In Unfamiliar England

antic associations. We sweep along the fine highway to Welshpool and from thence, a little farther, to Montgomery, a decayed, out-of-the-way town in t

de Montgomerie, "Second in command in the army of his kinsman, William of Normandy," though the grim, almost inaccessible castle antedated his possession of the town. Fierce indeed was the strife between the Normans and the wild Welsh tribes, and the fair vale of the Severn was the scene o

es and bits of meadow land. For eight miles out of Newtown we encountered a continually rising grade, which brought us to a narrow upland road running along the hillsides, which drop in almost precipitous slopes to the river far below. The road twists along the edge of the hills, at times in almost circular curves, and too close to the sharp declivity at its side for one's ease of mind. At Llandrindod Wells we had passed the wildest part of

. Though Builth has mineral wells and a "pump house," a mile from the town, there is nothing of the resort hotel about the Lion; on the contrary, it is the plainest of old-country inns, apparently a haven for fishermen rather than health seekers. Its walls were covered with the antique hand-colored prints so characteristic of English inns; i

self here and there in a quiet lakelike pool. The sunset hues were subdued rather than brilliant; pink and salmon tints were reflected in the stream as we stood on the bridge and looked up the quiet valley, and these faded into hazy amethyst as

wooded to the very crest, and at times far below we caught the gleam of the river-though so shrunken as to scarcely deserve the name-leaping and flashing over its stone-strewn bed. Here and there a quiet village nestled unobtrusively by the roadside; at Crickhowell we found a larger but somnolent town whose huge church is crowded with memorials of the old Welsh warriors. Even larger and more impressive is the great Priory Church at Abergavenny, whose square battlemented tower one might think had been built to withstand the sieges of the devil, even as the Welsh castles were made almost i

ically a suburb of Newport, where dim legends still linger to the effe

e high tow

goodly hills

s flying o'er

s ago existed in Caerleon in great magnificence. At any rate, modern Caerleon has no trace of the regal capital of the early king-a bald

grown from one to seventy thousand. The old order is indeed dead here. There is no effort to attract the tourist, and the castle, almost the sole relic of antiquity, is crumbling into unhindered ruin as it sits far above the drear

e us is hardly paralleled in impressiveness among British castles, unless it be by Corfe in Dorset. A great round tower, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, with walls ten feet thick, split as by a thunder stroke, greets our eyes. Half of it is still standing, though leaning many feet from the vertical, and the other half lies in mighty f

CASTLE, S

remain a mystery set in the midst of the barren hills, and he will hardly care to resolve the impressive pile into its original parts. It will seem an entity to him-it is hard to think it otherwise than it appears today. Its romance is deepened by the obscurity of its history-for the story of Caerphilly has many blanks and breaks. There is no record of when it w

from the gray ruin, half hidden by its mantle of ivy and dashed here and there with the purple valerian and yellow wall-flower? Such would be folly indeed as we sit on the soft green turf of the court and contempl

d, it is quite recent. One hundred years ago it had a population of a thousand; in 1837, of ten thousand; and it is easy to see that the traces of antiquity in such a city must be few. Its future was assured when the first Marquis of Bute hazarded his entire

by cost, and if garishness and incongruity sometimes prevail, interest is nevertheless continual. There is a fragment of the keep of the old castle in the grounds and Duke Robert's dungeon is incorporated into the new structure-a dark, vaultlike cavity in the walls whe

FF CA

t approaches-altogether models of what civic structures ought to be. Immense and busy as it is, there is lit

two hundred years later, and so deplorable was its condition that the task of restoration seemed a well-nigh impossible one. Still, after much difficulty, the work was happily carried out, and the twin towers-one a slender spire and its companion square-topped with Gothic finials-present a very unusual though not unpleasant effect. Inside there is a mixture of Norman and early English styles, and some beautiful Decorated work. There are three paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti that arrest attention at once-done in that artist's best style long ere he was known to fame. The windows, though modern, are of unusual excellence, having been designed by Burne

mining towns straggling along for considerable distances and there were many drunken men reeling on the streets. It was market day at Cowbridge and the village was filled with countrymen, many of whom treated our right to the road with supreme indiffer

our rural Bonifaces in this wise: "The hotel accommodation in country districts is often very poor and dirty," all of which may be painfully true. But in competition for distinction in these particulars, the Bear would certainly not be distanced by any American rival. Perhaps the confusion and disarray was partly due to the market-day rush, but the grime and dirt that prevailed everywhere seemed as ancient as the ramshackle old house itself. The dining-room was a large apartment with many lo

t of valleys on the bank of a clear, placid little river; but the coaling industry, which flings its pall over everything in Southern Wales, had played sad havoc with the sylvan retreat of the old Cistercian monks. Heaps of rubbish dotted the uncared-for green about the place. Coal trains rattled on the railroad near at hand. The spot where the abbey now stands so forlornly is the heart of the suburban slums of Neath, and so isolated and forgotten is it that few pilgrims come to view its melancholy beauty. For it is beautiful-does not our picture tell the story?-the mouldering walls hung with

