Yes, swift on Alban steed I flew

Thy dazzling charms more near to view;-
Though hard the steep ascent to gain,
Thy smiles were harder to obtain !

O fairer thou, and colder too,

Than new fall'n snow on Aren's brow!

O lovely flower of Trevor's race,
Let not a cruel heart disgrace

The beauties of that heavenly face!
Thou canst not with ungentle eye

Behold thy faithful Howel die !'

In that sort of day-dream in which the mind will at times delight, fancy pictured the grand castellated pile, its towers and marble halls, as they rose above all the scene in the day of their pride and strength. Nor was that princely beauty's secret bower, her rich-robed form, and soul-lit features,-nor a dark, but animated figure seen gliding by, and mingled voices with the harp's deep, sad tones,-absent from my thoughts, as the visions of other times rose in vivid colours before my view.

The blue mists had faded from the stream of the Dee,-the shadows fell on the deeper recesses of the hills; and, as I turned my steps towards Corwen, the Vale of Glyndwrdwy opened on my view, enriched with villas, hamlets, and all that interchange of objects which gives to these pleasant valleys their crowning charm. The peculiar aspect of the day brought the words of one of our favourite poetst to my lips-words which gave an echo to my inmost thoughts:

'When rising slow from Deva's wizard stream,

The blue mists, borne on the autumnal gale,
Cloud the deep windings of Llangollen's vale,
And the high cliff glows with day's latest gleam ;

* A mountain, or rather two lofty mountains, in Merionethshire.

† Sotheby.

Dinas, while on thy brow, in pensive dream
Reclined, no sounds of earth my ear assail,

I bid the ancient chiefs of Britain hail,

Spirits who oft, beneath the night's wan beam,

Strike the bossed shield, or blow the martial horn,

Or mournful, on the castle's wreck forlorn,

Sigh to the sorrows of the druid's lyre;

O let me join the visionary choir,

That I may hear the tales of former times,

And drink with ear devout the bard's historic rhymes!" Not far from the spot on which I stood, the Lord of Bromfield, at the head of the men of Chirk, as already shown, humbled the pride of the Second Henry, who owed his life only to the intrepid devotion of his faithful Hubert, who received the arrow aimed at his master's bosom. The Pass of the Graves on Offa's Dyke marks the spot of that sanguinary conflict up to the present day.

Proceeding next along part of the valley-once the patrimony of the redoubted Owen Glendower-I sought in vain for a vestige of his mansion whose daring adventures and strange escapes by flood and field conferred on him the reputation of a magician, in addition to that of a skilful chief. For to conjure up 'spirits from the vasty deep' was deemed an exploit scarcely more wonderful than to resist, during fifteen years, the efforts of an English monarch remarkable for his good fortune, and supported by a chivalrous nobility and a martial people.

The disasters which invariably attended the expeditions of Henry the Fourth against the Welsh present a very remarkable feature in the history of the times, and, interpreted by popular superstition, were held a proof of the magic genius of the terrible Owen, and not less in the light of a just retribution on the usurping monarch, who had steeped his hands in kindred blood. The elements themselves, it was believed, conspired against the murderer of the weak, unhappy Richard, the friend and benefactor of Glendower, whose devotion to his master, and whose singular good fortune, excited the most ardent enthusiasm, not unmingled with awe, in the minds

of the Welsh. He alone foiled the power of the wary and martial Henry, who, resistless before every other foe, had quelled the pride of the most powerful nobles by whom he had been seated on the throne, and trampled even the laurels of the heroic Percies in the dust.

No higher honour could be awarded to Glendower than that he had repelled such an invader,-that the genius and power requisite for such a task were supposed to partake of a supernatural character, and place him above the roll of common men. Repeatedly at the head of England's choicest armies, Henry was compelled to retreat before a handful of Welshmen, headed by one previously unused to a military life. Glendower, like many of the Welsh gentry, was quietly studying law, when it was notified to him that Henry had granted a large portion of his paternal estate to Lord Grey of Rhuthin, who had, with that view, been undermining him in the King's favour by every species of falsehood. Owen fled to armsa descendant of the Princes of Powys was 'not to be so treated. He took Lord Grey prisoner after a set battle on the banks of Evyrnwy, and, before he granted his ransom for a thousand crowns to the King, compelled his lordship to marry his daughter; after which he carried on the war with England during nine years.

