CAST. Let us seek these wonders of the waters, Astrophel; perchance we might, in some enchanted hour, see even beneath yon Severn flood the grotto of Sabrina, with its green and silver weeds, its purple shells and arborescent corallines; and, if we dive into the depths of the sea, might we not light on the palace of Amphitrite, and, while the Nereids and Tritons were mourning over the desolation of a shipwreck, hear the echo of some Ariel’s song “full fathom five,” undulating through the water; or realise the overwhelming of Maha-Velipoor, in the curse of Kehama: “Their golden summits in the noontide ray, Shone o’er the dark green deep, that roll’d between; For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seen Peering above the sea.” Or the legend of _Thierna Na Oge_, in Lough Neagh, in Ireland; for Moore has sung— “On Lough Neagh’s banks, when the fisherman strays, He sees the round towers of other days;” and why may not _we_? Who that has wandered among the dark mountains of Brecon, remembers not the blue pool of Lynsavaddon, and has not listened to the tales of the mountaineers, of the city over which to this day its waves are rolling? and in the beautiful vale of Eidournion, in Merioneth—but listen to a fragment of a romance of this valley, which from memory I quote:— There was a proud and wealthy prince in Gwyneth, when the beautiful isle was under the rule of the Cymri. At his palace gate a voice was once heard echoing among the mountains these words: ‘Edivar a ddau’—Repentance will come. The prince demanded ‘When?’ and in the rolling thunder the voice was again heard, ‘At the third generation.’ Nothing daunted, the wicked lord lived on, committing plunder and all evil excesses, and laughing to scorn the holy hymns in the churches. A son and heir was born to him, and there was a gorgeous assemblage in the hall of beautiful ladies and high-born nobles, to celebrate the festival of his birth. It was midnight, when in the ear of an old harper, a shrill voice whispered, ‘Edivar, Edivar;’ and a little bird hovered over him, and flew out of the palace in the pale moonshine: and the harper and the little bird went together into the mountains. The bird flitted before him in the centre of the moon’s disc, and warbled its mournful cry of ‘Edivar’ so plaintively, that the old man thought of the shriek of his little child Gwenhwyvar, as she sunk beneath the waters of Glaslyn. On the top of the mountain he sank down with weariness, and the little bird was not with him; all was silent, save the cataract and the sheep-bells on the mountain side. In alarm at the wild solitude around him, he turned towards the castle, but its lordly towers had vanished, and in the place of its woods and turrets there was a waste of rolling waters—with his lone harp floating on their surface. EV. I am unwilling to check your flight, fair Castaly, but my illustrations are not yet exhausted.