had no room, I was not
-to go farther, but to stay at the vicarage. But the
-inn had a bed to spare, and there was good beer to
-be had by a great fire in a room shining with brass
-and pewter, and overhead guns and hams and hanks
-of wool; and the hostess was jocund, stout, and
-young, and not only talkative but anxious to be
-talked to, and she had that maternal kindness—or
-shall I call it the kindness of a very desirable
-aunt?—towards strangers, which I have always
-found in Welsh women, young and old, in the
-villages and on the moors. So there I stayed and
-listened to the rain and the fire and the landlady's
-rich, humming voice uttering and playing strange
-tricks with English. I was given a change of
-clothing as if I had asked and paid for it. Then I
-went to the vicarage, and because I said I loved
-Welsh hymns and Welsh voices, the vicar and his
-wife and daughter, without unction or preparation
-or a piano, sang to me, taking parts, some tremendous
-hymns and some gay melodies,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>Whence banished is the roughness of our years,</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>which made the rain outside seem April rain.
-They sang, and told me about the road I was to
-follow, until I had to go to my inn.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Next day, after paying what I liked at the inn,
-and promising the hostess that I would learn Welsh,
-I walked for twenty miles over stony roads gleaming
-with rain upon the white thorns and bloom on
-the sloes, and through woods where nothing brooded
-solemnly over grey moss and green moss on the
-untrodden, rotten wood, and up dry, ladder-like beds
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>of brooks that served as paths, over peat and
-brindled grass, and along golden hazel hedges,
-where grew the last meadow-sweet with herb-robert
-and harebell and one wild rose, and above
-little valleys of lichened ash trees; and sometimes
-beneath me, and sometimes high above, the yellow
-birches waved in the rain, like sunset clouds
-fettered to the ground and striving and caracoling
-in their fetters.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Again I came at nightfall to a strange farmhouse,
-and was honoured by being asked into the
-kitchen; again I was given dry clothes. The juicy
-mutton broke up like game. The farmer sang to
-me from the Welsh hymn-book and from a collection
-of old Welsh songs, in a room which was
-none the worse for a portrait of Miss Maud Millett,
-"The Soldier's Farewell," and the presence of a
-fierce-thoughted, mild-eyed young minister, who
-was the most majestic man I have seen since I first
-saw the shop-walkers at Maple's—the kind of man
-whom one supposes that the animals observe, and so
-learn to temper their contempt for us. This man
-had the strange whim to call the devil a gentleman,
-a poor distinction which I could not understand
-until he showed me a passage, that should be highly
-interesting to gentlemen and the residue of mankind,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>in one of the Iolo MSS. Beginning at the
-beginning, the MS. declares that Adam's eldest son
-was ungenteel, "a low vassal"; but Seth and Abel
-were genteel. The angels also, the tenth grade,
-who fell from heaven, were ungenteel, "through
-pride, which is the principal characteristic of weakness."
-Continuing, the writer says of Noah's sons
-that one was a lord, the second a gentleman, the
-third a servile clown. Either the usual order of the
-sons is changed, or Ham was held to be a gentleman
-because from him was descended Nimrod, and all
-destroyers are gentlemen. If this be true, then
-Japheth was a "servile clown,"—in spite of the fact
-that he was "the first who made a targe with a lake
-in it, to signify that he and his brothers possessed
-the whole world," inventing heraldry,—merely in
-order that ungentility might have a common fount.
-And thus we see that descent is efficacious to all
-except descendants of Japheth (or Ham), and that
-therefore the genealogies are waste paper, and a
-popular pursuit which has hitherto been regarded
-as harmless is proved to be also fraudulent....
