CAERNARVON CASTLE.

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have mingled in feast and song, or started and turned pale, at the summons of the besieger's horn. And now all is silent and desolate. Grass overgrows the courtyard, and waves from the tops of the walls and towers. The birds build nests in these turrets, and chirp about them as if they were grand old places for aviaries; and the visiter comes, not to feast, but to meditate. What different scenes have passed here! what thoughts have been revolved, around these lonely, deserted, and scarce discerned firesides! what affections have here kindled and glowed, and withered and faded away,! what footsteps have been upon these rough stairs ! Enough! they have been the footsteps of men! Light and joyous hearts had they borne, though they had not been the hearts of princes. And heavy hearts had they borne, though they had not been carried wounded and bleeding from the battlestrife.

Everything about this old castle shows the purpose for which, mainly, it was constructed; small apertures, rather than windows, out of which arrows or other missives could be thrown, and opening inward to a space in the wall large enough for a warder to stand; three or four narrow loopholes on each side of the great gate of entrance, for the purpose of reconnoitering those who ap

proached; and, inside of the gate, the groove in which the portcullis slided up and down.

I am satisfied that in order to gain any approach to an idea of these things without seeing them, one must not be content with barely reading the description, but must lay down the measurement upon some familiar spot. For instance, the walls of this castle, I judged, from a rough measurement, to be two hundred rods in circuit; and they are nearly eight feet thick, and perhaps thirty feet high; and the principal tower may be ninety or one hundred feet high and fifty feet in diameter. So of the Menai Bridge, or of Eaton Hall. I am sure I got a far more impressive idea of Niagara falls, and probably far more just, by laying it down on a landscape three quarters of a mile in extent, and then conceiving a precipice of one hundred and sixty feet in height, and an ocean pouring over it.

Except the sublimest, I suppose that every description of mountain scenery is to be found in Wales; unless it be, also, the contrast of hills and mountains to the perfect levels of our New-England intervals and river banks-like which I have seen nothing. The pass of Llanberis and the road from Capel Curig are almost level, while the wildest mountains rise almost from the very roadside, on either hand. There is every variety of formsteep, swelling, bald, shaggy; massy and pointed

SCENERY IN NORTH WALES.

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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.

The

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. 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

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