I enjoyed a pleasant ride to St. Asaph, which finally disclosed to my view a cathedral of very unpretending dimensions, on a pretty hill, with a few houses grouped under its shadow, and a sightly bridge of stone. This the _City_ of St. Asaph! Even so—for it is an ancient Episcopal See, and therefore it is a city, while Liverpool is but a town. Therefore do I love St. Asaph, because, of all cities I ever saw, it looks most like a village. Indeed, as a village it would be much to my liking, as still and quiet above most villages, and sweetly embosomed among trees, over which the solid tower of the ancient church presides with a motherly air, and ticks a sleepy time from its solemn clock. It was Saturday night when I reached the Mostyn Arms, and ordered my supper, and my bed-room. ‘Here then,’ said I, ‘I will spend a Sunday in supremest loneliness; here I know nobody and am known of none; I will be a mystery to mine host of the inn, who seems to have no other guest, dropping nothing of mine errand in these parts, but going my way on Monday morning, with an air of dignified secrecy, and leaving him to imagine, as he may, what could have brought me to St. Asaph.’ A quiet breakfast at the inn was served with such noiseless neatness and despatch, at the appointed hour, that I grew sad with my bachelor comfort, feeling first, that I ought not to enjoy so much, except at home, and then longing to be there. It was not my hostess’s unimpeachable fare; bread all crisp without, and all snowy sponge within; butter golden and fragrant; prawns, gathered freshly from the clean sands of Rhyl; eggs, that were never cold, and that now were hot to the very second of culinary time; and divers varieties and fruits that feasted the imagination even more than they gratified the taste; it was not this substantial and meritorious breakfast that made the Mostyn Arms a delightful resting-place; but it was that entire order and decency that invested all, and that forbade the idea of a _hotel_, and seemed to remind me that it was Sunday; it was this that first charmed me, and then made me lonely, and then positively sad. There is often a domestic character about such an inn, in England and Wales, that is positively religious. I remember one, in which the innkeeper always invited his guests to family prayers.