How cheap must be the subsistence of a party who can walk twelve or fourteen miles to earn sixpence, or disburse a shilling or eighteen-pence, and how few must be their weekly wants which so small a sum can satisfy! It is true they divide this labour, and each take their turn of village or neighbourly duty. The market of this place is not only extremely reasonable, but excellent; hardly excelled in quality by any but Worcester, the cleanliness and beauty of the exhibition of which beats all England. Caermarthen has abundance of good meat, fish, poultry, butter, wild-fowl, and game. In December, 1819, I bought three fine turkeys for nine shillings, fowls from eightpence to one shilling each, and other things in proportion; still the taxes are the same as in England, and good land is high rented; but the wants of the tenantry are fewer; small farms are abundant, and every cottage has its garden and plot of ground, as well as waste land generally: fuel is likewise cheap. The view from Caermarthen over the Towy is beautiful, and not to be enjoyed any where to greater advantage than from the back rooms of the Ivy Bush inn, or the terrace walk in the garden. Its population is rated at between 7 and 8000, and its houses at about 1200. The market days are Saturday and Wednesday. It is 231 miles from London, by Bristol, and 216 by Gloucester. The mail arrives from London at nine in the morning, and departs at two o’clock in the afternoon generally. I should feel it the height of ingratitude, if I had failed to notice the great attention paid to strangers who attend divine service at the church: not only are they immediately accommodated in comfortable pews, but prayer-books are supplied to them by the son of the clerk. In short, I witnessed a courtesy and attention to strangers, and a backwardness to receive remuneration, such as I never saw evinced at any other place. The late Ivy Bush was the house of Sir Richard Steele, who obtained it and his property in this neighbourhood by marriage with the heiress of Jonathan Scurlock, Esq. After the death of his wife he retired to a small farm-house, called the White House, lying about a mile from Caermarthen, and there he wrote his celebrated comedy of the Conscious Lovers. At some distance from Caermarthen are several very remarkable caves: whence Merlin is supposed to have delivered his oracles. Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear? Who of a British nymph was gotten whilst she play’d With a seducing spirit. _Drayton Polyolbion_, s. v. Caermarthen gave birth to Merlin, who is styled, by an ancient author, “the sonne of a badde angell, or of an incubus spirit, the Britaine’s great Apollo, whom Geoffrey ap Arthur would ranke with the south-saying seer, or rather with the true prophets themselves; being none other than a mere seducer and phantastical wizard.” He flourished in the year 480.