The true way to enjoy Wales, and to understand the country, is to go and fix your quarters at some quiet little country inn in a spot to your taste; and remain there for a fortnight—a month—or as long as your _gusto_ endures; walking up the whole country around, until you know every crook and cranny of it, until it becomes in fact your “ancient neighbourhood.” Many, or rather innumerable are the spots where you may so fix yourself, and where your enjoyments, though simple, may be extreme. If you are a bachelor, you can get clean beds, sheets of driven snow, plenty of good milk, mountain mutton, and bread and butter _à discrétion_; and what the deuce does a man want more? If he is young, and in good health and spirits, and cannot fare upon this, let him put up his traps and go to the antipodes. Or, if you are in the softer predicament of having with you what, when you and I were young, you know, used to be called _poetice_, the “girl of your heart”—but what now in Polichinellic phraseology is termed the “wife of your bussum”—why, even in this extremity, you may find room for two in any inn that you venture to light upon. The lady must not be too fine in her notions, it is true; she must be of that breed and mettle that will enable her to face the mountain breeze, and wipe with hasty foot—as friend Gray says,—the dews of the upland lawn; to meet the sun or the moon, or any other natural phenomenon that is to be encountered on the hill-side. In short, she must be the sort of girl that can mount a rough pony, or scramble over a stone wall, and not care for her bonnet or her locks in a pelting shower, but must be content to follow her liege lord, and love him—and love his pursuits too, whether by the purling brook, or on the misty height. Be sure of it, my friend, that with such a companion as this, Welsh scenery—mountain scenery—nay, _any_ scenery, will have for you a double—ay, a tenfold charm. Men enjoy mountains: women enjoy waterfalls. There is no saying why it is; but the fact is positive. Perhaps it may be that men can toil up the rugged steep with greater ease, and therefore enjoy themselves the more when they reach the top. Perhaps it is that there is something grand, and bold, and rough, and dangerous, in the very nature of a mountain, which the masculine mind is alone capable of fully understanding. In waterfalls, there is all the beauty of form, and light and graceful motion, and harmonious sound, and cooling freshness, and ever-changing variety that woman always loves; and there are overshadowing trees, and an escape from the noontide sun, and the hum of insect life, and moss-grown stones, and soft grassy banks. Waterfalls and their adjuncts have a kind of mystic influence about them that acts with all-persuasive energy on the female mind: hearts like stones are worn down by their action, and the swain has often been indebted to the Naiad for the granting of his prayer.