included in the adjoining farm-house; but they are of little interest compared with the church and connected parts-which, let us add, are now carefully preserved.

The ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey are now merely thought of as a pleasing addition to the beauties of Llangollen: but they must once have been regarded with very different feelings by the solitary wanderer. Here on the one hand he saw a secluded dwelling, whose inmates were a band of men who had professedly devoted their days to the service of their Maker, and who lived here in the quiet performance of their religious duties, the instruction of those who sought their aid, the contemplation of Nature, and the pursuit of literature and of art as those things were then understood and studied-and whose doors were ever open to afford shelter and refreshment to the traveller, and succour and refuge to the distressed and the oppressed. On the other hand he saw, perched on an almost inaccessible rock, a building whose approaches were guarded by every military contrivance, and whose whole appearance, as well as its history, spoke aloud of strife, and tyranny, and rapine. Every castle would not then wear so forbidding an aspect as Castell Dinas Bran, nor every monastery appear as grateful as Valle

Crucis; but with all the faults and all the shortcomings of these religious houses-and even at the best their faults and shortcomings were necessarily very many-it must have been a consolatory thought to the reflective mind, that, as the world then was, there were scattered all over the land places which gave a home to the homeless, and while they proffered to the man of fervid religious spirit a better and more humanising retreat than the solitary hermitage, afforded also to the studious man a place where, undisturbed by anxious forebodings, he might prosecute his researches for the general good. Well is it that the monastic system is with us for ever gone; but let us acknowledge that in its better day it has done our country good service.

A little beyond the ruins of the abbey is a stone cross, which is by some antiquaries thought to have given its name to the valley, and by others to the lofty crags which skirt the vale. It is now known as the Pillar of Eliseg; it is said to have been erected above a thousand years ago, in memory of a British hero, Eliseg, father of Brochwel Ysythroc, Prince of Powis, by his grandson Congen: but we do not, of course, vouch for the truth of the saying. The cross, which had

been defaced and thrown down as a popish relic, was replaced on its pedestal towards the close of the last century. It stands in a lonely spot, surrounded by a network of bare mountains; and was, in all probability, erected in commemoration of some deed of blood-either of battle fought or of prince who fell here.

When at Valle Crucis, the visitor will find it a pleasant short extension of his walk to continue along the Dee, past the Chain-bridge, to the place where the canal unites with the river. The channel of the river is filled with massive blocks of stone and slate; and indeed, the rock and river scenery is unusually bold: while the spot where the canal joins the Dee is a broad smooth semicircular bay, with a wide weir on one side of it.

CORWEN.

The ten miles between Llangollen and Corwen are very pleasant and very varied. For the entire distance the Dee runs beside, and generally somewhat below the road, which is carried along the base of the Moel Ferna Mountains. Where the Vale of Llangollen ends-by the huge Rhisgog-the tourist will instinctively halt to take his parting glance of the famous vale. It is a view well adapted to leave on the memory a favourable impression-especially if the hill be ascended. The valley is then seen in one of its grandest as well as fairest aspects. Dinas Bran stands out majestically from the Eagle Crags ;-which in their turn exhibit to perfection their bold shattered cliffs. The river glitters under the bright morning sun. The light blue smoke curls up unbroken from one homestead and another, and hangs like a vapour over the half-concealed village.

Onwards is the Valley of the Dee, Glyn Dyfrdwy. The road now keeps at some height above the stream; but it affords no very extensive prospects; for the valley makes many sharp curvatures, and on the left the hill-side rise abruptly from the road. On the right, however, owing to the many tributary dales, there are more open prospects and distant peeps. Still there is a continuous variety of scenery forwards, and no feeling of weariness is likely to creep on. The river lies in a sort of glen on the right; and, as it emerges now and then into view, or sends up a cheerful sound as it leaps along its rocky bed, it is sadly tempting to one who prefers a river side to the main road; and heartily will he repent if he be an angler that he has not brought his rod with him, that he might whip the stream to Corwen, and at the same time enjoy its delicious succession of close, quiet scenery.

This Valley of the Dee was the patrimony of the redoubted Owen Glyndwr-Shakspere's Glendower— and with many a mountain side and summit do the natives delight to associate his name. Just beyond the seventh mile stone will be seen a kind of tumulus crested with a clump of firs; this is Glyndwr's Mount, and is, we believe, fixed on as the site of his palace,

which his bard described as "a fair timber structure on the summit of a green hill." On the brow of the Berwyn Mountain, behind Corwen, is Owen Glyndwr's Seat, and the fine prospect from the stone chair might lead one to fancy him a lover of beautiful scenery, as well as a hardy warrior, but the prosaic guide assures you that he delighted most in the prospect, because it showed him forty square miles of his own land. On one of the walls of Corwen church they show a hole made by the fiery chief's dagger, which he flung from this chair on some occasion when the townsmen had offended him.

Before reaching Corwen the valley opens; the hills recede further apart, are less abrupt, and though not less rocky, the rocks are plumed with wood; and Dee is smooth and dull-you would hardly fancy he could be so buoyant and sprightly a mile or two lower. Just a momentary tarriance will be made at the picturesque village of Llansantffraid, and then nothing will occur to arrest the attention till Corwen be reached.

Corwen is not at all a place to interest the stranger on its own account. But it has an hotel (named after the mighty Owen) whose fame is widely spread; it is a convenient centre from which to explore some very good (though not remarkable) scenery; and it is a favourite fishing station. The town is one of the quietest of its size in Wales—at least of those which lie in ́ a great line of road. It has no manufactures, and only the trade of an agricultural district, with that produced by a wealthy resident gentry, and the summer visitors.