-Then he went back to his books, which he allowed
-me to see. They were pretty, uncut editions of
-the profane classics; theology, Welsh history, and
-<cite>Grimm's Fairy Tales</cite>—all thumbed and pencilled.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>Frowning above was a photograph of Spurgeon,
-and a picture of Whitman from a chance number
-of an English weekly.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When I left on the next morning early, the
-farmer was threshing with an oaken flail in his
-barn; but he stepped out to tell me what he knew
-of the way through the bogs and over the hills,—for
-there was no road or path,—and to beg me not
-to go, and to ask me to pay what I had paid at
-my former inn, for my lodging.</p>
-
-<div id='fp192'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_491.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>VIEW NEAR MUMBLES, SWANSEA</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>The next twenty miles were the simplest and
-most pleasant in the world. For nearly the whole
-way there was a farm in every two miles. I
-had to call at each to ask my way. At one, the
-farmer asked me in and sat me by his peat fire to
-get dry, and gave me good milk and butter and
-bread, and a sack for my shoulders, and a sense of
-perfect peace which was only disturbed when he
-found that I could not help him in the verses he
-was writing for a coming wedding. At another,
-the farmer wrote out a full list of the farms and
-landmarks on my way, lest I should forget, and
-gave me bread and butter and milk. At another,
-I had but to sit and get dry and watch an immeasurably
-ancient, still, and stately woman, her
-face bound with black silk which came under her
-chin like a stock, and moving only to give a smile
-of welcome and goodwill. At another, they added
-cheese to the usual meal, and made the peat one
-golden cone upon the hearth, and brewed a pale
-drink which is called tea. Sometimes the shrill-voiced
-women, with no English, their hair flying
-in the wind, came out and shrieked and waved
-directions. In one of the houses I was privileged
-to go from the kitchen, with its dresser and
-innumerable jugs and four tea-services, to the
-drawing-room. It was a change that is probably
-more emphasised in Wales than elsewhere, since
-the kitchens are pleasanter, the drawing-rooms
-more mysterious, than in England, I think. The
-room was cold, setting aside the temperature, and
-in spite of crimson in the upholstery and cowslip
-yellow in the wall-paper and dreary green on the
-floor. There was a stuffed heron; a large pathetic
-photograph of man and wife; framed verses; some
-antimacassars, and some Bibles.... The room
-was dedicated to the unknown God. The farmer
-did not understand it; he admired it completely,
-and with awe, reverencing it as a priest his god,
-knowing that it never did him any good, and yet
-not knowing what evil might come if he were
-without it.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>At last, as I left landmarks behind in the rain,
-I reached a poor little house where a family of sixteen
-sat round the peat or went about their work,
-all preserving that easy dignity when their poverty
-is under the eyes of a stranger which I have ever
-found among the Welsh. Of his own accord, the
-farmer came with me over the worst part of my
-way—two apparently trackless miles—until I came
-to a road at last. He spoke no English; and yet I
-had, and think he had, a wonderful sense of satisfaction
-in our companionship of an hour, as he led
-me over undulating, boggy lands intersected by
-rivers,—which looked a little way off like an unpeopled
-continent in miniature, with lake and hill
-and stream,—and along the edges of steep crags that
-rose sheer from black brooks and grey foam, and
-above hollows inhabited by perfect, golden birches.
-It was a land which always comes back to me when
-the same cold rain, on the top of a London omnibus,
-beats the face and blurs the hurrying crowd and
-makes the ears tingle. Once, the rain stopped, and
-the air was calm, as we passed among decaying oaks,
-which were as a church full of men when the organ
-begins, and we no better than any one of them....
-He accepted money with as little offence as the
-others had given when they refused it. As a rule,
-I would rather drop a sovereign by the road than
-offer a man sixpence who has nothing of the
-lackey about him, though imitativeness has compelled
-me to do otherwise.</p>
-
-<div id='fp194'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_497.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>PENNARD CASTLE, GLAMORGANSHIRE</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>As he left me, a mist which he had probably
-foreseen suddenly cloaked me and hid everything
-except the road and its green edges, where the
-gentlest of winds shook the rain on the feathered
-grasses, but could not make it fall. The road was
-a river, shallow but swift, and for four miles there
-was not a house visible, except when the mist
-divided for a minute and showed, far away, a fair,
-shining, unshadowed valley, and a white house and
-motionless sheep, which I saw as a departed spirit
-might for a moment behold the earth; for the
-world was gone like last year's clouds. Yet again,
-the mist rose a little and showed lawns with a
-lovely dim light over the grass, as if the lawns had
-a light of their own which also made them seem
-aloof. And strangely sufficient was the mist, the
-hard road, and the moist stick in my hand, when
-my mood changed as when at night bells clash as if
-they were building the cathedral again with their
-noise, and we watch its pinnacles thus made among
-the stars, and joyously they clash so that we believe
-they will never cease; and suddenly they cease
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>and slowly toll. For the inn glimmered close by,
-and I heard the rustle of many sheep, and my brain
-began to prepare itself for meeting men again.</p>
-
-<h3 class='c011'><em>December</em></h3>
-
-<p class='c012'>Twenty miles from the sea, a little river leaves
-an underground lake, flows through a cave, and
-falls radiant from the darkness among steep rocks,
-and takes a course like a man's thoughts when they
-have the joy of an unknown impulse and no certain
-aim. There, the river always talks of Spring. It
-winds and studies all the country round,—castle
-and farm and inn and old graves,—with many
-sharp digressions, which I suppose it could not
-have done without, any more than I in a similar
-case. Now it shines and curves gently and looks
-over its bank at the cattle, and now, changing its
-voice, it is gloomy and intent among mossy stones,
-and now it leaps and is all foam over a ladder of
-crag. Suddenly it enters a steep, wooded valley,
-and falling over a perpendicular cliff, it is richly
-embowered, and always remembers Summer, and
-begins to please the trout where it swirls with
-shuddering foam or runs swiftly in the middle, and
-gloomily and slow under the alder roots. But in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>the wood, where birch and oak and hornbeam stand
-over it, it gains a look of great and growing age
-which mountain rivers have, and a shadow besets
-its cheerfulness, so unlike the happy prime of
-English waters among cowslip meadows. When
-it leaves the wood it is a masterly, full-grown
-stream that can turn a mill-wheel. Then it begins
-to pause in deep pools under shadowy bridges,
-where the otter slides for a moment over a slippery
-ledge and then can hide his path for fifty yards.
