has so pleasant and cheerful a look from the opposite bank, and the visitor will be tempted to cross over the ferry to it. Near at hand it does not maintain its picturesque character; but there is a waterfall in a cleft of the hill behind, which is called Cleiadan Shoots, that the Llandigo people are proud of, and that it may be worth while to visit if there be time to spare. It is not a very remarkable one.

Up to Redbrook the scenery loses nothing of its loveliness, the river is wide and rapid, the banks rocky, but on every possible part crowded with luxuriant vegetation, from the hanging woods on the hill sides to the lowly banks along the path, which are covered with a profusion of wild raspberries and strawberries, and flowers of every hue. At Bigg's Weir, a neat bridge of one large arch of 160 feet span, carries the new road from Monmouth to Chepstow over the river. Just by is an old manor house, the former residence of the Rooke family. In this part many neat villas are seen on the eminences on either bank, the most noticeable, perhaps, is Florence cottage, a pretty Italo-Swiss building on a rocky projection on the right. A lofty hill, a short distance from the left bank of the river, will attract attention from the tall mast that is seen on its summit. The hill is Pen-y-vant, and the mast is a May-pole, and thither yet on May-day morning do the young folks flock,' and then as the day draws on

"Around this May-pole do the jocund swains Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains;"

as in days of yore they used to do in every village. On another hill, St. Briavel's castle, is a prominent object, but its associations are not of so agreeable a kind: it is used as a prison for felons and debtors. Redbrook has been a place of some manufacturing consequence. In former times there was "a famous copper work managed by Swedes and other foreigners;" more recently there have been extensive iron works, and the working of tin has been carried on to a considerable extent. But now the place is far from flourishing. Some of the principal works are closed, and the others are decaying. Large buildings are going fast to ruin, and many of the cottages look deplorable.

Between Redbrook and Monmouth the banks are lower, but the river affords a very pleasurable sail or ramble. Within a mile of Monmouth is seen Penalt, whose church, from its happy position, is sure to catch the eye. On Penalt common is an oak, beneath which is a block of stone; and the custom is said to be still maintained of depositing the corpse of a person on its way to the churchyard on this stone, while the mourners sing psalms over it. Some antiquarians have fancied that the practice is a relic of Druidic rites. The tall Kyman-hill now comes in view, it is one of the Monmouth lions, and a favourite stroll with visitors. On the summit is a monument to the naval heroes of the early part of the eighteenth century; and a pleasure house for the accommodation of those who wish to enjoy the beautiful prospect. Before we

arrive at Monmouth the Wye has received two affluents that considerably increase its volume-the Monnow and the Trothy. On the Trothy, at a short distance from the Wye, is Troy-house, an ancient residence of the Worcester family, but now most observable as a show house. It contains family pictures and 'curiosities'-chief among which are the cradle in which Henry of Monmouth was rocked, and the armour he fought in at Agincourt.

The situation of Monmouth has been universally admired. Gray, who visited the Wye the year before his death, describes it as lying "in a vale that is the delight of my eyes, and the very seat of pleasure." He speaks of Monmouth as "a town he never heard mentioned;" but he surely had not forgotten what Fluellyn says of it, in noticing that it was the birth place of his hero, Harry the Fifth, as Macedon was of Alexander. "If you look in the maps of the world, I warrant you shall find in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one; 'tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both." We have little to add to Fluellyn's luminous account of the situation of the good town; but we hope the visitor will not forget that "there is salmons" at Monmouth, and taste thein.

The town is a very good one, and has a clean, comfortable look, that one is glad to see after passing through the dirty, poverty-stricken Redbrook village. It has a noble church, and some respectable corporate buildings. Over the entrance to the Town Hall the Monmouth hero struts most heroically. There are good shops, and comfortable inns, and the streets are well paved and lighted. The stranger must walk quite to the extremity of the town, in order to see the old gatehouse, which, on the country side, still carries a warlike front. Close by it is a very curious early Norman church. It has been lately repaired, and some rather fanciful additions have been made to it, to the loss of much of its antique character. Of the Castle nothing remains. Ragland Castle, about eight miles from Monmouth, is one of the finest ruins in the country, and should by all means be visited.