BEY, SOU

pleasantly pervade the city. Here, too, is the great steel plant of the Siemens Company and many allied industries. And yet there was a time when Swansea had at least the promise of a resort town before it, when the poet Landor declared that "Italy has a fine climate but that of Swansea is better; that it is the only spot in Britain where one may have warmth without wet." Then it had six h

eeting panorama. Just as the twilight faded into dark we came sharply into Haverfordwest and with grave misgivings halted at the Castle Hotel. Here we must stop, willy nilly, for there was nothing that promised better in many miles. But to apply the cautious Yorks

s the terribly steep hill to which the town seems to cling somewhat precariously, has been reduced to a county jail-or gaol, as the English have it-and thus robb

g a tortuous road over many steep and barren hills. The railroad ends at Haverfordwest and no doubt the facilities for reaching St. David's a thousand years ago were quite as good as today, the daily mail cart and coach twice a week in season being the

e ancient town. Shortly before reaching St. David's the road drops down to the ocean side, but the sea is hidden by a long ridge of stones and pebbles piled high by the inrushing waters. The tide was far out and we saw no finer beach on the Welsh coast than the one that lay before us as we stood on the stony

eat winds sh

lt tides s

ild white h

fe and toss i

the market place. The cathedral has been recently restored, more perhaps on account of its historic past than any present need for it, but the bishop's palace, once one of the most elaborate and extensive in the Kingdom, stand

ir sins; in this travelling age only the enterprising tourist comes to the city at all. Eight or nine roads converged upon the little place on its headland of about three miles square, but the majority are now no better than humble weather-worn lanes. The Atlantic winds sweep across the depression by the Alan brook in which St. David's Cathedral, the extensiv

n his garden, and he did his part well; nothing curious or important in the history of the cathedral was forgotten by him. The leaning Norman pillars, the open roof of Irish oak, the gorgeous ceiling with its blood-red and gold decorations, and many relics discovered during the restoration, were pointed out and properly descanted upon. But one might write volumes of

ID'S CA

e farmers to serve the purpose of the steam roller. The country is pitifully barren and the little hovels-always gleaming with whitewash-were later called to mind by those in Ireland. There are no great parks with fine mansions to relieve the monotony of the scene. Only fugitive glimpses of the ocean from

igan? Straight ah

etty steep,"

he roofs of those houses there, and the road rough and crooked. Yes, thi

ings. To our dismay, a grocer's cart across the narrow road compelled us to stop midway on the precipitous ascent, but the motor proved equal to the task and we soon looked back down the frightful

ificent and far-reaching. We found it much the same after leaving Cardigan, though the country is distinctly better and more pleasing than the extreme south. The farm houses appear more prosperous, and well-cared-for gardens surround them. Nowhere did we find the people kinder or more courteous. An instance occurred at Carmarthen, where we stopped to consult our maps.

straight broad stretches between rows of fine trees, past comfortable-looking farm houses, and through cozy little hamlets nestling amid trees and shrubbery, and seems

all on a mound overlooking the rivers-dismantled "by Cromwell's orders." Delightful as the town is, its surroundings are even more romantic. The highest peaks of South Wales, the Beacon and the Black Mountains, overlook it and in the recesses of these rugged hills are many resorts fo

though we find it crowded almost to our exclusion. But we are so weary that we vigorously protest and a little shifting-with some complaint from the shifted parties-makes room for us. We are told in awe-stricken whispers that the congestion is partly due to the fact that Her Grace the Duchess of B-- (wife of one of the richest peers in England) has arrived at the hotel with her retinue, traveling in two motor cars. She was pointed out to us in the morning as she walked along the promenade in very short skirts, accompanied by her poodle. We heard of this duke often in our journeyings, one old caretaker in a place owned by the nobleman assuring us that his

ntiquity and it was here that Sir John Price made overtures to Henry VIII. which resulted in the union of England and Wales. The priory church is one of the largest and most important in Wales and is interesting in architecture as well as historical association. We saw the plain old house where the ever-charming Mr

pected of an effort to crowd into a few pages the record