little prospect of their being erected in too great a hurry. It happened, however, that the Duke of Richmond returned from the Mediterranean, while the authorities were considering a variety of plans. He had witnessed the bombardment of a little town, called Martella, on the Corsican coast. Most of the defences of this place were quickly laid in ruins by the heavy guns of the English fleet; but one insignificant-looking fort offered an unexpected opposition. On this building, which was of a circular form, the heaviest artillery of the times made no impression whatever. The cannon balls glanced off the structure, just as they are said to have done when fired in more recent days at the circular turret of the celebrated "Monitor," during the American Civil War. So this small Corsican fort was the progenitor of the multitude of "Martello" towers, which still mount guard on the shores of the English Channel. The turret-ship "Monitor," above alluded to, was likewise the progenitor of hosts of vessels of similar build, called "Monitors."

Among exclamations in common use, "Halloo!" and "Hurrah!" have curious origins attributed to them. It is said by the author of the "Queen's English," that the people of Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, when they desire to hail a person at a distance, call out, not halloo !" but "halloup! This he imagines is a survival of the times when one cried to another, "a loup! a loup!" or as we would now say, "wolf! wolf!" "Hurrah," again, according to M. Littré, is derived from the Sclavonic huraj, "to Paradise," which signified that all soldiers who fell fighting valiantly, went straight to heaven. "Prithee" is obviously a is obviously a corruption of "I pray thee"; while "marry" was originally, in Popish times, a method of swearing by the Virgin Mary.

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The familiar term "jockey" is from the Gipsy "chuckni," a whip; and John Galt informs us that "canter' " is abbreviation of "Canterbury." In his Entail," this passage occurs :-"The horse at the same moment, started forward into that pleasant speed at which the pilgrims of yore were wont to pass from London to the shrine of Thomas á Becket at Canterbury, which for brevity, is in vulgar parlance called, in conse. quence, a canter." In the south of Scot. land, a donkey is termed a "cuddy";

and near Melrose Abbey, there is a park called "Cuddy's Green." This, however, is a contraction of Saint Cuthbert's

Green.

Sir Walter Scott, when embarking on a new steamship called the "City of Edinburgh," remarked to the captain that the vessel should have been christened the "New Reekie"; and he is responsible for the subjoined explanation of the sobriquet "Auld Reekie," as applied to the northern capital. A Fifeshire laird used to regulate the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which could be distinctly seen from the door of his mansion. When he observed the smoke thickening, he directed his family to make preparations for prayer. "For yonder's Auld Reekie," said he, "putting on her night-cap!" These is met with, in some districts, a surname "Reekie"; perhaps this may be derived from the by-name of the Scotch capital.

To turn for a moment to one or two terms of a different character, we find that "turncoat" has an interesting history. One of the Dukes of Savoy found his position between the opposing forces of France and Spain somewhat awkward; and he had often to change sides. In order to facilitate this alternation of policy he had a coat made, blue on one surface and white on the other, either side being adapted to wear outwards. When in the French interest, he appeared in white; when in the Spanish, in blue. From these circumstances he acquired the nickname of Emanuel the Turncoat, to distin guish him from the other Princes of his house.

"Cravats," now obsolete, or nearly so, were introduced to Paris by the Croats; while "haberdashers" derive their designation from a variety of cravat which enjoyed great popularity, and which was called a "berdash."

"Blue-stocking" has given rise to much controversy. De Quincey attributes the use of the word to an old Oxford statute, which instructs "loyal scholastic students" to appear in blue socks; while Dr. Bisset says "blue-stocking" was a sobriquet applied to the only gentleman who attended Lady Mary Montague's assemblies in Portman Square. This gentleman, a learned Dr. Stillingfleet, wore blue stockings.

It is singular to note that the wellknown word "Whig" is derived, by

Thy salmon, of all floods most plentiful in thee.

That the beaver really haunted the River Teifi within historic times there is satisfactory evidence to show, and the valley perhaps owes some of its rich meadow flats to the dams constructed by these industrious creatures centuries ago. Giraldus, writing in the reign of Henry the Second, describes the animal as still existing in the river. Indeed the beaver was also known in North Wales, and under its Welsh name, Ffrangcon, has left a memory here and there, in vale or stream.

Though the beaver is extinct, the salmon still remains, and the Teifi fishery continues one of the best in Wales. In the northern parts of the county the rivers are much befouled by the mine works. But this is no new thing, for mining in Cardiganshire is an ancient industry which existed probably from the time of the Roman dominion in Britain. Otherwise it is difficult to see what was the object of the Roman roads that traversed the county across the wild hills, not only roads of grand communication, but less pretentious vicinal ways, still often in use between parish and parish. The metal seekers were here, no doubt, time out of mind; nor could their privileges be deemed onerous, nor their customs too exacting, considering the benefits they conferred on the community at large. The early Norman Kings, with a foresight that did them credit, laid claim to all mines discovered throughout the country—that is, they claimed the royalty paid by the miner-while at the same time they gave the royal sanction to his privilege of freely prospecting for metal in any man's domain.