Before reaching Monmouth the stranger has probably seen some of the little tub-like boats called coracles (or quite as commonly by the English peasants, truckles), in which the fishermen float about the river like some overgrown shell-fish. These coracles are not peculiar to our river, being met with on the Usk, and we believe one or two other rivers in the principality. But it is on the Wye that they are most common, and most noticed. Every Wye fisherman, almost, has one. They are made of tarred canvas strained over a wicker frame, and are in shape like the half of a walnut-shell. They are light and portable, weighing only about twelve pounds. The fisherman generally makes his own coracle, but he can purchase one of the best

description for a guinea. When going out fishing, the fisherman generally paddles down the stream some six or seven miles, fishing as he goes; and, then, when he has completed his take, he goes ashore, slings his coracle over his shoulders, and with his fish on his arm, and his boat at his back, trudges home as briskly, and with as much ease, as an ordinary angler with his creel. The coracles are of course very fragile, and on the slightest rub against a stone in passing over a rapid, are apt to spring a leak; but the leak is easily stopped and the boat is little the worse for the damage. In rowing them the boatman sits on a board in the centre, and placing the handle of his paddle (which resembles a baker's peel in shape) against his shoulder, works it with his left hand, and the light boat glides with fishlike rapidity along the stream. When not fishing, the boatman generally has a stick in his right hand, with which he directs the motions of his coracle-it can hardly be called steering it. When in motion they have a very unstable appearance, and, indeed, are not easily kept in equipoise by a novice, and sometimes even an adept is upset if he attempts to over-do the speed. There is an annual regatta at Monmouth, and a coracle race is usually one of the most attractive matches of the day. It commonly happens that before the competitors have run half the distance, a moiety of them are capsized in their eagerness to win the first place, or by fouling' one another.

We have supposed the stranger to be walking up the Wye, but the space from Monmouth to New Weir he must boat, or he will miss some of the very finest and

most characteristic of the Wye scenery. The magnificent Coldwell rocks can only be fairly seen from the bed of the river. The stranger cannot do better than hire Samuel Dew-whom he will find by Monmouth bridge. Sam is one of the steadiest and cleverest of Wye watermen, knows the river well, and is quite used to guiding those who are in search of the beautiful. Moreover he has a nice light boat, and while he works the sail, or handles the sweeps, you may take the ropes in hand, and while sailing gently along, enjoy at your ease the splendid succession of rock and river prospects that for those dozen miles make the Wye a river worthy of paradise. And if you are used to handle the pencil-as all ramblers ought to be-Sam will hold on the boat for you with a patience that is most exem plary, and that he acquired, as he says, by having had some fair sketchers to attend upon-but he only tells that to the rougher sex.

You cannot fail to enjoy the sail from Monmouth. For a mile or two the scenery is of the quietest and most graceful order of river scenery, with something of gaiety in its gracefulness, and delight in its quiet. You involuntarily whisper your feeling of happiness into her ear who sits beside you, and are overjoyed, though not surprised, to find it returned, brightened with a lustre that makes the clear river, and the verdant hills, and the cerule sky shine all with new life, and grace, and sweetness: if even you be not blest with such a companion, but have instead some steady old schoolfellow, who has grown, like yourself, gray and grave, and a little prosy, the gossip, however serious

it may be at starting, will assuredly become cheerful presently; and the reminiscences of school days, when the world lay in sunshine before you, and you fancied yourself a born genius for whose advent the whole hemisphere was waiting in panting anticipation, ready to burst into loud paeans when it should be announced, will be of the blithest class or should you be alone, and driven, through lack of rod and flies, to a cigar in order to dissipate the superabundant bile that is liable to be secreted as you "chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancies"the last being in this rough world so apt to preponderate -even then the genial influence of the place will soon seize hold of you, and you will unconsciously fall into a train of cheerful thought that will put you into better humour alike with yourself and your position, and the world around you, and inspire you with sentiments of charity and benignity, quite unusual even to your benevolent mind.

