stand clear. Though, therefore, the reader may give him credit for veracity, in the plain coarse sense of the term, yet the absolute truth will be modified, in many cases, by this sporting of a man's own whim and caprice, and this violence for blaze and bounce, in a style we must say, sometimes not unworthy of the stage of the mountebank. But nevertheless, the genuine effect of the matter of fact portion of the representation, will be, to convey an image akin to barbarism in worse features than ignorance, squalidness, and the appropriate roughness of the seafaring character. Without going into particulars, we may remark, how many odious things are complicated in the one nefarious practice, general on this coast, of making a prey of whatever might have been saved to the sufferers in shipwrecks. At Combe-Martin the people complained of the infrequent occurrence of this profitable calamity. They talk of a good wreck-season as they do of a good mackerel-season,' says our Author; adding, in his dashing way, and thank Providence 'for both.'

But the Cambrians, on the opposite side of the channel, it seems, are still more accomplished practitioners in this iniquity. It is when in the neighbourhood of St. Donat's that the writer observes,

The people on this coast have always been, and still are, notorious for more than common rapaciousness and brutality in their attacks upon the miserable wretches, who have the misfortune to be cast away upon their shores. The particulars that are recorded of these savages on these occasions, are such as one should expect to hear of, only amidst the privileged pillage and massacre of a stormed town. They have been accused not only of robbing, but sometimes of murdering, that they might rob with security; and heedless of age or sex, of tearing the clothes from the persons of women and children, though drenched with wet, and shivering and dying with cold. There is a mixture of such monstrous cruelty and cowardice in thus falling upon the feeble and distressed, that it is difficult to credit these shocking accounts; but I fear that they are true, and that they extend to many other parts of our coast. I do not believe that the seamen along shore are ever concerned in these desperate outrages. I have before had occasion to observe that they do not hesitate to plunder a wreck, and that they plunder on a simple principle of justice to themselves; but they are invariably humane and gentle toward the sufferers.' The people who are called wreckers, come from all the country villages in the neighbourhood of the coast; and it is most probable that the numbers of those are but few, who are guilty of the worst enormities of their dreadful trade, and that they consist of those miscreants who, not only on the coast, but in all parts of this and every other country, prowl about loose in society, always prepared for plunder, and often fearless and ferocious from want, ready to murder when plunder is to be the reward.'

But will it be impertinent to inquire what becomes, all this

while, of law, and of magistrates? Where are the records of judicial proceedings, and awarded and inflicted punishment? The power of the government, pervading as it does, with such comprehensive and irresistible efficiency for whatever relates to its own claims and interests, every corner and shred of the country, is it baffled in its benevolent zeal for the repression of this flagrant iniquity? Is this detestable moral violence, prevailing within the line of the contact of the land and sea, regarded as something beyond human cognizance and control, like the fury of the waves on the other side of that line?

It should be the less difficult to repress or punish this abomination now that the aristocracy of the coast have relinquished their share in it. The time was, if local tradition may be believed, when a watch-tower, still standing on a height in the park of St. Donat's castle, was the station for a sentinel, constantly looking ' out for vessels in distress, not for the purpose of guiding and saving them, but that the servants of the castle might have instant notice when a ship was wrecked, and pounce upon it in the name of their lord, before the country people had time to come 'down and intercept them.' And in a brief account of Dunraven House, a gentleman's seat on a cliff four miles from St. Donat's, there is, and of no very remote period, a dreadful history of one of the occupants having enriched himself by the wrecks on his manor, which he multiplied as much as possible by the bellish device of setting up false lights along the shore.'

Tradition reports that this wretch was punished for his iniquity by a sudden misfortune, of which these are the particulars. Within sight of the house there is a large rock, which is partially dry at low water, but at other times entirely covered by the sea. On this rock two of Vaughan's sons' (that was the miscreant's name) landed one day for the sake of amusement; but not taking care to secure their boat, it was carried away by the tide, and they suddenly discovered themselves doomed to inevitable destruction, and with the protracted horror of watching the gradual rise of the water, which they knew must at last overwhelm them. In this terrible situation they were perceived by the family from the house, but no assistance could be given to them, for there was no other boat in the neighbourhood, and no time to procure one from a distance: amidst the vain expedients and frantic screams of the poor boys and their wretched parents, the tide rose, and the rock disappeared. This visitation was, of course, generally regarded as a judgement on Vaughan; and he himself was so struck with grief and remorse, that he could no longer endure the sight of his house, and sold it to a Mr. Wyndham, the ancestor of its present possessor.'

From the cast of the language here, it may be surmised that the Writer would not be unwilling to bring an indictment of superstition against the notions of the people and the conscience of the wretch himself; with which notions and conscience we are strongly disposed to coincide.

The coast at Aberthaw, the point at which the tourists first és touched the Welsh side of the channel, is stated to be composed of a kind of limestone peculiar to that spot, and which furnishes an incomparable cement.

When burnt into lime and placed under water, it immediately assumes the hardness of the original rock, and even when pulverised and scattered over the land it is converted into a hard grit by the first shower of rain. In the construction of bridges, piers, and all stone work that is exposed to water, this lime is in the highest estimation. All the roofs and walls in the village are defended by a coat of this eternal cement; and when a roof admits the rain, it is conceived quite time to pull the house down.'

While looking at the modernized castle at Cardiff, our Author, na sprightly and sensible strain, defends against the reproaches of antiquaries, the practice of repairing and depraving castles into commodious dwelling-houses, instead of keeping up ruins in a state of purity, at an expense sufficient to build a palace." The prodigious operation by which a canal has been formed from Penarth harbour, two miles below Cardiff, to the grand scene of won-works-Merthyr Tydvil, is duly celebrated, as well as those

works.

