born in Wales. What pictures would his powers, with such an original before him, have given us! I've no sort of sorrow for the defunct golden age, while I fancy I see a lowly kind of one lingering in the recesses of Wales. I never could fancy even Virgil's shepherds. Look but at this web, that coat which hangs there and the women's gowns are all of home manufacture too; remember those sweet, very thick, soft blankets we see in every cottage farm, and tell me if men are not more agreeably engaged making these than if they sate playing on a pipe, with a third blockhead for their Midas? really, when we consider the many comforts and blessings to which the still activity of these people converts the rude material into, a mere encumbrance to the creature, and this without filth, without peril, without the Moloch sin and sacrifice of infant slavery in the accursed factory-not to quite forget the truly Arcadian-delicious holiday-business which precedes it, I mean sheep-shearing-I say, when we view this main feature of Welsh rustic life, I doubt whether the idleness of the fabled golden age presents equal charms. Grey-coated heavy"shooned" Tityri and Meliboei of our own mountains! I prefer you after all! only, for God's sake be clean! here's water enough every where, and a sweet Naiad to tend your ablution at every houseend, with her green silken hair streaming, and singing away. The humble bright-eyed handmaid! It's a mortal sin to decline her sweet services! Boys, we'll bow down to her, and be washed over head and ears as soon as we go forth; 'tis a blessed morning for it.

Parson. You see there's no actual ignorance here, neither. Here's a huge brass-clasped volume, old as the house methinks. What is it? Canwyll y Cymro-oh, 'tis the old Vicar Prichard's Welshman's Candle, an excellent old collection of pious songs, which rivals the Bible itself almost, in the country people's veneration. Look, here are all the dates of the family's births— no such vile hand writing neither.

Doctor. [Reads.] "At foure of the clock," &c. Here's rustic antiquity for you. "Borne May, 1688." Now that was written by some Sais schoolmaster or Welsh one proud of his seisoneg. I wonder at an English entry here.

Major. [Running in from the orchard.] By Jove, here they come! the whole family from the hay-field; but a good way off yet: we must clap a bold face on it or take to our heels, that's certain. Here comes the sledge, the drag first full of hay, next the gamboo, swig-swag; its wheels are solid though they look coming off every minute, as it jolts along the rocky ruts of the road. In the middle of the first, buried almost in flowers not dead yet, there squats a ruddy rogue, with a still smaller in his lap, who looks as brown, and hot, and busy as the rest, turning his little head all about. Behind walks the gude wife, knitting, yet carefully picking

down every whisp of hay which the dog-rose briars keep snatching off, and wear a minute amongst their flowers.

Doctor. There, now, is to me a more elegant picture than Arcadia has suggested to the pen or pencil yet.

[Not to extend this article to an undue length, the interview of our Welsh Paul Prys with the master and family of the house they had invaded, with the dialogues on Welsh doings-on the superstitions of charming Welsh longevity, and Welsh life generally, is reserved for another number of this work. As we cannot take leave, however, handsomely, and dismiss them without a breakfast, we beg, in their name, the reader's good company to their fine meal on a sod of a little peninsula formed by the meanderings of the Dovey.]

Boys [both at once.] Great news! good news! a beautiful breakfast parlour-two sides rock, all over ivy-turf like grassplat-brooks like quicksilver, running into the Dovey! water-lilies all on the face of it, flowers every where, full view of Bwlch y Groes, and banks of Dovey too, high up where it's only a cataract shall we unpack? we must unpack—it must be here!

Doctor. A most providential little place, and shady too! boy! dost see? would you burn those flowers? you can't have the fire there!-farther-farther-that will do-mind the flame don't catch your hand before you see it, for it's quite invisible, the sun shines so finely, thanks to god Apollo for it, and amen. That's a very good fireplace, now, among the dry rocks of the brook's bed.

