them, visible from every eminence in those parts. On such wide terms
is it called Vale of Glamorgan. But called by whatever name, it is a
most pleasant fruitful region: kind to the native, interesting to the
visitor. A waving grassy region; cut with innumerable ragged lanes;
dotted with sleepy unswept human hamlets, old ruinous castles with
their ivy and their daws, gray sleepy churches with their ditto ditto:
for ivy everywhere abounds; and generally a rank fragrant vegetation
clothes all things; hanging, in rude many-colored festoons and fringed
odoriferous tapestries, on your right and on your left, in every lane.
A country kinder to the sluggard husbandman than any I have ever seen.
For it lies all on limestone, needs no draining; the soil, everywhere
of handsome depth and finest quality, will grow good crops for you
with the most imperfect tilling. At a safe distance of a day's riding
lie the tartarean copper-forges of Swansea, the tartarean iron-forges
of Merthyr; their sooty battle far away, and not, at such safe
distance, a defilement to the face of the earth and sky, but rather an
encouragement to the earth at least; encouraging the husbandman to
plough better, if he only would.

The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but peaceable and
well-provided; much given to Methodism when they have any
character;--for the rest, an innocent good-humored people, who all
drink home-brewed beer, and have brown loaves of the most excellent
home-baked bread. The native peasant village is not generally
beautiful, though it might be, were it swept and trimmed; it gives one
rather the idea of sluttish stagnancy,--an interesting peep into the
Welsh Paradise of Sleepy Hollow. Stones, old kettles, naves of
wheels, all kinds of broken litter, with live pigs and etceteras, lie
about the street: for, as a rule, no rubbish is removed, but waits
patiently the action of mere natural chemistry and accident; if even a