The head of the canal, at Merthyr, is more than five hundred and fifty feet higher than the tide-lock where it falls into Penarth harbour; and in the intervening space it is raised sometimes more than three hundred feet above the river Taff, to which it runs parallel in its whole course.'

The notice suggested by the instance of the church-yard at Britton Ferry, in Swansea bay, of the now declining practice of decorating the graves of relatives with planted ever-greens, and flowers, leads to the mention of a curious mode of petty spite und revenge. None but sweet-scented flowers are planted on the graves, they alone being considered as emblematical of goodness;

but the turnsole, African marygold, or some other memorials of iniquity, are sometimes insidiously introduced among the pinks and roses by a piqued neighbour, in expression of contempt for the deceased or his surviving relations. The facility which is thus given to every malevolent individual, of dropping a seed against the memory of another, is certainly a great imperfection in this system of monumental gardening.'

And upon this follows one of that sort of forced jokes, which are interspersed throughout the narrative with a liberality which leaves the reader's gratitude far behind. It forms a puzzling 'kind of consideration to determine what possible construction the law of libel could put on this singular mode of slander: it 'would have rather a droll effect in a trial, to hear of a man escaping on a nice question of smell, or being at once pronounced guilty by the whole nose of the court."

6

In truth, the affectation of jocular smartness recurs so very often, as to become a nuisance in the composition. Besides par taking but slenderly of the wit for which it may be suspected to be intended and mistaken, it is generally of what we may fairly call a rather low quality, we do not mean in a sense importing turpitude, but as expressive of a certain vulgarity of taste, much estranged from the mental habit created in the best schools of literature. These ill-judged vivacities shall sometimes be protracted, in a continuous form, through a succession of sentences, and sometimes they are made to crack off in a single phrase, or queer combination of words. Of the latter kind, we have an example only two or three paragraphs further on than the sentence we have just transcribed.

In the last boisterous excesses of a wake or a fair, I can easily conceive that the ancient feelings of national rivalship might be for a a moment revived,' [between the people of English and of ancient Cambrian descent,] and that the parties might be ready to decide the question of superiority at the point of their knuckles; but in the ordinary business of life, they do not suffer their peace to be disturbed by such fanciful distinctions; but associate on terms of the most intimate familiarity, and interchange hearts and hats without

reserve.'

In viewing the copper-works carried on at Neath, and near Swansea, the Travellers had occasion to observe the very destructive effect of the smoke on vegetation. In the immediate vicinity of one of these establishments, situated in a hollow, "there is not a blade of grass, a green bush, nor any form of ' vegetation: volumes of smoke, thick and pestilential, are seen crawling up the sides of the hills, which are as bare as a turn'pike-road.' They find, however, a much stronger cause of complaint against the copper-works and the iron-works, in the wretched, squalid, and revolting condition to which the women are doomed in these employments. In their sooty persons and coarse attire,' they present,' says the Describer, a form of more 'roughness and rudeness, in the shape of woman, than I ever 6 saw in any other part of the kingdom.' It is added, that in all parts of Wales the women are employed in the hardest and dirtiest drudgery like the men.' A similar account is given of their condition on some parts of the previously surveyed tract of English coast. A strong deposition is made of the depravation of morals and marners of which they notoriously partake at Swansea, and throughout the districts of the manufactories. A laudable and indignant regret is expressed at the pernicious system of these establishments, in the article especially of their devoting very young children to barbarism, and vice, and all their consequences, amit the employments and corrupt example of their busy and profligate crowds.

The number of ruined castles in the western tract of Glamorganshire, attributed chiefly to Norman usurping occupants of the territory, is so great, that the Tourists seldom found themselves convicted of an impertinent question in asking regularly, at hazard, on entering a village, Which is the way to the castle? There are some very lively and just reflections on the bloody, but yet unvaried and uninteresting history of these castles. (Vol. I. p. 78.) Nevertheless, the writer has taken laudable pains to furnish a general idea of the transactions constituting this history, with several special samples relating to particular spots and castles, the scenes of long and ardent strife between the Welsh on the one side, and the intruding Normans, and a colony of Flemings who made good their ground in Pembrokeshire, on the other. These foreigners were willingly patronized and abetted by the English monarchs. It was seen that they must, and that they did, to a degree very highly convenient to those monarchs, engross the martial animosity of the Welsh, violently and justly indignant at this encroachment on their territory. The cost of energy and blood, expended on these resolute invaders and their castles, was so much gained to the cause of English ambition and conquest. The colonists, in addition to the facilities for receiving aid by sea, and to their immeasurable superiority in the arts and works of fortification, had the grand advantage of faithful compact among themselves; whereas the Welsh, condemned to a wretched distribution among rival chieftains, all possessed with the spirit of the first-born 'Cain,' could not be restrained even by the urgency of this general interest, from hacking and demolishing one another, as if to save the Normans, Flemings, and English, a part of the trouble of doing it for them; and as if, by giving these adversaries the opportunity of recruiting their force, consolidating their defensive system, and rebuilding their sometimes burned fortresses, to compensate to them the mischief often done by the impetuous fury of Cambrian attack. Our Author takes occasion, in describing Pembroke castle, and adverting to its history, to give a hideous specimen of this state of things, in a brief recital of the events of eight years of murder and devastation; an exhibition to make even the deepest hater of ambition invoke the strong arm of a conqueror.

The long course from Pembroke, by Milford Haven, St. David's, Fishguard, and Cardigan, to Aberystwith, is marked by many curious descriptions and observations, which we must not stay to particularize. The most disconsolate kind of scene, as uniting dreariness in the works of nature with decay in those of man, would seem to be St. David's.

In a melancholy desert, and within view of a wild and terrible coast, stands the city of St. David's, which, whatever may have