-There the girls stand and dip their vessels, and
-think for a minute while the vessels fill, and raise
-them again, spilling some, and show that the black
-water can shine as when it left the mountain ten
-miles away.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Leaving a hamlet near one bridge, the river
-runs through such a lonely land that even on
-stormy nights it is heard only by the groups and
-groves of oaks that guard the stony and tussocky
-pastures. Here and there, on either hand, a brook
-adds a murmur to its music. A throbbing flock
-of lapwings for ever wheels and gleams and calls
-over it. The royal fern basks on its edge. And
-there Autumn abides.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When it reaches the next village, the river is
-so yellow and poisonous that only in great floods
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>dare the salmon come up. There, with two other
-rivers, it makes a noble estuary, and at the head
-of that estuary and in the village that commands
-it, the old and the new seem to be at strife.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>On the one hand are the magnificent furnaces;
-the black, wet roads; the ugly houses, that have
-the one pleasing virtue of not pretending to be
-anything else, with their naïvely chosen names,
-such as "Bryn Gwyn Bach" and Mazawattee Villa;
-the cheap and pretentious chapels; yet all of them
-filled with people bearing the old names,—the
-women called Olwen, Myfanwy, Angharad,—loving
-the old songs, theologies, histories. I heard of
-one man there who once heard part of <cite>Robinson
-Crusoe</cite> told on a winter night. For a year he
-struggled and learned to read, and found no version
-in Welsh. Then he went to London, and while
-he helped to sell milk, learned to read English, and
-came back home with a copy of the desirable
-book.</p>
-
-<div id='fp198'  class='figcenter id003'>
-<img src='images/i_505.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
-<div class='ic001'>
-<p>OLD CASTLE KEEP, CARDIFF</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>On the other hand, there is the great water,
-bent as if it were a white arm of the sea, thrust
-into the land to preserve the influence of the sea.
-Close to the village stands a wooded barrow and an
-ancient camp; and there are long, flat marches
-where sea-gulls waver and mew; and a cluster of
-oaks so wind-worn that when a west wind comes
-it seems to come from them as they wave their
-haggish arms; and a little desolate white church
-and white-walled graveyard, which on December
-evenings will shine and seem to be the only
-things at one with the foamy water and the
-dim sky, before the storm; and when the
-storm comes the church is gathered up into its
-breast and is a part of it, so that he who walks in
-the churchyard is certain that the gods—the gods
-that grow old and feeble and die—are there still,
-and with them all those phantoms following
-phantoms in a phantom land,—a gleam of spears, a
-murmur of arrows, a shout of victory, a fair face,
-a scream of torture, a song, the form of some
-conqueror and pursuer of English kings,—which
-make Welsh history, so that to read it is like walking
-in that place among December leaves that
-seem never to have lived and been emerald, and
-looking at the oaks in the mist, which are only
-hollows in the mist, while an ancient wind is
-ceaselessly remembering ancient things.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>APPENDIX</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>For those who care to go into some of the art questions
-suggested by the illustrations and their originals, we
-have included a short appreciative criticism by Mr. A. J.
-Finberg. From experience we have found that the general
-reader and art-lover derives enhanced pleasure from
-having certain qualities brought to his notice. The art
-expert also may find some interest in the artist's point
-of view and methods of working.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>A. &amp; C. BLACK.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>
-  <h2 class='c001'>A NOTE ON MR. FOWLER'S LANDSCAPES</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>By <span class='sc'>Alexander J. Finberg</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c004'>When Rudyard Kipling's stories first gripped the imagination
-of the reading public, it became the fashion among a certain
-set of profound thinkers to go about asking whether such
-writings could really be regarded as works of art. The
-author's extraordinary powers of observation, his insight, his
-skill in telling his story and in impressing the imagination
-of his readers, could not be gainsaid; yet the thin shrill
-voices kept on repeating: "But is it art?"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>I do not wish to pretend that the artist whose paintings
-have been reproduced in this volume can fairly be compared
-with Mr. Kipling. Mr. Robert Fowler does not aspire to
-fill such a place in the world of art as Mr. Kipling fills in the
-world of politics and letters. But incidentally there happen
-to be some few points in common between the two men.
