Dolgelley was the native place of John Thomas, Bishop of Salisbury. He was born in 1681, and was the son of a porter in the service of a brewer. His father’s employer, seeing that he was a bright, clever boy, paid the expenses of his education at school and college. He was ordained and went as chaplain to the English factory at Hamburg, and owing to the fluency with which he could speak German, acquired during his residence in the capacity of chaplain at that seaport, he attracted the notice of King George II., who took Thomas along with him whenever he visited his electorate of Hanover. Thomas married a Danish woman, and on her death married a niece of Bishop Sherlock of Salisbury. He was made rector of S. Vedast’s, Foster Lane, London, and then prebendary of Westminster and canon of S. Paul’s. In 1743 he was nominated to the bishopric of S. Asaph, but before he was consecrated he was offered and accepted the bishopric of Lincoln, and was consecrated in 1744. He was translated to Salisbury in 1761, and died there in 1766. “He is,” says Cole, who wrote during his lifetime, “a very worthy and honest man, a most facetious and pleasant companion, and remarkably good-tempered. He has a peculiar cast in his eyes, and is not a little deaf. I thought it rather an odd jumble, when I dined with him in 1753; his lordship squinting the most I ever saw anyone; Mrs. Thomas, the bishop’s wife, squinting not a little; and a Dane, the brother of his first wife, being so short-sighted as hardly to be able to know whether he had anything on his plate or no. Mrs. Thomas was his _fourth_ wife, granddaughter, as I take it, of Bishop Patrick, a very worthy man. It is generally said that the bishop put this poesy to the wedding ring when he married her: ‘If I survive, I will have five’; and she dying in 1757, he kept his word.” It is not my intention to describe scenery, perhaps because as I have not slept on Cader Idris I lack the proper _afflatus_, but also because that of Cader Idris and of the Mawddach valley has exercised better pens than mine. Instead of dilating on the scenery I will here give a few remarks on the characteristics of the Welsh people, for whom I entertain a great liking.