After you pass Dixton Church the banks increase in height and ruggedness; they are still richly wooded, but bare hills rise beyond, and at every turn of the river the whole scene grows wilder. For a while there is somewhat of sombreness in it, but that soon gives place to a bold, almost savage grandeur, before which all the rocky river scenery that ever Ruysdael, or even Salvator, painted, sinks into paltriness. He who does not feel the grandeur of the river as it passes between the Coldwell rocks, may be assured that he was not meant by Nature for a traveller (unless it be of the class yclept commercial); and he will do well in future to

confine his river excursions to the banks of that named the New; and in his ordinary travels to deviate as little as possible from the high road. Somewhere hereabouts, by the way, Brunel proposes to carry one of his new railways across the river in two or three places, within a space of a few miles; but whether above or below the stream we do not know-we hope below, some fathoms deep.

By the Dowards, Great and Little, and so forward to New Weir, the crags are still more broken, and the whole scene is of the wildest and most romantic description. Huge fragments stand out from the parent cliffs, looking often like the remnants of some mighty fortress, or the keep and towers of an ancient castle, that time and the chances of war have beaten into their present ruinous form. Large detached blocks lie scattered along the bases of the precipices, and in the bed of the river. In the steep cliffs are seen the mouths of caves shaped apparently by the hands of some giant tribe. You are not surprised that the rocky towers and grim caverns have not only distinctive names, but also in many cases appropriate legends. You acquiesce at once in the propriety of the locality of Arthur's Hall,' and hardly wonder that, in olden times, the adventurous wight who penetrated its gloomy recesses should have discovered the enchanted king and his knights, and gained a golden reward for his temerity-or that the spirit appointed to watch the cavern should, after miners and quarrymen, and other prying mortals had begun to hammer at the rocks, have cast over the inner door such a

shadow that no human ken has since been able to penetrate it. The chairs, and stools, and thrones, and other modern-sounding names that your attention is called to, do not so well satisfy you. What is it to you that the huge mass on which some bold climber has planted a staff (see Cut, No. 1) is called the 'Lung Stone,' or that the recess beyond is named 'Bowler's Hole ?' There is profanity in the very sound. It rings of Cockaigne, though of undoubted Monmouthshire origin. Here along the lofty hills, in apparently unapproachable places, you see proofs of the industry and perseverance of man, and the hidden wealth of Nature. The debris of mines and quarries in the slopes above, and the smoke and noise of iron works below, hardly, indeed, aid the romance of the scene, and somewhat detract from its air of savage seclusion; but as they only come fairly in sight when the wildest spot is past, and then afford a new object of interest, we will not, for our part, complain of their presence. And see how, to a poetic imagination, such objects may even add to the grandeur of the scene. We quote the following passage the more readily, because the book from which it is taken is now a scarce one, and the passage itself has been greatly admired by Gray, and Alison, and other equally able critics, and, besides, being a very favourable example of the style of the writers on the picturesque in the last century, it gives another and tolerably faithful picture of this famous spot:-" A scene at the New Weir, on the river Wye, which in itself is truly great and awful, so far from being disturbed, becomes more interesting and impor. tant by the business to which it is destined. It is a chasm between two ranges of hills, which rise almost perpendicularly from the water; the rocks on the sides are mostly heavy masses, and their colour is generally brown; but here and there a pale cliff starts up to a vast height above the rest, unconnected, broken, and bare; large trees frequently force out their way amonst them, and many of them stand far back in the covert, where their natural dusky hue is deepened by the shadow which overhangs them. The river, too, as it retires, loses itself amid the woods, which close immediately above, these rise thick and high, and darken the water. In the midst of all this gloom is an iron forge, covered with a black cloud of smoke, and surrounded with half-burned ore, with coal, and with cinders. The fuel for it is brought down a path worn into steps, narrow, and steep, and winding among the precipices; and near it is an open space of barren moor, about which are scattered the huts of the workmen. It stands close to the cascade of the Weir, where the agitation of the current is increased by large fragments of rocks which have been swept down by floods from the bank, or shivered by tempests from the brow; and at stated intervals, the sullen sound, from the strokes of the great hammers in the forge, deadens the roar of the waterfall.”—(Whateley, Observations on Modern Gardening, p. 109.)

