A little way beyond the town a man came out of a cottage and walked beside me. He had a basket in his hand. I quickened my pace; but he was a tremendous walker, and kept up with me. On we went side by side for more than a mile without speaking a word. At length, putting out my legs in genuine Barclay fashion, I got before him about ten yards, then turning round laughed and spoke to him in English. He too laughed and spoke, but in Welsh. We now went on like brothers, conversing, but always walking at great speed. I learned from him that he was a market gardener living at Bangor, and that Bangor, was three miles off. On the stars shining out we began to talk about them. Pointing to Charles’s wain I said, “A good star for travellers.” Whereupon pointing to the North star, he said: “I forwyr da iawn—a good star for mariners.” We passed a large house on our left. “Who lives there?” said I. “Mr. Smith,” he replied. “It is called Plas Newydd; milltir genom etto—we have yet another mile.” In ten minutes we were at Bangor. I asked him where the Albion Hotel was. “I will show it you,” said he, and so he did. As we came under it I heard the voice of my wife, for she, standing on a balcony and distinguishing me by the lamplight, called out. I shook hands with the kind six-mile-an-hour market gardener, and going into the inn found my wife and daughter, who rejoiced to see me. We presently had tea. CHAPTER XXVII Bangor—Edmund Price—The Bridges—Bookselling—Future Pope—Wild Irish—Southey. Bangor is seated on the spurs of certain high hills near the Menai, a strait separating Mona or Anglesey from Caernarvonshire. It was once a place of Druidical worship, of which fact, even without the testimony of history and tradition, the name which signifies “upper circle” would be sufficient evidence. On the decay of Druidism a town sprang up on the site and in the neighbourhood of the “upper circle,” in which in the sixth century a convent or university was founded by Deiniol, who eventually became Bishop of Bangor. This Deiniol was the son of Deiniol Vawr, a zealous Christian prince who founded the convent of Bangor Is Coed, or Bangor beneath the wood, in Flintshire, which was destroyed and its inmates almost to a man put to the sword by Ethelbert a Saxon king, and his barbarian followers at the instigation of the monk Austin, who hated the brethren because they refused to acknowledge the authority of the Pope, whose delegate he was in Britain. There were in all three Bangors; the one at Is Coed, another in Powis, and this Caernarvonshire Bangor, which was generally termed Bangor Vawr or Bangor the great. The two first Bangors have fallen into utter decay, but Bangor Vawr is still a bishop’s see, boasts of a small but venerable cathedral, and contains a population of above eight thousand souls.