Glyndewi had been recommended to us as a quiet place. It was quiet--horribly quiet. Not the quiet of green fields and deep woods, the charm of country life; but the quiet of a teetotal supper-party, or a college in vacation. "Just the place for reading: no gaiety--no temptations." So I had written to tell the governor, in the ardour of my setting forth as one of a "reading-party:" alas! it was a fatal mistake. Had it been an ordinarily cheerful place, I think one or two of us could and would have read there; as it was, our whole wits were set to work to enliven its dulness. It took us as long to invent an amusement, as would have sufficed elsewhere for getting tired of half-a-dozen different dissipations. The very reason which made us fix upon it as a place to read in, proved in our case the source of unmitigated idleness. "No temptations," indeed! there were no temptations--the only temptation I felt there was to hang or drown myself, and there was not a tree six feet high within as many miles, and the Dewi was a river "darkly, deeply, beautifully"--muddy; it would have been smothering rather. We should not have staid to the end of the first month, had it not been for very shame; but to run away from a reading-party would have been a joke against us for ever. So from the time we got up in the morning, until we climbed Mrs Jenkins's domestic tread-mill again at night, the one question was, what should we do with ourselves? Walk? there were the A---- and B---- roads--three miles of sand and dust either way. Before us was the bay--behind the ----shire mountains, up which one might walk some sixteen miles (in the month of July), and get the same view from each successive point you reached: viz., a hill before you, which you thought must be the top at last, and Glyndewi--of which we knew the number of houses, and the number of windows in each--behind. Ride then?--the two hacks kept by mine host of the Mynysnewydd Arms deserve a history to themselves. Rosinante would have been ashamed to be seen grazing in the same field with such caricatures of his race. There was a board upon a house a few doors off, announcing that "pleasure and other boats" were to be let on hire. All the boats that we were acquainted with must have been the "other" ones--for they smelled of herrings, sailed at about the pace of a couple of freshmen in a "two-oar," and gave very pretty exercise--to those who were fond of it--in baling. As for reading, we were like the performers at a travelling theatre--always "going to begin."