At New Weir you may as well discharge the boat. In the summer season you cannot well get over the

Weir, which is in truth a very pretty fall; and in the autumn it is not much easier, and so you had better be thankful for the pleasant sail you have had, and 'jog on' the remainder of the journey a-foot. Of course, if you descend the stream the journey may be easily accomplished in a boat. You will, in any case, ascend the hill on your right. There is a smooth and easy road to the very summit of Symond's Yat (or Gate), and the tenderest feminine tourist will hardly be fatigued by the ascent. The summit is some seven or eight hundred feet high (one of the 'Guide Books' funnily calls it above 2000); and it affords a prospect splendid enough to repay a climb of twice the labour. The Forest of Dean stretches away on the right; the spire of Ruer-Dean, and here and there other scattered churches, and the light blue smoke marking the site of a few hidden villages, and imparting an air of humanity to the dense sea of leaves, that else would look too dark and gloomy; beyond the Forest the eye wanders across a rich and fertile tract of country, stretching into two or three different counties. In other directions the scene is hardly less beautiful-forward, it is perhaps more so. There the windings of the river guide the observer into a district full of the most various beauty; Goodrich castle dignifies the middle ground, and the noble Welsh mountains close in the distance. The doublings of the river are here most erratic, and have a singular appearance as we see them from this tower of observation. From the bank below to Goodrich Castle is said to be not much above a mile in a direct line, while it is seven miles by the river; the sort of loop made by the stream in its course round the base of this hill is some three or four miles in extent. Probably no pedestrian would here follow all the sinuosities of the stream, but there is much of beauty and much of interest in some parts along its course. The ferries of Holme's Rope and Hunt's Holme, with the few rude, disconnected cottages, and the back-ground of rugged hills, are strikingly picturesque. Whitchurch is pleasant. The Bicknors, both Welsh and English, have their claims to attention. Opposite to Welsh Bicknor, by the way, a brook falls into the Wye that is said to sink into the ground at a place called Brookshead Grove (some miles from the Wye), and rise again a mile and a half lower-a circumstance that is related of some other English streams, as the Hamps, which falls into the Dove at Ilam, and the Surrey Mole-though, in the latter instance erroneously. Courtfield has a mansion famous as the nursery of Harry the Fifth, and a monument in the church that is commonly, but incorrectly, described as being to the memory of the Countess of Salisbury, the nurse of the English hero. Ledbrook has some lovely scenery, though in part disfigured by quarries.

Thus, whether following the tortuous course of the stream, or crossing the ferry, and taking the shorter path over the meadows, we shall arrive by a very pleasant route at Goodrich, where, of course, the rambler will halt awhile, and examine at leisure both its Court and Castle.

Goodrich Court should be visited first. It stands on a bold promontory overhanging the river, and forms a very noticeable object for miles around. It is, in truth, a strange-looking pile. The towers, with their bartizans, and tall conical spires, the many battlemented turrets, that break up the outline of the main edifice; and the detached flag-tower and other out-buildings that we catch glimpses of among the trees, give altogether the impression of one of the castles on the Rhine, rather than an English castle. But it is a true copy of an old castle of the early part of the fourteenth century. And the intention is worked out thoroughly, at least in the exterior; internally, of course, there is some concession to modern refinement. You have to enter the grounds through a gate-house, built as though to deter hostile approach. A carriage-road of half a mile leads to the Court, and there you are again stayed by the Warder's Terrace, and must cross the draw-bridge, and pass through a gate that is defended by round-towers and a formidable-looking portcullis, before you arrive at the Entrance-hall. The interior is not less striking. There are many rooms of a feudal character, but others are of more recent times-though none is later than the reign of Anne. To every monarch in whose reign a marked style of domestic fittings appertains, is appropriated a room. Thus there are the Rooms of Elizabeth, James I., the Charleses, &c., and the furniture and fittings in each are strictly in keeping with its title. Much of the furniture and many of the decorations are really of the time; the remainder is a careful imitation. It is in those parts of the building to which the public are admitted, that the style of the ancient castle is chiefly retained. The Great Hall, the Chapel, the Armoury, and so forth, are admirably calculated to revive our notions of feudal fashions; and a visit to the Court will be remembered with delight and profit. Not alone are the rooms and their furniture interesting and remarkable, but there is also the magnificent collection of arms and armour-perhaps the finest private collection in existence. Every variety of armour almost is brought together:-from the splendid suit that belonged to the Duke of Ferrara, to that worn by the Indian rajah, and the buff coats of Cromwell's soldiers; and of arms from the massive and often exquisitely-finished weapons of medieval date, to the rude contrivances of the Welsh Chartists of our own time. In short, as in the collection of the famous Captain Grose,