-Neither of them cares a brass button for the formulas of the
-critics. Neither is oppressed by the weight of precedent and
-authority. They both look at things with their own eyes
-and weave the texture of their works out of their own
-thoughts, feelings, and sensations. They draw their inspiration
-from life rather than from the books or pictures of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>other men. They seem to hold that almost any material
-is capable of treatment. The one has boasted that he has
-found nothing "common or unclean," and the other that he
-has never seen an ugly thing in his life. And the parallel
-will be complete enough for my purpose when all the art
-critics of the kingdom begin to gird at Mr. Fowler's landscapes
-for their lack of artificiality, and to ask, as the book-reviewers
-asked of the Kipling stories: "But is it art?"</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It may perhaps seem strange that I should imagine that
-Mr. Fowler's vivid and accomplished paintings are likely to
-provoke such an objection. But the temptation to judge
-by precedent, to test new things by their likeness to the old,
-is a very strong one. This is especially the case in matters
-of pictorial art. A picture that does not startle us out of
-our conventional grooves of thought seems to us to be the
-most natural thing in the world. We reward it for its
-complaisance by saying that it is like nature. But when we
-are confronted by an unconventional rendering of nature,
-we give expression to our ruffled feelings by saying, either
-that it is unnatural, or that it is not art. At the present
-time so much attention has been given to the careful
-study of nature's aspects that few are likely to overlook or
-deny the astonishing accuracy of Mr. Fowler's transcripts.
-On the other hand, those who have a great fondness for
-pictures are apt to feel that his work is too much like
-nature and not enough like other works of art. The design
-in his pictures is often so subtle and elusive that it either
-seems accidental or else is overlooked. The art is often
-so artfully concealed that the astonished critic is tempted to
-ask, "But is it art?" I know the temptation is very real,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>because—I may as well confess it—because I have succumbed
-to it myself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>When first I saw some of Mr. Fowler's paintings—it was
-at the end of 1903, in the Goupil Gallery in London—I was
-struck by the accuracy with which Mr. Fowler had reproduced
-his visual impressions of nature. The work didn't
-look as though it had been done by a human being. "If I
-had been told that these results had been produced by some
-new process of colour photography I should have believed
-it," I wrote on the spur of the moment. The artist seemed
-to have cut himself off so completely from the art of the
-past, to have de-humanised himself, so to speak, that it was
-perhaps natural for me to compare his methods of work with
-the cold impassivity of a machine. But, though natural
-enough, such an impression touches only on the most superficial
-aspect of Mr. Fowler's art. Unless it is treated merely
-as the first step towards a more intimate investigation, it is
-likely even to be misleading.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In the rough and tumble of everyday life we are often
-enough compelled to act upon our first hurried impressions.
-It is one of the greatest privileges of art to give us opportunities
-for correcting these first impressions, for disciplining
-and training our very faculties of perception. The art critic
-who understands his business will therefore be jealous of his
-right to amplify his first impressions of an artist's work by
-a more searching investigation. He will not overvalue a
-reputation for consistency, if only he can develop his half-truths
-into more fully articulated conceptions; he will be
-courageous enough to say to-day what he thinks to-day, and
-to-morrow what he thinks to-morrow.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'><span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>What, then, is the result of a more prolonged experience
-of this artist's work? what are the essential qualities that I
-find in his work, when I have done what I can to rid myself
-of the conscious and unconscious prejudices that colour so
-inevitably one's first impressions?</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In the first place, I think it is evident that Mr. Fowler
-is a painter who loves nature more than pictures—a much
-rarer thing than many people would suppose. Most painters
-learn to be original by imitating other artists. Mr. Fowler
-never seems to give us echoes of other men and of other
-men's works. His paintings are the immediate outcome of
-an overpowering desire to embody his own feelings and sensations.
-To many artists nature is interesting only in so far
-as she furthers their business of making pretty pictures.
-But the man who painted "The Stacks, Tenby," regarded
-nature as something more than the mere raw material of art.
-He seems to have said to himself, "Nature is greater than
-all our artifices," and to have abandoned himself to the might
-and splendour and incommensurability of the great mother.
-The tricks of the trade are all forgotten or abandoned.