When skill and valour failed before its veteran hosts, Owen seemed still to triumph in the terrors of those repeated storms and floods which broke the strength of the foe. Fire and famine, sharper than the swords of the enemy, pursued them, like some avenging fiend, till their scattered legions were supposed to have repassed those magic limits which had brought such a fearful pother of the heavens' upon their heads. Though at times reduced to take shelter in caves and fastnesses, known only to themselves, the necromantic tactics of Owen were even then conceived to be busily manœuvering how to bring down fresh dismay and destruction upon the enemy. It was then he summoned his grand reserve, and charged, as it is quaintly expressed, at the head of his favourite company of the elements, which raised so tremendous a commotion

(as they did at his birth) that Henry and the English began to think they had got before the time into winter quarters. The dreadful signals of a new and more terrific onset fell on the startled ear of the murderer,—(for what usurper is not a murderer?)—he saw the black speck in the far horizon, dark as that upon his soul,he watched the gathering of the storm upon the distant hills,—the blackening shadows which invested all-smiling nature in the hues of the grave, and heard the deep, low mutterings of its voice, as it rose with the sobbing of the mountain wind and the shrill whistling of the groaning woods. The old towering fastnesses opened the floodgates of their secret springs, when the din of the resounding cataracts, as the tempest grew into resistless might, must have come like the rushing of some demon's wings, fated to scatter and destroy. Hardened as he was, he must have felt the prevailing superstition of the people,-felt that there was more than accident in those awful visitations which dispersed his hosts like leaves before the autumnal blast.

Well, indeed, might the exploits of the once quiet law-student equal those of the most dreaded of guerilla chieftains-making England ring from end to end. Yet he was amiable and beloved in time of peace, affording a striking instance of that madness and desperation to which injury and oppression will drive the noblest minds. Often, during the intervals of the sanguinary war, he 'Loud, like a maniac, to the mountain gale,

Told of his country's wrongs the harrowing tale!' And he left but too many memorials of his revenge to prove that 'oppression driveth a wise man mad.'

Pleasanter thoughts, however, soon engaged my mind as I bent my steps through the lands of the veteran chieftain to Llansaintffraid; and from thence by the meanders of the sportive Dee to Corwen.

CHAPTER VIII.

DOLWYDDELAN CASTLE, BETTWS Y COED, RHAIADR Y WENOL, &c.

The morning air

Plays on my cheek how gently, flinging round
A silvery gleam; and now the purple mists
Rise like a curtain; now the sun looks out,
Filling, o'erflowing with his glorious light,
This noble amphitheatre of hills.

Rogers's Italy.

THE following morning was beautifully calm and fine; the air, after the passing storm and rain of the previous night, was deliciously cool and refreshing.

On

At the entrance of a house in Corwen, I heard the strains of a harp, superior, I thought, in point of execution, nor was I deceived; a number of persons, both natives and strangers, were listening round, not to an aged harper, but to a gentle looking youth, with a remarkably animated and poetical countenance. expressing a wish to hear the old air of Morfa Rhuddlan, it was played for me in the noblest and most touching manner. This fine old lament still dwelling on the ear, I took my way to the antique church of Corwen, and speculated, with a sort of melancholy humour, upon the moral uses of the curious monuments, and that antique stone column in the churchyard to the memory of the great saint. The rocky cliffs of the Berwyn-once the strong-hold of Owen Gwynedd-tower above the spot; and there, from what is termed his seat, the no less famed Glendower beheld nearly forty square miles of his possessions, chiefly watered by the Dee.*

At the seat of Colonel Vaughan is preserved, in an elegantly wrought case, a curiously shaped dagger, with a knife and fork richly ornamented, and bearing the arms of Glendower-a lion rampant with three fleurs-de-lis very highly engraved. The dagger is seventeen inches long, and tapers off to the point.