Caermarthen is the Kaervyrdhin of the Britons, the Maridunum of Ptolemy, and the Muridunum of Antoninus. The ancient Britons reckoned it the capital of all Wales: here they held their Parliaments, or Assemblies of wise men, and here fixed their Chancery and Exchequer. When the Normans overran Wales, this town severely felt the miseries of war, being often besieged, and twice burnt by the Welch princes; Gilbert Earl of Clare, however, at length fixed his power at Caermarthen beyond the reach of their attempts. This place gave birth to the famous Merlin in the year 480: he appears to have been a man of extraordinary wisdom and learning, which, no doubt, occasioned him to be looked upon as a magician in that dark age, and transmitted as such to posterity by Monkish writers, who always looked with an evil eye upon knowledge possessed out of their craft. Here also was born Lewis Bayly, chaplain to James the First, afterwards Bishop of Bangor, and author of the celebrated “Practice of Piety.” From our comfortable quarters at the Green Dragon, we set out early in the morning; and, on leaving the town, were more interested than pleased, in noticing several fine young women who were acting as scavengers, while one, whose elegance of form defied even her awkward habit to conceal it, was bending beneath the fatigue of wheeling away the filth in a barrow. In the same point of view, seated behind a counter, a brawny-fisted fellow was folding up ribbons and laces. How odious is the employ of men-milliners! How shameful, that men, who might gain a prosperous livelihood in a thousand ways, should interfere with almost the only eligible means which the limited powers and habits of women capacitate them to adopt for a maintenance! Driven from their natural employ, they must either have recourse to a cruel drudgery which they were not formed, and are generally unable, to endure; or wander after subsistence in the paths of shame and misery, at once a disgrace, a burthen, and a terror to society. But does our censure more properly fall on these men, for entering into the pretty dalliance of women’s affairs, in preference to masculine pursuits requiring intellectual and bodily exertion? or on the ladies, who encourage men, rather than their own sex, in the fiddle-faddle arrangement of their caps and tuckers?