-Here is no cunning artifice of line, no obvious formula of
-design. The scene itself speaks to us from the canvas: the
-art and the artist are forgotten.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is the same with canvas after canvas. In the early
-morning scene of "Conway from Benarth" we forget that it
-is a painted scene that we have before our eyes, so resistless
-is the eloquence of the sleeping towers and hills. But this
-concealment of himself is the very triumph of the artist.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>How rare is this power of self-suppression only those who
-have passed much of their time in the company of artists and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>pictures can fully realise. You will meet hundreds of clever,
-dexterous artists before you will find one sincere enough to
-efface himself in his work, to stand aside and let his subject
-speak to you for itself.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It seems to me that the largeness and peace of nature
-appeal most forcibly to the artist. Such pictures as the
-"Conway Estuary near Gogarth Abbey," "Llandudno Bay—a
-Nocturne," "A Sunny Field near Llanberis," are so
-musical with the respite and peace that the artist's soul found
-there. But whatever note she touches nature seldom finds
-him unresponsive. "Conway Castle and Quay" lazily dozing in
-the noon-tide heat, the cliffs like sleeping dragons guarding the
-lonely shore of the "Barmouth Estuary," the sullen gloom of
-"Moelwyn," the glamour and enchantment as of fairyland in
-the "Silvery Light on Conway Shore," the rush and resounding
-din of "The Swallow Falls,"—all these experiences has
-the artist lived through and stamped for us on the canvas.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>There is one reward nature gives to those who love her
-with Mr. Fowler's self-abandonment, which the illustrations
-of this volume prove that the artist has gathered
-abundantly. He never seems to repeat himself. His work
-has something of nature's infinity, her prodigality and
-inexhaustible resources. We not only pass from scene to
-scene, but we share the myriad adventures of the days and
-hear the tramp of the seasons resounding through his pictures.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Mr. Fowler once adorned the walls of his studio with this
-motto: "The world has been enough invented: let us discover
-it." He meant that he had had the temerity to look at the
-world for himself, and that he wanted us also to see something
-of the glorious things he could discover—not invent. On
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>another occasion he said: "I always laugh when I hear
-people say that my ideal is the camera. They never see the
-reality clearly enough in all its beauty to wish to reproduce
-it in its entirety. I would willingly be a camera if I could
-get some of the wonders I see in the fact." "Go out one of
-these glorious mornings," he added, "and look at the scene
-just as it lies on the retina, and ask what is wrong with this
-beautiful thing that one should have to haul in 'memories of
-<em>other</em> days' and other people's pictures."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Mr. Fowler's landscapes show that he is not one of those
-who fly to dreams to satisfy the craving for beauty that
-exists in every human breast. The reality, he feels, is infinitely
-more wonderful than anything we could imagine. But
-the full significance of reality is not displayed on the highway
-so that even the most careless and indifferent cannot fail
-to see it: it is only to the lover that the beauty of reality is
-revealed.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>In a remarkable article dealing with certain modern
-developments in the art of painting which Mr. Fowler has
-recently published, a passage occurs which throws considerable
-light on his own aims as a painter. After criticising the
-absence of beauty which is noticeable in many of the works
-of the modern impressionists, and commenting on the tendency
-of such movements to harden into a formula, he writes:
-"Perhaps the demand is unreasonable, but what one would
-wish to see in the near future is the work of an artist who uses
-the brush simply, directly, and delightfully, and with such a
-sense of structure that all the finest <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">nuances</span></i> of form, even
-the most vague and distant—whether of cloud or mountain-side—get
-built in air as if by magic; whose colour will be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>so exquisitely true that, unlike the spectral treatment, no
-amount of analysis will disclose its secret; whose luminosity
-will not depend on theoretic and mechanical separation of
-colours, but on a more vivid visual analysis, and more
-consistent with the natural handling of a brush. Added to
-this one wants—abstracted from the natural scene—the noble
-elements of decoration and design. Also a hand so swift and
-sure that it is amply able to cope with the quickly-passing
-phase, and able to give back, in fact, tint for tint and tone
-for tone, and reproduce that inexorable logic and consistence
-of lighting on which the illusion of visual Nature herself
-depends. This will be 'to copy Nature,'"—and to copy
-nature is, according to many artists and writers, a thing to
-be avoided. "Well," adds Mr. Fowler, "it may be so. If
-one could only see it done <em>once</em>, one could be a better judge."</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It seems to me that the artist has done well to insist upon
-this point. We hear so much of the antithesis of Beauty
-and Nature that we are apt to forget that beauty may be
-natural and nature beautiful. Hazlitt and Ruskin especially
-were constantly falling into the mistake of making the
-distinction between beauty or art and nature far too cutting.