Of mines of gold and silver, indeed, the King claimed the whole produce, and as lead ore contains a greater or less percentage of silver, the Crown laid claim to the lead mines too. During the minority of King Henry the Sixth, the Duke of Bedford granted himself a lease of all gold and silver mines within the kingdom, with the title of Governor of the Royal Mines. The distracted state of the Kingdom, however, culminating in the Wars of the Roses, caused the Royal claims to

fall into abeyance, and in the wilds of Cardiganshire mining went on, without much tribute being rendered to the Cæsar of the day.

Queen Elizabeth leased all her Royal rights to a company of mining adventurers, and under license from this company the well-known Hugh Myddleton realised a large fortune, by successfully mining for silver in Cardiganshire. This fortune, it is said, was in a great measure expended by Sir Hugh, in bringing the New River water to London; but the enterprising Welshman went on mining to the end of his life, and no doubt with tolerable success. At any rate his successor, Thomas Bushel, drew a large fortune from the same mines, and obtained the Royal permission to establish a mint in the Castle of Aberystwith, where from 1638 to 1642 silver pieces were coined, which are still tolerably plentiful in the cabinets of collectors. So great, indeed, was the value of the bullion raised, that Bushel obtained a grant of the Isle of Lundy as a storehouse for his treasure; and when the Civil War broke out, Bushel was able to show his gratitude to the King by clothing the whole of the Royal army in the West, as well as by lending the King the sum of forty thousand pounds in specie. Eventually Bushel sank nearly the whole of his fortune in supporting the Royal cause; and the most productive veins of ore being now exhausted, Bushel abandoned his Cardiganshire mines and went prospecting on the Mendip Hills, led to this course, it is said, by some old prophecy of the enchanter, Merlin.

Some years later valuable veins of ore were discovered at Gogerddan, near Aberystwith, on the estate of Sir Carberry Price, and in the year 1690 an Act of Parliament was obtained in the interests of landed proprietors, by which the ancient claims of the Crown were abrogated, and only a royalty retained upon the produce of gold mines. On the Act receiving the Royal assent Sir Carberry Price rode straight from Whitehall to his home in Cardiganshire, accomplishing the journey within forty-eight hours, and bonfires were lighted on all the hills, and general rejoicings instituted, in celebration of the event.

To Dovey's floods shall numerous traders come, Employ'd to fetch the British bullion home, writes one of the minor poets of the period. With many vicissitudes of fortune silver mining went on, enriching a few proprietors, bringing many adventurers to

ruin, and affording precarious employment to colonies of working miners. In the result the less valuable product has proved the more profitable. Meagre lead

Which rather threat'nest than doth promise aught.

The chief lead-mining district is among the hills and ravines where the streams join the Rivers Rheiddol and Ystwith, above the watering-place of Aberystwith, and in the wild dreary country whose monotonous desolation is relieved by that wondrous chasm which is spanned by the Devil's Bridge. The name is uncomplimentary to the monks of the Abbey of Strata Florida, who built the original arch, the lower one, now disused, high above which stretches the handsome span of the more modern bridge. The Welsh, however, with more propriety, call the bridge Pontarmynach, or Monks' Bridge.

In the same wild district, but on the watershed of the Teifi, is placed the Abbey of Strata Florida, once the richest and most famous Abbey in Wales-now represented only by a few fragments, and fine Norman arch, which has been marvellously preserved in the midst of universal ruin. When Leland visited the place in the reign of Elizabeth, he found that the precincts of the Abbey were still a favourite place of burial, and the ruins were surrounded by a cemetery of great extent, with thirty-nine great yew trees growing there. The Reformation, which destroyed this noble foundation, was never a popular movement in Wales, but was regarded with little but indifference.

The Welsh, indeed, had always viewed with dislike the supremacy of the see of Canterbury; the see of St. David's was, in their eyes, the rightful Metropolitan of the Church of Wales, and English domination had weakened so much the hold of the Church on the people of Wales, that its misfortunes hardly touched their sympathies. Among the farmers and peasants, the old prayers, the old charms, still retained a certain influence; they assembled at the parish church on Sundays as for a weekly holiday. The parson shared the potations and amusements of his flock; if a sense of decorum prevented his playing ball in the churchyard with the rest, anyhow he might keep the score. It is customary to regard this period as one of Egyptian darkness; but there was, probably, a great deal of honest enjoyment and happiness; and, if the men drank a good deal of ale, at least the ale was good.

Then came the religious revival, beginning in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when preaching was revived with something like bardic fervour, and the excited, and everywhere chapels arose heart of the people was moved and through the land.

Tom

Not far from the Abbey, near the village of Tregaron, is still shown the house of the Robin Hood of Wales, the Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and Jack Sheppard of the popular legend rolled into one. Jones, or, in Welsh, Tom Sion Catti, no doubt had a real existence, and flourished at his neighbours' expense between the years 1590 and 1630, but legend has embellished the small fragments of his veritable history with many ornaments of ancient folk-lore. That Tom, while living ostensibly on his small patrimony, should have added to his means by plundering all the country round about is credible enough. He certainly did not rob the rich to help the poor, after the example of Robin Hood; on the contrary, he plundered the small people and left alone the great, and thus was able to evade justice, and to finish his career with credit by marrying an heiress and eventually becoming High Sheriff of the county.

