its good condition to the good fortune of having had the late Bishop of Llandaff for a parishioner. Some years ago he occupied Llansaintfraed House, and rescued the parish from the disgrace of a ruinous and neglected church. It is only to be wished that every parish had its manor occupied so well--for a district with churches so shamefully fallen into disrepair we never saw. In all the churchyards, for instance, the piety of our forefathers had raised a cross; and it surely does not argue a man to be a Puseyite, if he thinks highly of such an emblem in such a place; and in every instance, except this one of Llansaintfraed, the hand of the spoiler hath been upon it. The cross, in every instance, is broken, and only a portion of the broken pillar remaining. If the archdeacon disapproves of the cross, let it be removed altogether; but if not, let it be repaired, and not left to affront the parishioners with the daily spectacle of the rate-payers' meanness and the clergyman's neglect. So, having managed to get Polly's head round again--for she had availed herself of our pause to whisk homeward--we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians, we perceive, call it Rhaglan--and probably attach a nobler meaning to the name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland, we shall keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ornamented Gothic arch, and the mansion-house pure Grecian--an allegory, perhaps, of the gradual civilization of mankind, or the process by which chivalrous knights are turned into Christian gentlemen. The house is modern, and even the arch without much pretension to antiquity; but the family stretching far back into the gloom of ages, and lineal ancestors of the antediluvian patriarchs. Since the Deluge, however, they have restricted themselves to this part of Monmouthshire; and judging from the number of Joneses--which is the great name in the neighbourhood--there seems no great chance of the genealogical tree being in want of branches. There is nothing so strange in a new vicinity as the different weight attached to family names. We have known districts where the word Smith itself, even without the fictitious dignity of _y_ in the middle and _e_ at the end, was pronounced with great veneration. Jones--elsewhere sacred to the comic muse--is of as potent syllable--unluckily it has only one--along the banks of the Usk, as Scott or Douglas on the Nith and Yarrow. And such is the effect of territorial or moral association, that we shall willingly withdraw an objection we made to a line in the tragedy of our late friend J---- S----, where some one, speaking of the patriot Pym--to eye and ear the most pithless and contemptible of cognomens--says, "There is a sound of thunder in the name."