The river /Alyn/ joins the Dee below Wrexham. It has come through much lovely country, of one portion of which, near Mold, Pennant says:--"I hang long over the charming vale which opens here. Cambria here lays aside her majestic air, and condescends to assume a gentler form, in order to render her less violent in approaching union with her English neighbour." The Alyn runs underground for about half a mile after it has passed the old fortress of Caergwele. Indeed, as Drayton says, with all due exactness, "twice underground her crystal head doth run." Our first great landscape painter, Richard Wilson, was buried at Mold, and it was in the vale of the Alyn that fortune at last came to him, for here, on a small estate which had been bequeathed to him, he came upon a vein of lead, and was henceforth able to live in reasonable affluence. "And following Dee, which Britons long ygone Did call 'divine,' that doth to Chester tend"-- so remarks Edmund Spenser. First, however, we pass Eaton Hall and its splendid grounds. Sir John Vanbrugh built a great mansion on the site, which was pulled down when Gothic architecture again came into fashion. Its successor was, in spite of great cost and elaboration, an architectural failure, and it has now given place to Mr. Waterhouse's greatest and most colossal achievement in domestic architecture. This magnificent seat of the Duke of Westminster is situated in a very extensive park, in which there is one avenue two miles in length, bordered on each side by forest trees. The style of architecture adopted by Mr. Waterhouse is that which prevailed in France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "There is not a house in England," it has been said, "that has been built on a more perfect arrangement." The Dee flows round the outskirts of the park to the beautiful village of Eccleston, where the grounds, sloping down to the river, are very beautifully ornamented with trees. Henceforward to Chester the stream is like a broad reach of the Thames, calm, massive, with leafy banks, a truly impressive introduction to one of the most famous of English cities.