The sea comes up to Rhuddlan, which, indeed, has some slight pretensions as a port; then, with flat meadows on one side and low-hanging woods on the other, the Clwyd bends about, this way and that, until, before long, it is joined by the river /Elwy/, which, as it is a pretty river to follow, and takes us to St. Asaph, we shall, for a while, keep company. The Elwy is a merry, romantic, shaded stream, with abundant trout. It is fringed by willow and hazel copse. Sometimes it is wholly lost in foliage, except for a silvery gleam among the leaves; sometimes it comes out into the sunlight, and flows by shingly holms and muddy flats. A peaceful, rich, pastoral country is that through which it courses merrily on its way, with here and there groups of cattle huddling under the hedges for coolness and shade. The water is stained brown with peat, telling of its birth on mountain slopes. Below Ffynnon Fair, seated on the brow of a hill, it receives the waters of a holy well, once sheltered by shrine work, and a place of pilgrimage, as the ivy-clad ruins of a cruciform chapel still declare. And this chapel was also the Gretna Green of Wales, a place for the marriage of runaway couples, as this ancient record shows:--"1611. Mem.: Thatt upon Frydaye, at night, happening upon vij. day of Februarie, one Pyers Griffith ab Inn Gryfydd, my brother in lawe, was married clandestinely with one Jane rch Thomas hys second wieff at the chapel at Wicwer called Capel Fynnon Fair." The Elwy loses the shadow of its willows and hazels a mile or so below St. Asaph, which is five miles upwards from Rhyl. Winding among deep banks of rich soil, it makes the necessary part of a pretty picture when, flowing under a fine stone bridge of five arches, it forms a foreground for one of the smallest cities, crowned by the smallest cathedral, in all these islands. St. Asaph may be satisfactorily explored in half an hour's time. It spreads itself over a hill, which is called Bryn Paulen, after some legendary Paulinus, a Roman general. The cathedral, which is no more than an average-sized church, is the central and highest object. St. Kentigern is said to have built a church of wood on the site about the middle of the sixth century, when he was driven from Scotland by a prince who declined to be won from Paganism. St. Asaph, who was a native of Wales, succeeded as bishop when Kentigern returned to Scotland. He built a church of stone, in which he was buried in 576. For five hundred years the see has no dependable history; but in the period of the Civil Wars there was a cathedral in which horses and oxen were stabled, and a see whose revenues were sequestrated by Parliament. The building was restored, when Charles II. came to the throne, by Bishop Griffith, and a bishop's palace was erected by his successor, who was none other than the learned Isaac Barrow. The cathedral of St. Asaph contains the tomb of this distinguished prelate, and a monument to Mrs. Hemans, who spent