Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, No. 33, November 1877Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, No. 33, November 1877
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
their family, being expelled on account of his loyalty to the king; and
Glann-y-llyn, a comfortable shooting-box of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. Of
course there are numberless other houses, the mere list of which one
could not get through without the help of a county history and a court
guide for each of the shires through which the Dee passes. Every library
stored in these old houses or carefully brought there from still older
ones forms an inexhaustible subject of interest, not only to the owners
(who are often the least benefited by it), but to inquiring minds of
various races and conditions. Even a lad let loose from college, his
mind full of athletics and Alpine Club aspirations, can find something
to admire in the relics or representations of ancient national games,
while the scholar discovers details full of interest in looking over the
books, manuscripts and curiosities. The size of the country-houses and
the extent of their gardens and parks seem perhaps disproportionate
compared with the confined space of the country itself: indeed, it is as
much their frequency in the landscape as the general cultivation of the
whole that has made England celebrated for its garden-like look; but the
historic associations of these small rivers and small territories are on
an equally large scale. Thousands of unnamed brooks on this side of the
ocean run through forests or farms as large as an English or Welsh
county, without rousing any save imaginary associations in the mind of
the traveller or the angler: they are as large as, and more varied in
scenery than, our "wizard stream;" but the old recollections, the
castles, the ruins, the modernized homes, the national relics, the
inherited traits of likeness between past and present, are wanting. In
Wales it is easy to leap back a few hundred years. The costume of the
market-women at the seacoast town of Aberystwith--not a sluggish place,
by any means--is almost literally like the old one in pictures of
"Mother Hubbard." I have seen young and pretty women wear it. The
neatly-roofed hay and straw stacks, so different from the ungainly
heaps so called in England, are thatched in the same way for which the
Welsh farmers were famous two hundred years ago, while many of the
poorer dwellings, especially in the slate districts, look just as they
may have done to Owen Glendower himself. The character of the people,
like that of the grave Highlanders, is stern and enduring, though their
temper is fierce and hot: it is easy to understand how passionately
certain forms of Methodism appealed to such temperaments, and developed
among them an enthusiasm easy to stir up into a likeness of that of the
old Cameronians.
[Illustration: MOSTYN HALL.]
LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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