in this part of Wales, and almost every woman on holidays wore the red cloak and high black hat, and looked far better, I think, than their descendants at this Gresford Club fête, though several of these were as well dressed as the squire’s wife and daughters. I followed the procession into church, as did most of the crowd through which they passed, one man only refusing to join in my hearing, on the ground that he had been already to one service too many. He had got married there, his neighbour explained, and his wife was in the procession. The service was short and well chosen, with a good, sound ten-minutes sermon at the end, and then the procession re-formed, the band still leading, and marched to tea in the big schoolroom facing the churchyard. “Scholæ elymosynæ Dominæ Margarettæ Strode, fundatæ 1725, ad pauperes ejus sumptibus erudiendos,” I read over the door. I notice that the Welsh are rather given to Latin inscriptions can it be in token of defiance to vernacular English? During the tea-hour I had the pleasure of exploring church and churchyard, the former a large and fine specimen of the later perpendicular, but containing relics of painted glass of a much earlier date, probably thirteenth century. Portions of this, of a fine straw-colour, the Rector says, are invaluable, the art being lost. I wonder what Mr. Powell would say to that? The churchyard is glorious with its yews, more than twenty grand trees, and the grandfather of them the largest but one, if not the largest, in the Kingdom. He measures 29 feet 6 inches round 6 feet from the ground, and is confidently affirmed by Welsh experts (who have duly noted it in the parish register) to be 1400 years old. Without supposing that Merlin reposed in his shade, one cannot look at him in his glorious old age and doubt that he must have been a stout tree in Plantagenet times, and furnished bow-staves for Welshmen who marched behind Fluellen to the French wars.