SCENERY IN NORTH WALES.

35

tops; sides sometimes ploughed by the mountain streams and sometimes only seamed by the trickling rills while around their eternal battlements and turrets, the light mist floated, every moment varying its shapes, now unveiling some stupendous ledge or crag, and then shrouding it in thick darkness. The pass of Llanberis is part of the Snowdon range; but old Snowdon himself was all day enveloped entirely in clouds.

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

For another description of scenery in Wales, imagine something like the following: A deep dingle, sinking almost beneath you, at the roadside, with a little lane winding down through hawthorn hedges to one or two cottages half covered with ivy and overshadowed with trees; just beyond, rising and boldly swelling up from the chasm below, a noble sweep of hills, cultivated to the very

top, yet not bare and naked as it probably would be in America-cultivated and rich, but studded with beautiful clumps of trees; a ploughed field sweeping gracefully around a little grove; a pasture dotted over with noble oaks; the fences on all sides verdant hedges, not always well clipped to be sure, but beautiful in the distance, &c. Now, if you will introduce on the other side, ragged, bold, precipitous mountains, like those of the pass of Llanberis, with goats far up among the steepest ledges, quietly cropping the grass that springs among the rocks, or sleeping on their very brink, you will have a panorama of the scenery of North Wales.

GENERAL REMARKS. The houses (always of stone or brick, by-the-by) are commonly low, miserable habitations. I went into several-those of the cottagers and small farmers I mean-and I never saw a wooden floor upon any of them. They were paved with stone; or more commonly not even that accommodation was afforded.

The

women I thought handsomer than those of England-I speak of the common people-the faces not so bold, marked, and prominent, indeed not enough so, but more delicate. This provincial or national difference of countenances is certainly very curious. I perceived it as soon as I was in Wales.

Dublin-Architecture of Cities--Beggars-St. Patrick's Cathedral-Mrs. Hemans-Drogheda-Irish Cottages-Peat bogsBelfast Scenery and People of the North of Ireland-Carricka-Rede Giants' Causeway-Castle of Dunluce-Steamer to Glasgow.

DUBLIN, JULY 5, 1833. I am glad to get a pleasant impression of any spot in Ireland; Dublin, is a fine city. It resembles Philadelphia in two respects-its regular ranges of buildings, and its fine

open squares. What a pity it is, that cities, or at least streets in cities, could not, like single edifices, be built upon some regular and well-considered plan! Not that the result should be such regularity as is seen in Philadelphia or Dublin; the plan, indeed, would embrace irregularity. But there might be an arrangement, by which a block of buildings, a street, or, indeed, a whole city might stand before us as one grand piece of architecture. If single specimens of architecture have the effect to improve, humanize, and elevate the ideas of a people, if they are a language, and answer

VOL. I.-D

a purpose kindred to that of literature, poetry, and painting, why may not a whole city have this ef fect? To secure this result, there must, I am afraid, be a power like that of the Autocrat of Russia, who, I am told, when a house is built, in his royal city of St. Petersburgh, which does not conform to his general plan, sends word to the owner, that he must remove that building and put up another of a certain description. But as we have not, and will not have, any such power exercised among us, I suppose we must have such cities as Boston and New-York, such streets as Broadway: which is a sort of language, too, which sets forth visibly, in stone and mortar, what is the spirit that reigns in our country-the very personification of the principle of individuality-where every one builds to please himself, and pleases to build differently from his neighbour-usually a little higher. It is a principle that spoils a city; that it will make a people, is the reflection in which we must find our comfort.

But to return. Dublin is, indeed, a fine city, and filled with noble mansions and showy equipages; but alas! all is marred by this dismal looking population; full half that I meet in the streets, very shabbily dressed; many in rags; the boys would collect in America, and the very dogs would bark,

at spectacles that pass me every moment; men and women on every side begging; women with children in their arms, imploring charity for God's sake; yes, innocent childhood is here involved in the common mass of misery, and that is the hardest of it to the spectator. Indeed, I have seldom seen anything more striking or touching than a child, sleeping in its mother's arms amid all this surrounding turmoil and distress. It is actually picturesque, if one may say so: the image of repose amid noise and turbulence; innocence amid vice and wretchedness; unconscious ease on the bosom of suffering; helplessness imploring even more pathetically than the wan and haggard features of maternal solicitude. No doubt, there is a good deal of acting in this system of beggary. For instance, I saw a little girl, last evening, seated on the curbstone of the sidewalk, and holding in her arms a sleeping infant-but holding a candle at the same time so as to exhibit the infant to the best advantage. This is going on the stage pretty early. What the receipts were I do not know, but they doubtless expected to be repaid the outlay of lights and wardrobe, and something more.

It is a comfortable reflection which I have often had occasion to make, that Providence does, after all, dispense many blessings, which neither the