Doctor Johnson, who, touring North Wales in 1774, found the “quire” of Bangor to be “mean,” could quite honestly repeat that criticism to-day. The service in his time was also “ill-read.” A “very mean inn” in the town further helped to jaundice his views—an inn with little accommodation, for he records: “I lay in a room where the other bed had two men.” De Quincey is one of the very many who have not liked Bangor. He says it has “fewer attractions than any other spot in Carnarvonshire”—a very mild and negative way of putting Bangor’s disabilities, and much milder than it might have been, considering the provocation received. It was in 1802 he was here, following his “elopement” from school at Manchester. With the weekly allowance of a guinea, he was free for a while to roam Wales as he pleased, and came (of all places!) to Bangor, where he hired “a very miniature set of apartments—one room and a closet.” His landlady had been a servant in the household of the Bishop of Bangor, and, one day, calling at the Palace, happened to mention to the Bight Reverend how she had let her rooms. Thereupon that dignified cleric thought it incumbent upon him to caution her as to her selection of inmates. “You must recollect, Betty,” he said, “that Bangor is the high road to the Head (_the Head_ was the common colloquial expression for Holyhead); so that multitudes of Irish swindlers, running away from their debts into England; and of English swindlers, running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route.” This was excellent advice for judicious ears; but Betty unhappily repeated the Bishop’s words to De Quincey, together with her reply, which was, “Oh, my lord, I really don’t think this young gentleman is a swindler, because——” But the clause that was to have justified him that young gentleman never knew. “You don’t _think_ me a swindler,” he interposed; “I shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it”; and so departed, in a righteous fury. L It is at Bangor that the old Chester route to Holyhead, by way of Penmaenmawr, falls into the great Holyhead Road. Although we have not come by Chester, it may be worth while to glance at Penmaenmawr, that gigantic headland over whose perilous heights old-time travellers went, trembling for their safety. Its Welsh name, meaning literally the “great stone head,” sufficiently describes this old obstacle and stumbling-block, looking over the water to Anglesey. Nowadays the railway tunnels through it, and travellers by the Wild Irishman, warned by the locomotive’s shriek, are plunged into a momentary darkness, fifteen hundred feet beneath the windy height where the horsemen of two hundred years ago stumbled along an indistinct track. Swift was of that company, and it is still told how the inns at either end of this laborious route used to display on their signs the couplets written by him:—