pool, was an image of the form above, the fine unglazed oriel of the abbey. We have seen many views of the abbey published, but this we have never seen; still the memory of it is fresh with us-a golden memory of the passed away.

Back again in the town. We have some refreshment. Now for the walk to Cefn. Reader, did you ever walk from Gathurst to Appley Bridge on the Leeds and Liverpool canal, or on the Peak Forest canal from Hyde to Marple ? If so, you may form some idea of this walk. But to know this properly you must see it. The canal, of undefiled Dee water, like a slow, solemn companion to the stream brawling scores of feet lower down the valley, glides along under tall, gloomy firs and tasselled larch. Willows hang down their streamers; ashes and birch trees add their charms. Glimpses of distant mountains and distant woods, pleasant sunshine, pleasant company. We are in the Vale of Llangollen. We have seen "Jenny Jones."

There are coal

We pass on. We are approaching Cefn. boats here. We see the darker hue of the sky about the ironworks. We have come through the smoke of the limekilns blown hitherwards; we have turned the bend of the canal; we are standing on the towing path of the Ponty-Cysylltau aqueduct. From the level of the canal to level of the river is 127 feet, and only an iron rail to prevent our fall. Here are nineteen arches, each having a span of fortyfive feet. Walk on; look down. What a giddy height ! Look east. There is the viaduct. What a splendid sight! Not far away, but far enough for a heavy railway train to seem to move through the air.

When our beloved sovereign was the Princess Victoria

she visited this place, being a guest at Wynnstay, and close to where we are standing now a breach was made in the channel of the canal, so that there was exhibited for her benefit a waterfall of nearly 130 feet. That is not the highest in England, but it could be seen to better advantage than most falls in the kingdom.

Since that June holiday eight years ago, we have many a time walked over the aqueduct of the Ellesmere canal at Cefn, and over the not less beautiful though less extensive one over the Ceiriog, at Chirk. (We have crossed that when Ariel has gone past us on a bat's back, and the white owl gone for company.) We have walked at early dawn over the massive arches of the Dee viaduct, swallows and swifts twittering and whistling far below. We have driven and walked over yond light iron bridge at Cefn Bychan; we have seen the Dee rolling fiercely after rain out of Llyn Tegid, and sweeping in broader, heavier flood past Corwen. We have crossed it by all the three bridges at Chester; we have seen the river and the vale in storm and shine; but we do not forget our first visit to Llangollen, or the pleasant time we spent that evening with pleasant friends in a pleasant parlour at Cefn Mawr.

CONGLOMERATE.

"WHAT is the nature of the adhesive part of this noncalcareous sandstone?" Such was the question put by the Cromarty stonemason to Professor Pillans. And what is the kind of thought that has induced the writer of this volume to string together the sketches it contains, to make a whole of them or are they sufficiently homogeneous to be considered as a whole?

Such will perhaps be a question put by many

a reader of this volume, and in a few pages we will say something in answer. In a valley of Montgomeryshire watered by a tributary of the Vyrniew, is an ancient corporate town named Llanfyllin. It seems an out-of-the-way place, and so it really was half-a-dozen years ago, being then innocent of railways and gas. Not many drearier sights, sweet reader, in this world than a small Welsh town on a wet Saturday night,

without gas.

However do they exist?
Impossible.

exist fifty years ago?

called the dark ages.

How did everybody

No wonder they were

There are some historic associations connected with this town of Llanfyllin. One of the unfortunate and misguided Stuarts was here. Llewellyn ap Griffydd chartered the town, and the Romans made one of their great roads along the valley; but the glory of Llanfyllin is the hills around it. Many of these hills have we ascended, and many of the valleys have we explored. Some of the eminences are famous for their tremendous names. Here is one. Moelyfronllwydd. Unless you have a Welsh friend beside you,

brother Englishman, do not attempt to pronounce that word, and if you have, you must exonerate us from blame if your jaws come to grief. You are fairly warned.

Another is Allt-y-gader, which, in form, as seen from lower down the valley, is something like the back of an animal cross-bred between a Bactrian camel and a whale. The rock of which this hill is composed is one of the Silurians known as the Wenlock shale, which in places is of sufficient hardness and thickness as to be worth quarrying, and on the west side of this hill is a quarry where we have sought and found fossils. In that same quarry there is or was a thin stratum differing entirely from the other rocks. It extended a few yards, and was only a few inches thick. A deposit of quartz pebbles, rounded and polished like those of our modern streams. These were fastened into a matrix of dark brown ironstone, similar to that which, in many parts of this region, is intercalated frequently in the Silurian limestones, and is highly fossiliferous, only that here it was very hard. It has often, since we looked upon it in the side of Allt-y-gader, afforded ground for speculation, and now a small portion of it that we chipped off and carried away gives us a text wherewith to close our volume, which is small and like unto it, a piece of conglomerate.

We have in the foregoing pages stated some historical facts, given some topographical information, and here and there a very little geology; we have recorded many pleasant experiences gathered out of doors, and may be there are some thoughts worth the telling. They all form a conglomerate, but there is an adhesive principle among the parts besides the juxtaposition caused by typography or the external force of the binder's press. The contents of this volume are bound together in our mind by links of

pleasure; yea, our

peripatetic experiences are a chain of delight, and if we have brought in the poets it is because they are linked by their art and names to the places we have seen.

to you, sweet reader.

A happy Christmas

CLARKE AND CO., PRINTERS, MARKET PLACE, WIGAN.