A short distance beyond Corwen, the Dee bends sharply to the left, and the tourist might ascend it to Bala along the Vale of Eideyrnion-one of the loveliest in the principality. Our course however lies right forward: we must diverge little either to the right hand or to the left till we arrive at Conway.

Hardly have we parted company with the Dee when its affluent, the Alwen, comes to the road-side and gives us for some miles its pleasant company. It breaks away to the right just by its confluence with a smaller stream, the Geirw-which in its turn runs alongside the road for half a dozen miles. But Geirw provides a spectacle which the larger rivers did not offer. Close by the sixty-first milestone from Holyhead, the little stream rushes over a series of rocky slopes into a deep glen. The sides of the glen are thickly clothed with trees-too thickly perhaps, for in consequence of the narrowness of the glen and the quantity of foliage, it is difficult to see more at once than a small portion of the waterfall. High above the stream the glen is spanned by a bridge, which is named with the happy descriptiveness so often observed in Welsh nomenclature, Pont-y-Glyn, the Bridge of the Glen.

Three or four miles farther is Cerig-y-Druidon, now only noticeable as a tolerably fair example of a thoroughly Welsh village; but which in Camden's time contained two Kist-vaens, as they were called; Camden seemed to think they were solitary prisons.' These," and the name of the parish," he says, are all

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We have given an engraving of the view, but it is impossible to represent the fitful play of light and shadow along the slopes, the gloom of the hollows, and the creeping mists on which so much of the effect of such a scene depends. (Cut, No. 8.)

The road here is in dull weather sufficiently dreary. The mountains lie somewhat away, and are lumpish in form. No sparkling rivulet meanders on either side; instead is a level peat-bog, unvaried by house or tree. But there is one scene which would repay thrice the extent of dreariness. You come almost suddenly, where the left-hand mountains open, upon a view of the entire range of the Snowdon Mountains. (Cut, No. 9.) Under almost any aspect it must be a grand sight, for nowhere else is the entire range so fairly seen: but it was truly a thing to remember as we beheld it at the close of a day of remarkable beauty. The sun had just descended behind the most northern of the hills, when suddenly the summits in that direction became as it were incandescent, while those at the opposite extremity, and the giant Snowdon himself, rapidly changed in hue from a blueish purple into the deepest gloom,-their bases meanwhile being concealed by a pinky vapour, out of which the mighty hills rose like islands from a foaming sea, and over-head the fleecy clouds gathered into a canopy of crimson and gold: it was a glorious vision; but it retained only for a moment its full splendour, and then fled swiftly into the darkness.

THE VALLEY OF THE CONWAY.

At Pentre Voelas-where, as well as at Cernioge, which has just been passed, there is a good tourist's inn -the river Conway comes down from the mountains, and will be our guide and companion for the day's ramble. It has its source only a few miles higher, a little above Llyn Conway, and is in its early course a beautiful stream: but it is in the few miles from Pentre Voelas to Bettws-y-Coed that it appears to feel its strength, and there it exhibits best its daring and frolicsome spirit. As it advances it grows soberer, and at length settles down into a dignified gravity. Gray should not have written "Old Conway's foaming flood:" it would have been applicable enough to its youthful career.

The scenery as well as the river is full of beauty for all this distance: but in one part it is eminently fine. About seven miles from Capel Curig, there opens a view of an uncommon kind even in this region of splendid views. (Cut, No. 7.) The valley is bounded by lofty hills, which send their projecting roots far into the vale, where they terminate in rugged cliffs; a narrow stream plays along the bottom; groups of handsome trees are in the foreground; while the enormous form of Moel

Immediately beyond this occurs another famous scene, the Falls of the Conway. They will be found just out of the main road, where that to Ffestiniog is carried by a lofty arch across a chasm :-but the ear will be a sufficient guide to the spot. The Conway, a stream of considerable volume, is here pent within a narrow ravine, through which it rushes with tremendous impetuosity, and after making a short sharp turnseeming indeed as though it burst through the rockflings itself over a long slope of riven rocks into a deep pool below. The rocky banks, as well as the fallen fragments which check the progress of the stream, are of the grandest forms. The cataract altogether is of the finest kind; but there are two things which detract a good deal from its grandeur, the thick plantation of trees which has a formal air, and the proximity of the road, together banishing effectually what most befits such an object-the feeling of solitude, of standing alone in the presence of the untouched handiwork of Nature.

Not far from this cataract is another formed by the Machno river, a short distance before its junction with the Conway. The Falls of the Machno are not comparable with those of the Conway, either for magnitude or grandeur; but they are eminently picturesque and beautiful. The mass of water foams and dashes from rock to rock in every variety of form and curve, before it takes its grand plunge, and then quickly recovering from the shock starts forward again, making in its rapid way a multitude of wild waterbreaks. From every clift spring self-planted trees and shrubs. On one side is seen a pandy (or fulling) mill, sufficiently rude and informal to add to the effect as a picture.

The

From the Falls to Bettws-y-Coed, the Conway continues to maintain the wild beauty of its character. Now passing along a close wooded glen, again, through a more open but still wild valley, and occasionally crossed by bridges noticeable both for their fine forms and often striking positions. This part of the stream is the delight of the skilful angler, with whom the Oak at Bettws-y-Coed is a favourite little hostel. sketch (Cut, No. 10) will show better than words the kind of scenery which the fisherman meets with in here pursuing his gentle craft along the margin of Conway. The spot represented is a wild rocky passage, about a mile above Bettws-y-Coed,-well known to artists and anglers, but from the difficulty of access not often seen by the tourist; though, as the engraving shows, well worth scrambling down to.

Bettws-y-Coed-or, as cockney tourists resolutely pronounce it, 'Betsy Code,'-is a quiet, thoroughly Welsh village (with something of English neatness superadded), seated in a beautiful neighbourhood, just by the confluence of the Llugwy with the Conway.