There's a sky, gentlemen! I don't marvel at the lazaronis of Naples being at once the wretchedest poor houseless rascals and the happiest and laziest dogs on God's earth. The eternal smiling at them of that glorious face not only keeps them for ever in good humour, but there is an instinct of defiance to want in the feeling of its glow. One of the main saddening evils of our nature, which demand our troublous defence, that deadly enemy cold, is set at a distance at once and forgotten. A man basking in the sun forgets he's poor. A day like this, a single day, is a capital prize in the lottery of life! Boys, one of you please to pick my flowers-t'other plunge the cream in the bottle under the water of the undermined bank till we're ready for it;-Major, set the cups-friend, place the brown bread, the ham, the watercresses reverend sir, be pleased to say grace: fall to and eat! Now, I do say that let a man but enjoy fine health, peace of mind, (but that is indigenous here,) an appetite, one quarter of what I have now, love milk, abhor spirits, be early abroad, well tired, and, lastly, stretched here as I am now, with a huge dock leaf

round his head for a noon-cap, and all this "pomp and prodigality of heaven" and green earth, towering and glistening, and ravishing in his eye, his ear, his soul; and he needs not envy any heaven extant, of any faith whatever, not even Mahomet's.

What was Horace's favourite "Angulus" to this, made by this silver brook and this that most romantic river? to look around and listen, one would swear this could never be the ill-reportedof old "wicked world," as we learn to call it as soon as we can lisp, but some glorious new-born one, where sin, sorrow, nor death, ever set foot. Look above, and you might think that azure expanse never gloomed, never thundered, since it was stretched like a curtain round this burnished green and golden panorama! It reminds one of the brow of an angel which cannot frown: such its mild blue marbled fixedness of glorious placidity!

Quaker. Thou art quite an epicurean, friend doctor, in the innocent spirit of that doctrine, as first taught by the belied and wronged founder of the sect. The conceited stoics began the misinterpretation of his wise exaltation of true pleasure above all earthly objects, that pleasure being peace of mind produced by the love of nature and practice of innocence. But I never could guess why Cicero, Plutarch, and Clemens, and Ambrose, and a host of great men, adopted their gross exposition of his sentiments, and handed down to us a lie.

Doctor. Aye, a lie so confirmed in men's minds that it is too late to hope to correct it, we must suppose; else why did worthy master Beattie talk of " Epicurus's stye?" Fie, Doctor Beattie! Did you not know that your hog, Epicurus, fed on bread and water, and when he would "dine with Jove" himself, he only desired to add to his feast a shave of Cytheridian cheese? I pity the old gentleman from my soul for never breakfasting under a Welsh mountain. Had his pupil Lucretius ever done so, he would not have rebuked man's fond clinging to this life. For my part, when I look at this scene, under such a sky, I can content myself with nothing short of the age of Methusaleh; though, to speak the truth, when I look at a withered autumn or winter world, and a watery black sky, the life of an ephemera seems long enough for me. I am a great coward of life and limb in a blue summer day, pretty bold and reckless in a black December one.

Major. Really, doctor, I don't see you precisely following your great favourite in your diet. Grant that you are to-day breakfast-ing not only sub Jove, but cum Jove; instead of cheese, what numerous amendments are you making to the original; why, the cream alone which you consume in every cup of tea, out of that huge stone bottle, is a fattening meal.

Doctor. Sir, you mistake; cream is a mental luxury, and in

that sense I love it. Wherever is abundance of milk, there is also abundance of all pastoral delights, and generally those modes of life sweet and congenial to quiet and quiet-loving spirits, especially those which have

sought out a shelter for their hopes decayed, In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade."

How feelingly does Rosseau pour himself forth on this lowly subject of milk, in describing his youthful pedestrian ramble in the Valois.