-"Nature," wrote Hazlitt, "is consistent, unaffected, powerful,
-subtle; art is forgetful, apish, feeble, coarse. Nature is the
-original, and therefore right; art is the copy, and can but
-tread lamely in the same steps." But if art is the copy of
-nature, it is difficult to see how it can be so absolutely unlike
-its original as Hazlitt's impassioned rhetoric would make it
-out to be. Reynolds was not only a better painter than
-Hazlitt, but he proves himself a better critic when he insists
-that "a comprehensive and critical knowledge of the works
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>of nature is the only source of beauty and grandeur"; and
-when he writes, "The terms beauty, or nature, are but
-different modes of expressing the same thing." Reynolds was
-therefore consistent when he blamed the Dutch painters—not
-for imitating nature, but for copying nature in a one-sided
-and vulgar way, and for missing the beauties that intelligent
-insight and loving sympathy can always discover.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Mr. Fowler is right in refusing to admit that beauty is
-unnatural or that nature is unbeautiful. He is right in
-maintaining that it is not by listening to the "fond illusion
-of his heart" that the poet or the artist should create for us,
-but that he should see more clearly into the nature of reality
-than the majority of men. In his landscapes, at least, he has
-given up—so far as it may be—the desire to</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c009'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in18'>add the gleam,</div>
-      <div class='line'>The light that never was, on sea or land,</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c000'>and has resolved to "welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
-and frequent sights of what is to be borne." That such a
-man should find so much of beauty and of joy in the world
-as Mr. Fowler has evidently found is surely something to
-be grateful for.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The reproductions of Mr. Fowler's paintings in this volume
-will serve to introduce his work to a larger public than that
-of the habitual haunters of picture galleries. But this does
-not mean that the artist is either a beginner or an unknown
-man. It is only as a landscape painter that Mr. Fowler
-might perhaps be regarded as a new-comer. As a figure
-painter he has already established a considerable reputation.
-His works have been bought for several of the great
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>Continental collections, and his fine pictures of "Ariel" and
-"Eve and the Voices" are among the ornaments of the Walker
-Art Gallery at Liverpool. Still, as a landscape painter Mr.
-Fowler is practically a new-comer, and he has so far given
-the public few opportunities of becoming acquainted with
-his powers. A few years ago he held an exhibition at the
-Salon Gurlitt in Berlin of some eighty of his "nature-portraits,"
-as the German critics styled his work, and in
-1903 some thirty of his paintings were shown in one of
-the exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery in London. He has
-frequently exhibited figure subjects at the Royal Academy,
-but only once, in 1903, has he exhibited a landscape there.
-This was a large picture of "Conway Castle." It formed
-a notable feature of the Central Gallery, and proved that
-a new landscape painter had arisen sensitive, to an extraordinary
-degree, to the fugitive and exquisite charms of
-natural light. Such a picture could only have been painted
-by one who had devoted many years of study to subjects
-that lie outside the range of the ordinary figure painter.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It was not therefore surprising to find that the artist had
-painted something like two thousand studies in the open air
-before he could "reproduce that inexorable logic and
-consistence of lighting" which characterises the seventy or
-eighty pictures which are reproduced in the present volume.
-For thirty years the figure painter has devoted fragments
-of each year to what at first seemed the hopeless attempt to
-capture those subtle and elusive beauties of nature which,
-through evident lack of swiftness and skill, elude the painters,
-or, at best, can only be memorised. Each year had found the
-artist nerving himself to fresh efforts by saying to himself,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>"Nature can be actually reproduced in paint,—given the
-ability," and each winter he had returned to his studio from
-his campaign among the mountains wondering when, if ever,
-that ability would come to him. But gradually the hand
-has become quicker and more skilful, the eye more certain.
-After years of the most exacting discipline something of the
-very illusion of the sunbeams seemed to get on to the canvas,
-and the artist's hand learned the cunning of his swift, flying,
-vivid, suggestive touch—a touch which sometimes seems
-like an electric shock received from the tense and excited
-vision.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Perhaps it is one of Mr. Fowler's most conspicuous merits
-that his works seem to have sprung up spontaneously in
-response to the artist's passionate interest in nature's aspects.