Through this same lonely region runs the cld Roman Way known as Sarn Helen, which traverses the county from end to end; and at Llanio, a small township of Tregaron parish, remains of an extensive Roman settlement have been discovered. But among the peasantry of the county the Roman roads and camps are generally ascribed to the Flemings, the authors of all the mischief done in that part of the country, according to popular tradition.

This notion in regard to the Flemings, so opposed to that generally conceived of a mild, industrious people, occupied in teaching the semi-barbarous English and Welsh all kinds of useful arts and industries, requires a little elucidation. In the time of our Henry the First, Robert of Jerusalem, who had served with Geoffry of Bouillon at the siege and capture of the Holy City, was Count of Flanders, and a firm ally and a pensioner of our King. "In his time, Flanders was so afflicted with plague, famine, inundations, and continued rains, from October, 1108, to April, 1109, that many of the inhabitants were forced to retire into England, where they were planted in a colony in the east part of the country by King Henry." The east part of the country resented very strongly

the intrusion of these foreigners, and eventually the colony was planted in that extreme corner of Wales, now known as Pembrokeshire.

The ancient Principality of Dyfed, the Demetia of the Romans, at one time had embraced the greater part of South Wales. The tribe of Pendaran Dyfed was, according to tradition, one of the three original tribes of the Cymry. It spoke its own peculiar dialect of the Welsh, and in earlier times, it spread over the opposite shores of the Severn, occupying the counties of Devon and Cornwall, and holding out a friendly hand to the kindred tribe of the land now called Brittany. But in the twelfth century, Dyfed had shrunk into the corner called Pembroke. At the present time, Pembroke is still divided between an English and a Welsh speaking people. Here is the little England beyond Wales, which has existed as a distinct colony for at least seven centuries, and probably for much longer. For it is highly improbable that the broad tidal lakes and fiords, known as Milford Haven, were overlooked by the colonising or plundering swarms from the Baltic. The names of places of rivers and creeks, all suggest the Northman; and when Arnulph de Montgomery founded the town of Pembroke, and built a strong castle there, he levied tribute probably not from Welshmen, but from settlements of his own more or less distant kinsmen.

The south part of Pembrokeshire, indeed, is apart from the rest of Wales in physical character, as in population. It is a land of market gardens and fruit plantations, a land that yields much to careful cultivation, and in whose neatness and primness the Flemings have left perhaps their trace. Otherwise, there is little definite to remind us of this foreign plantation, unless it be a solidity and sturdy grace in the brickwork of ancient buildings and farmhouses. We hear of the Flemings indeed in the early Welsh chronicles; they are marching to and fro; they are fighting with Rhys and Caradoc; they are somehow mixed up in the curious imbroglio of Princes, Concubines, Bishops, and Royal Stewards, that were the moving pieces of the politics of the time. But of the inner life of the colony, we know nothing. Probably, it was never a very large one; a military rather than an industrial settlement, which soon became merged among the Englishspeaking inhabitants of the district.

The northern part of Pembrokeshire remained still thoroughly Welsh. There

stood the ancient shrine of Saint David, who had removed the Metropolitan jurisdiction of the Church of Wales from Caerleon upon Usk-that once famous city of the Roman rule-to the barren promontory looking over the Irish Sea. Here, too, something like a city had arisen: a place that was almost neutral ground, in virtue of the holiness of its surroundings, and owed its prosperity to the pilgrims that resorted there from all parts of Wales, and even from the English borders.

Pembroke is a county of noble harbours without ships; and, as if Milford Haven which would hold the whole commercial marine of the whole world, were not enough, here is Fishguard on the north coast, with a noble bay, in which an Armada might find secure anchorage. Such an Armada did anchor in Fishguard Bay in the year 1797; if not a mighty fleet, yet sufficient to put the coast and all the neighbouring regions in a state of great alarm.

Three French ships, one of which was an armed frigate, anchored in the bay and landed a force of fourteen hundred men. Their General formed an entrenched camp on a neighbouring height, which had been used for the same purpose some ages before. It was ages, indeed, since anything exciting had occurred in that neighbourhood; perhaps not since the Flemings appeared in sight, or the mailclad men-at-arms of Arnulph de Montgomery.

The men of St. David's, however, were equal to the occasion. On the news that the enemy had landed, they mustered and demanded the keys of the cathedral, and, when their purpose was questioned, they pointed significantly to the roof, some part of which was covered with lead. The lead was stripped from the roof and divided among six blacksmiths, to be melted into bullets. Fowlingpieces were furbished up, and every man who was capable of bearing arms warned for the levy en masse. All this seems to have been done, as it were, instinctively, by the people themselves, without leaders, without organisation.

was

It seems probable that the French Directory, in thus throwing an isolated expedition upon the coast, had the notion that the Welsh, like the Irish, were ripe for rebellion, for the force in itself was curiously unfit for any aggressive purpose. It was the Légion Noire, of fourteen