A dairy-country is a luxury to more senses than one; cream, "thick substantial cream! what Swift's Lord Peter swore about his brown loaf containing the materiel of all that aldermen love, I maintain is religiously true of cream! Cream contains in it the quintescence of green fields, and clover flowers, and buttercups, and wild rural life, and long life, and summer rambling, and twenty sweet things more than I have breath to utter; but you did not see the dairy this came from, that good Welsh wife admitted me to that holy of holies of a farm: oh, I could begin to immortalize her for it, as Ledyard did the African woman:

"The poor white man sate beneath our tree,"-how next? without a drop of cream for his tea!-I never tasted richer!

Major. But the dairy! the dairy! We are quite satisfied of its excellence, doctor; don't make yourself sick to demonstrate it to us; thank you, all the same.

Doctor. Oh, sir! I was only enjoying the picturesque and pure by association. I was only tasting the dairy. It was underground in the steep cool orchard, being, I think, a natural excavation in a little mound. Flowers nodded over the edge of the sod outside, a prill ran sparkling by the little overhung door. The inside was like a grot, so cool, so pure! the shelves were natural stone, only a little smoothed, and the puncheons and bowls white as what they held, and pure as spar! It tastes, it tastes of the crystal rock! of orchard grasses!-I could drink

Quaker. Stop friend, stop! What mean you by applying this mental luxury to your vile organ of liquorishness? The optic, the olfactory, use any road to your romantic sensorium but that, I conjure you!-Major, you don't eat, you look thoughtful: did you lose a fish lately after hooking him, or what has overshadowed thy summ-erevening countenance?

Major. Oh, nothing! I was gone back into the Peninsula; into that little dingle of the mountains and goatherd village you've heard me tell of so often, which I was obliged to take, because a party of the French who occupied a convent on the height above, drew supplies thence of milk, and cheese, and various rural productions. Now, the Welsh farmer's wife and her kindness

brought back that poor unfortunate Spanish woman and child, whose fate was the immediate cause of my throwing up my commission.

Doctor. I would gladly hear that story; in short, a flying sketch, not to damp your spirits.

Major. In short, then, sir, I was lost among the extensive sheep-walks on the Portuguese frontier. I was received most brother-like by the simple people of a hamlet among cork-trees, shepherds, and goat-herds, and artless as their sheep. They laughed at my bad Spanish, fed me with their best fare, lodged me on their best flock-bed. The wife was as pleased and proud at my taking her sweet little white-headed boy on my knee, as if I had been a brother goatherd, or she my sister English woman. We parted next morning, and the husband led me by a defile to our position at the back of the mountain, without which aid I should probably have wandered within the French line. Not three days after I had to take this hermit village, in no enmity to our dear ally the Spaniard; of course, none in the world; but to annoy their enemy. So the French possessed it, and we, by turns, and between us it was fired: I blush to say, that last act was ours, before we evacuated it, the French proving too strong for us, as possessing the convent-hill's side to fire down on us.

Quaker. And the poor Goatherd's family?

Major. Of the man I never heard; the woman, in trying to save a few goods, received a shot; my little boy dropped from her hand that could no longer hold his, and perished in the flames; I saw her bleeding, dying, and still calling for him-and this was glory! this was a just and necessary war!-I never felt utterly ashamed of myself, my heart never rose in downright wrath and rebellion against me, but once; that was when I received the thanks of our commander for that gallant action! (for we took the convent ultimately.) “Oh, murderous slave! a hollow horrid voice seemed saying within me, while my comrades all around were envying me! Thanks be to God, here I am; yet I wish this valley had not resembled the vale of the cork-trees.

Doctor. (After a long general silence.) Those are "recollections of the Peninsula," with a vengeance! War, horrid war! What a noble proselyte to the truly noble tenet of your sect-refusal to shed blood, is our Major, a natural quaker. When I mix in the "madding crowd" of our cities, infected with the political rabies of the continent; when I see the peril of civil war incurred and welcomed as a brave delight by Englishmen, for matters of opinion more than fact, for shadows and self-delusions raised by the heats of political controversy, I am astonished and ask myself, is this England? When I come back to peace and the mountains of Wales, and feel that these harmless people, their children,