A high rampart incloses the whole; round the top of which a walk is carried, affording many pleasing views of the surrounding country. When Robert Fitzhammon conquered and divided the lordship of Glamorgan with his twelve knights, he reserved the town of Cardiff, among other estates, for himself, and erected this castle: here he held his courts of Chancery and Exchequer; the former on the first Monday in every month, when his knights or their heirs were bound to attend, and were then entitled to apartments in the outer court of the castle ; which privilege, says Sir John Price, their heirs or assigns enjoy to this day. This castle has frequently experienced the vicissitudes of war. Soon after its erection, one Ivor Black, a little resolute Welchman, marched hither privately, with a troop of mountaineers, and surprized the castle in the night; carrying off William Earl of Gloucester (Fitzhammon's grandson), together with his wife and son; whom he detained prisoners until he obtained satisfaction for some injuries that he had suffered. It was also taken by Maelgon and Rhys gyre anno 1282; and and again by the parliamentary forces in the civil wars, after a long siege. A pleasant walk over the fields led us to the episcopal city of LANDAFF, now in extent an inconsiderable village: this deserted spot occupies a gentle eminence in the great plain of Cardiff. The west front of the cathedral is an admirable relic of Norman architecture, with two elegant towers of extraordinary height, profusely enriched with the best sculpture of that age: here all the apertures are circularly arched; but the windows of part of the nave, yet remaining, are Gothic. Upon the chancel's falling to decay some score years since, a great sum was expended in raising the present church upon the old stock; but surely such an absence of taste and common sense was never before instanced: beneath the solemn towers has sprung up a fantastic. summer-house elevation, with a Venetian window, Ionic pilasters, and flower-pot jars upon the parapet. The same sort of window is coupled with the elegant line of the ornamented Gothic in other parts of the structure; and within, a huge building upon the model of a heathen temple surrounds the altar; which, with two thrones, darken and fill up nearly N 4 nearly half the church. From this mass of inconsistencies we turned to the inspection of several ancient monuments, which were chiefly recumbent, and from several marks of recent damage appeared to be much neglected *. The cathedral, now in ruins, was built by Bishop Urban, anno 1120, upon the site of one founded by St. Dubritius in the commencement of the sixth century, and dedicated to more saints than I have room to enumerate. Urban also built a palace here, which was destroyed by Owen Glendower: its high outer walls and gateway, however, remain, and form an inclosure to a garden. A large mansion adjoining, occupied by Mr. Matthews, is, I understand, attached to the bishopric +. *There is no cross aile to this cathedral, as there is to all the others in England and Wales: nor any middle steeple, as there is to all the others except Bangor and Exeter. + Castle coch, or the Red castle, situated upon a high bank of the river Taffe, about four miles above Landaff, is a small ruin which we neglected to visit. CHAP. * ON quitting Cardiff, we soon entered MONMOUTHSHIRE in crossing Rumney bridge. The church of Rumney is a large Gothic edifice, * Monmouthshire has been separated from Wales by the judicial arrangement of later times; yet the character of the county throughout is so entirely Cambrian, that I cannot consider myself out of Wales until after having passed the Wye. Indeed, this highly-varied and interesting district may be considered as an epitome of the whole principality. The mountains stretching over the north-west of Monmouth shire edifice, with an embattled tower. Nearly opposite to it, on the left of the road, crowning a steep bank of the river, is an old encampment of an irregular figure, with a triangular outwork; and a short distance further, at Pen-y-pile, another occurs of a polyhedrous form. As we proceeded, the ele‐ vated mansion and extensive woods of RuPERAH, an elegant scat belonging to a branch of the Morgan family, appeared finely situated beneath the brow of some hills bordering the vale of Caerphilly; and on a gentle hill below it, KEVEN-MABLE, an ancient seat of the Kemy's family. At the rural little shire may vie with any in South-Wales, and even aspire to the majestic wildness of some in North-Wales; the rich fertility, or broken precipices accompanying the course of the Severn, Wye, and Usk, with much contrastive grandeur, possess the highest pretensions to picturesque fame; and its numerous ruins and other monuments of antiquity are among the most celebrated in the kingdom.-An elegant and able work, in two volumes, quarto, has been lately published, descriptive of Monmouthshire, and illustrated by no less than 90 excellent plates. The researches of its author (Mr. Coxe) have been so accurate and complete, as to leave little more for a succeeding tourist to do than to select and transcribe. The descriptions I always found highly satisfactory and just; I have therefore, in the generality of instances, thought it unnecessary to follow any other authority for documents in his tory and antiquities. village |