66

Come, and take some ale," said I.

Indeed," said I, and having shaken him by the hand, thanked him for his company and bidding him farewell, went on. He was the first person I had ever met of the fraternity to which he belonged, who did not endeavour to make a parade of his abstinence and selfdenial.

After drinking some tolerably good ale in the public-house I again started. As I left the village a clock struck eight. The evening was delightfully cool; but it soon became nearly dark. I passed under high rocks, by houses and by groves, in which nightingales were singing, to listen to whose entrancing melody I

more than once stopped.

On coming to a town,

lighted up and thronged with people, I asked

one of a group of young

Bethesda," he replied.

fellows its name.

"A scriptural name," said I.

"Is it?" said he ; "well, if its name is scrip

tural the manners of its people are by no means so."

A little way beyond the town a man came out of a cottage and walked beside me. He had a basket in his hand. I quickened my pace; but he was a tremendous walker, and kept up with me. On we went side by side for more than a mile without speaking a word. At length putting out my legs in genuine Barclay fashion I got before him about ten yards, then turning round laughed and spoke to him in English. He too laughed and spoke, but in Welsh. now went on like brothers, conversing, but always walking at great speed. I learned from him that he was a market gardener living at Bangor, and that Bangor was three miles off. On the stars shining out we began to talk about them. Pointing to Charles's wain I said, “A good star for travellers."

We

Whereupon pointing to the North star, he

said:

"I forwyr da iawn—a good star for mariners." We passed a large house on our left.

"Who lives there?" said I.

"Mr. Smith," he replied. "It is called Plas Newydd; milltir genom etto-we have yet another mile.”

In ten minutes we were at Bangor. I asked him where the Albion Hotel was.

"I will show it you," said he, and so he' did.

As we came under it I heard the voice of my wife, for she, standing on a balcony and distinguishing me by the lamplight, called out. I shook hands with the kind six-mile-an-hour market gardener, and going into the inn found my wife and daughter, who rejoiced to see me. We presently had tea.

CHAPTER XXVII.

BANGOR.-EDMUND PRICE. THE BRIDGES.-BOOKSELLING.-FUTURE POPE.-WILD IRISH.-SOUTHEY.

BANGOR is seated on the spurs of certain high hills near the Menai, a strait separating Mona or Anglesey from Caernarvonshire. It was once a place of Druidical worship, of which fact, even without the testimony of history and tradition the name which signifies "upper circle" would be sufficient evidence. On the decay of Druidism a town sprang up on the site and in the neighbourhood of the "upper circle," in which in the sixth century a convent or university was founded by Deiniol, who eventually became Bishop of Bangor. This Deiniol was the son of Deiniol Vawr, a zealous Christian prince who founded the convent of Bangor Is Coed, or Ban

There

gor beneath the wood in Flintshire, which was destroyed and its inmates almost to a man put to the sword by Ethelbert a Saxon king, and his barbarian followers at the instigation of the monk Austin, who hated the brethren because they refused to acknowledge the authority of the Pope, whose delegate he was in Britain. were in all three Bangors; the one at Is Coed, another in Powis, and this Caernarvonshire Bangor, which was generally termed Bangor Vawr or Bangor the great. The two first Bangors have fallen into utter decay, but Bangor Vawr is still a bishop's see, boasts of a small but venerable cathedral, and contains a population of above eight thousand souls.

Two very remarkable men have at different periods conferred a kind of lustre upon Bangor by residing in it, Taliesin in the old, and Edmund Price in comparatively modern time. Both of them were poets. Taliesin flourished about the end of the fifth century, and for the sublimity of his verses was for many centuries called by his countrymen the Bardic King. Amongst his pieces is one generally termed