"Here is a fouth o' auld nick-nackets,

Rusty airn caps, and jingling jackets
Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets
A towmont guid."

There is something hobby-horsical doubtless about it all, but at least every reader of Sir Samuel Meyrick's splendid works on Ancient Armour, and similar subjects, will rejoice that the excellent author-so unlike authors in general-has been able to ride his hobbyand one of such mettle too-with safety. An inscription in Gothic characters over the arch of the Entrance Hall informs you that the building was erected by S. R. Meyrick, in 1828, and that Edward Blore was

the architect. In the village just by the Court Sir Samuel has built a little inn that is also a curiosity in its way. It bears the sign of 'The Hostelrie,' and is a capital imitation of an old English hostel. It is now being enlarged, to meet the wants of the increasing number of visitors, and will shortly be a very welcome hostel to the wanderer. The host, too, is plain, homespun, and obliging-just what such a host ought to be. Goodrich Castle is a grand ruin. It is of different ages and styles of architecture, but throughout of the most solid construction, and its ruins present masses of the most imposing form. Parts of it are believed to be anterior to the Norman period; and though that may be doubted, there is little doubt of their being very ancient, and none of their being very majestic. The castle has been large, and of the completest defensive character. Barbicans, ballium, and other outworks yet remain to attest its strength; and the massive keep and enormous walls prove that when even the outworks were lost it must have been long tenable. Many of the details, as well as the general form, are very interesting in an architectural and antiquarian view; and all will look with interest on the curious carvings of names and figures yet visible on the walls of the prison, the tracing of which served to while away the time of some luckless beings who were enclosed within them many centuries ago, and of whose existence these are the only memorials. The history of the castle would be interesting; but we cannot now enter upon it. Goodrich was the last castle, except Pendennis, that held out for Charles I. It had, after desperate struggles, changed hands more than once during the contest, and when it finally was taken by the Parliament, it was ordered to be thoroughly disgarrisoned and dismantled. It is said that Sir Samuel Meyrick was anxious to purchase and restore Goodrich Castle instead of building his Court; but we may be glad he did not succeed, for our river would have lost one of its chief ornaments in losing this most magnificent ruin, while it has gained a new one in the remarkable edifice that now rears its head close by.

Just below the Castle there is a ferry, from which there is a short cut to Ross; but there is also a path alongside the river the whole way to the good town, which is infinitely preferable, though it be thrice as long. From this path the view down the river is most striking and beautiful. The clear, broad stream winds gently along, with rich meadows skirting its left bank, while on the right rises a lofty hill whose side is covered with a luxuriant hanging wood, and whose brow is crowned with the towers and turrets of Goodrich Court, its quaint form suiting admirably its wild position, and the red colour of its masonry glowing still redder under the influence of the declining sun; and a little beyond, and lower, is Goodrich Castle, the massive keep and crumbling towers of which are clad in a mantle of ivy, - the majestic ruin forming in its venerable antiquity a fine contrast to the freshness of its youthful neighbour. We ought to have mentioned before that both from the