-He has not turned for support to the formulas of abstract
-science. He has simply felt a genuine passion for the truth
-and beauty of the visible concrete reality, and he has clung
-with admirable tenacity and faith to what he has himself
-felt and proved to be of worth. For in art, as in every
-other walk of life, the enemy of all excellence and of all
-progress is the tendency to accept ready-made habits of
-thought, to go with the crowd, to rely upon routine and
-machinery. So few are ready to "pay in their person," to
-win their way to a higher standpoint by dint of their own
-sufferings, exertions, and failures.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>It is this readiness to "pay in his person" that seems to
-form the distinguishing note of Mr. Fowler's work. He has
-discarded all picture-making formulas, setting himself to put
-on record as definite a statement as possible of his own
-feelings and sensations in the presence of nature. If only he
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>could get something of what he himself had seen, he knew it
-would be beautiful enough. The whole merit of his work
-thus springs from his initial, his fundamental determination
-to see true, and to paint things in their actual relationship.</p>
-
-<p class='c000'>Work like that of Mr. Fowler is particularly liable to be
-misjudged by an ignorant or hasty glance. It is easy for
-those who do not consider what art is to call it artless, and for
-those who do not see deeply into the infinite beauty of nature
-to sneer at it as "a mere transcript of nature." "As painting
-is an art," says Reynolds—and he knew what he was talking
-about—"they" (the ignorant) "think they ought to be
-pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously
-displayed; they will from this supposition prefer neatness,
-high finishing, and gaudy colouring to the truth, simplicity,
-and unity of nature." But it is not to the undiscriminating
-that Mr. Fowler's work makes its appeal; his aim is rather
-to use art than to make a display of it. And such work
-rewards us for all the interest we can take in it.</p>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>THE END</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div><em>Printed by</em> <span class='sc'>R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <em>Edinburgh</em>.</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<table class='table1' summary=''>
-<colgroup>
-<col width='82%' />
-<col width='17%' />
-</colgroup>
-  <tr><td class='c007' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class='c014'>A. &amp; C. BLACK'S LIST OF BOOKS ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR.</td>
-    <td class='c006'>SPRING 1905</td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class='ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c015'>
-    <div>IN THE SAME SERIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>ALL WITH PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-    <div class='c016'>EACH 20s. NET</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='c017'>"<strong>Of all God's gifts to the sight of man,
-colour is the holiest, the most Divine, the
-most solemn.</strong>"—<em>Ruskin.</em></p>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY</div>
-    <div>PAINTED BY A. D. M'CORMICK</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE ALPS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>70</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>TEXT BY MARCUS B. HUISH, LL.B.</div>
-    <div class='c016'><span class='sc'>BRITISH WATER-COLOUR ART, Etc.</span></div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>60</strong> OF THE KING'S PICTURES IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I., R.E.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BRITTANY</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY HENRY B. WIMBUSH</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY EDITH F. CAREY</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE CHANNEL ISLANDS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>76</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>TEXT BY JOSEPH GREGO</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CRUIKSHANK'S WATER-COLOURS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>68</strong> FULL-PAGE FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE DURBAR</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>100</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY HELEN ALLINGHAM, R.W.S.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY MARCUS B. HUISH</div>
-    <div class='c016'>HAPPY ENGLAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>80</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='c017'>"<strong>All men completely organized and justly
-tempered enjoy colour; it is meant for the
-perpetual comfort and delight of the human
-heart.</strong>"—<em>Ruskin.</em></p>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY A. HEATON COOPER</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY WILLIAM PALMER</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE ENGLISH LAKES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED AND DESCRIBED BY R. TALBOT KELLY, R.B.A.</div>
-    <div class='c016'>EGYPT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY COL. R. C. GOFF</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY MRS. GOFF</div>
-    <div class='c016'>FLORENCE AND SOME TUSCAN CITIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY NICO JUNGMAN</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY BEATRIX JUNGMAN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>HOLLAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>76</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY THE REV. JOHN KELMAN, M.A.</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE HOLY LAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>92</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS, MOSTLY IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY FRANCIS S. WALKER, R.H.A.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY FRANK MATHEW</div>
-    <div class='c016'>IRELAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>77</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>JAPAN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>100</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span></div>
-<div class='ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c015'>
-    <div>IN THE SAME SERIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>ALL WITH PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-    <div class='c002'>EACH 20s. NET</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY ROSE BARTON, A.R.W.S.</div>
-    <div class='c016'>FAMILIAR LONDON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>60</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY MARIAN AMY WYLLIE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>LONDON TO THE NORE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>60</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY HERBERT M. MARSHALL, R.W.S.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY G. E. MITTON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE SCENERY OF LONDON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY A. S. FORREST</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY S. L. BENSUSAN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>MOROCCO</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>74</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY AUGUSTINE FITZGERALD</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY SYBIL FITZGERALD</div>
-    <div class='c016'>NAPLES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>80</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY NICO JUNGMAN</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY BEATRIX JUNGMAN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>NORWAY</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY EDWARD THOMAS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>OXFORD</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>60</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY ALBERTO PISA</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY M. A. R. TUKER AND HOPE MALLESON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>ROME</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>70</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY SUTTON PALMER</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BONNIE SCOTLAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED AND DESCRIBED BY A. HENRY SAVAGE LANDOR</div>
-    <div class='c016'>TIBET AND NEPAL</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS</div>
