Carriage dogs—Dalmatian hounds or “plum-pudding” dogs—are not so fashionable as they were. Until recent years they were often to be seen trotting at an even pace under the carriages of the aristocracy and the wealthy during the London season, and were almost wholly kept for the sake of style and display. They were then, apart from being somewhat companionable and soothing to the nerves of restive horses, wholly useless; but—just as the waist-belt of a groom is the now meaningless survival of the necessary belt by which ladies riding pillion on horseback in the old days clung to the horseman—they had originally a very good reason for existence. Carriage dogs, in fact, date from more than two centuries ago, when families, travelling in their “chariots” between their country and their town houses, and often carrying great store of valuables with them, were always accompanied by these dogs, whose especial business was by no means comprised solely in keeping pace with the equipage. Indeed, the serious part of their profession only began when the wayside inn was reached, and the carriage put up in the coach-house. Throughout the night they kept watch and ward over their master’s goods; and ill fared the thief, or even the incautious stable-hand, who went near. XXXI Modern Oswestry is a place of engineering shops, foundries, and mining interests, and, as the seat of the Cambrian Railway locomotive and carriage works, is busy and prosperous. Not a vestige of its old trade in Welsh flannel remains, for the mills of Lancashire long ago began to produce a cheaper article than the Welsh could make. Very little of old Oswestry is left, and although the streets are still for the most part narrow and crooked, the greater number of the houses are modern. Inns abound in the grimy and slovenly place; a very different state of things from a hundred years ago, when Rowlandson and Wigstead came here and found it “remarkable for having (though rather a large town) the fewest public-houses we ever witnessed.” No one is at all likely to raise that complaint in these times. The road out of Oswestry passes close by two grassy hills crowned with trees, the original site, according to legend, of the town, and still known as “Old Oswestry.” The Welsh name them, and the ancient entrenchments that ring their summits, “Hen Dinas,” or “Old Fort.” Hidden away behind is Porkington, a historic estate whose real name is Brogyntyn, but thus vulgarised by the invading Saxon certainly as early as the reign of Henry III. Quite recently Lord Harlech, who now owns the estate, has re-adopted the original name, but “Porkington,” after an existence of six hundred years, is not so readily forgotten.