-    <div>(<strong>50</strong> IN COLOUR)</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>VENICE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>100</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY ROBERT FOWLER, R.I.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY EDWARD THOMAS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BEAUTIFUL WALES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WAR IMPRESSIONS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>99</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY CAPTAIN S. E. ST. LEGER</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WAR SKETCHES IN COLOUR</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>165</strong> ILLUSTRATIONS (<strong>50</strong> IN COLOUR)</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY A. S. FORREST</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY JOHN HENDERSON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE WEST INDIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>75</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WORLD'S CHILDREN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>100</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY MORTIMER MENPES, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WORLD PICTURES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>500</strong> ILLUSTRATIONS (<strong>50</strong> IN COLOUR)</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span></div>
-<div class='ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c015'>
-    <div>ILLUSTRATED IN THE SAME STYLE AS THE 20s. SERIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>PRICE 7s. 6d. NET EACH</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY WM. SMITH, JUN.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY THE REV. W. S. CROCKETT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>ABBOTSFORD</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>20</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY C. LEWIS HIND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>ADVENTURES AMONG PICTURES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>24</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS (8 IN COLOUR, <strong>16</strong> IN BLACK AND WHITE)</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY ROSALINE MASSON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>EDINBURGH</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>21</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY LADY BUTLER</div>
-    <div>PAINTER OF "THE ROLL CALL"</div>
-    <div class='c016'>LETTERS FROM THE HOLY LAND</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>16</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY LADY BUTLER</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED AND DESCRIBED BY MRS. WILLINGHAM RAWNSLEY</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE NEW FOREST</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>20</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY ARTHUR GEORGE BELL</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY NANCY E. BELL</div>
-    <div class='c016'>NUREMBERG</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>20</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY H. J. DOBSON, R.S.W.</div>
-    <div>DESCRIBED BY WM. SANDERSON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>SCOTTISH LIFE AND CHARACTER</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>20</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY W. EARL HODGSON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>TROUT FISHING</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING A MODEL BOOK OF FLIES IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.</div>
-    <div>TEXT BY MRS. A. MURRAY SMITH</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WESTMINSTER ABBEY</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>21</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>13</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ARTIST</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY GORDON HOME</div>
-    <div class='c016'>YORKSHIRE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>COAST AND MOORLAND SCENES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING <strong>32</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PRICE 5s. NET</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BY SIR WALTER SCOTT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE LADY OF THE LAKE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>LARGE CROWN OCTAVO, CLOTH, GILT TOP, CONTAINING <strong>50</strong> FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS, EIGHT OF THEM IN COLOUR, FROM PAINTINGS BY SUTTON PALMER</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span></div>
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>WHISTLER AS I KNEW HIM</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BY MORTIMER MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>SQUARE IMPERIAL OCTAVO, CLOTH, GILT TOP (11 × 8¼ INCHES)</div>
-    <div class='c016'>PRICE 40s. NET</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 125 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND TINT OF WHISTLER OIL-COLOURS, WATER-COLOURS, PASTELS, AND ETCHINGS</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>REMBRANDT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BY MORTIMER MENPES</div>
-    <div class='c016'><em>The first of a Series of Monographs on the</em></div>
-    <div><em>Great Masters</em></div>
-    <div class='c016'>DEMY QUARTO (11 × 8¼ INCHES), CLOTH, GILT TOP</div>
-    <div class='c016'>PRICE 12s. 6d. NET.</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING SIXTEEN EXAMPLES OF THE MASTER'S WORK, REPRODUCED IN COLOUR FACSIMILE BY A SPECIAL PROCESS</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c015'>
-    <div>WITH FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>PRICE 6s. EACH</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY S. R. CROCKETT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>RED CAP TALES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>STOLEN FROM THE TREASURE-CHEST OF THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY SIMON HARMON VEDDER</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BY C. M. A. HEWETT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE RAT</div>
-    <div class='c016'>BY G. E. MITTON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE DOG</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div><em>Others in preparation</em></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>GULLIVER'S TRAVELS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY S. BAGHOT DE LA BERE</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>UNCLE TOM'S CABIN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 8 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR, AND MANY OTHERS IN THE TEXT</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY JOHN BUNYAN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 8 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND, R.I.</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY P. G. WODEHOUSE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>WILLIAM TELL TOLD AGAIN</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY PHILIP DADD</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY G. E. MITTON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CHILDREN'S BOOK OF LONDON</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY JOHN WILLIAMSON</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY THE REV. R. C. GILLIE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE STORY OF STORIES</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='ph3'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>BY THE REV. R. C. GILLIE</div>
-    <div class='c016'>THE KINSFOLK AND FRIENDS OF JESUS</div>
-    <div class='c016'>CONTAINING 16 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND SEPIA</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c1'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div>PUBLISHED BY A. &amp; C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='tnotes'>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c001'>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
-</div>
- <ol class='ol_1 c002'>
-    <li>Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
-    </li>
-  </ol>
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-</pre>
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-  </body>
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-06 02:08:54 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-02-06 02:08:54 -0800
commit	c70aa9ae2159f9588bf7831419aa751c35c70056 (patch)
tree	89b06a86d6aed4db85c2131aacabdb2b467e23d1
parent	c0620fc9ec46e7eb15f1fdd6b2d2a455cfa6f7c7 (diff)