rise into tall cliffs, richly decorated with natural foliage. From this to Monmouth is perhaps the finest part of the Wye. Following the carriage-road, and crossing the river at Monmouth to the high grounds on the south, we had some superb prospects, rendered additionally interesting from the many elegant mansions which here and there reposed in the bosom of the wooded banks. Seduced by a local guide-book, we proceeded three miles in a southerly direction from Monmouth in quest of a Druidic rocking-stone, which was said to stand on the summit of a conspicuous height in Dean Forest. Truly enough, after a pedestrian tramp to the top of a hill, escorted by a troop of juvenile lazzaroni, we reached the so-called rockingstone, which in three minutes we discovered to be no rocking-stone at all, though sufficiently like one to form a subject of local wonder. It consists of a huge unshapely mass of a softish conglomerate, about twelve feet in height, slopingly resting, by a base of three feet, on a rock of the same material. The whole, in fact, is immoveable, and but one rock, as is observable from the stratification; and the form of a rocking-stone has been given only by the abrasion of the weather. A few more winters, and the point of rest will crumble away, causing the incumbent mass to go thundering down the hill over which it impends. As the public road is beneath, we cannot admire the temerity which leaves such an engine of destruction in its present precarious position. What mythic legends and stories are told of this rocking-stone, which assuredly never rocked since the creation! Geologically, the stone is curious. Having on a previous occasion seen the lower part of the Wye, with Tintern Abbey and Chepstow, we had no wish on the present occasion to go further down the river; and so, returning to Monmouth, we proceeded thence by the pretty vale of Crickhowel to Abergavenny and Bwlch. We were now in South Wales, and spent a few pleasant days in rambling about Brecknockshire and part of Radnorshire-country all beautiful; green hills and glittering waters; old mossgrown churches; hamlets, and villages, not over-tidy; and plenty of toll-bars, all the reformatory doings of Rebecca notwithstanding.

From Brecon, a substantial county town, with a large military barrack, we crossed the hills in a southerly direction to Merthyr-Tydvil, a distance of twenty miles. On reaching the culminating point, and dropping down into the valley of the Taff, we found ourselves in a new world. The green wooded region of Brecknockshire, with its placid life, is exchanged for bare pastoral heights and valleys, filled with the ashes, smoke, and tumult of a Pandemonium. Merthyr may be called the centre of those great iron-works in Glamorganshire and adjacent counties which threaten to alter the character of South Wales-transforming a thinly-peopled country, with primitive habits, into a species of Lancashire; a Lancashire, however, without the intellectual qualities which distinguish that scene of English industry.

Everybody is recommended to visit Merthyr for the first time at night, when its furnaces, vomiting forth fires, are seen to the best advantage. We came upon the town in daylight, but having remained over-night, and seen the place at various striking points, nothing was left for us to regret. Situated in the higher recesses of a valley, which stretches southwards to Cardiff on the Bristol Channel, there never would have been a town here but for the discovery of coal and iron in the huge bare hills from which are gathered the waters of the Taff. In an early period of British history, a Welsh prince, it seems, here erected a church to the honour of Tydvil the Martyr, and hence MerthyrTydvil. This edifice modernised was, till lately, the only established church in the town. Stretching up the valley from the old church, and pinched as to standing-room, the town has grown and spread till it has reached the higher uplands; the only apparent principle guiding its movements being an attrac

tion towards the iron-works which have from time to time sprung up. Everything great in this world has had small beginnings, and so has Merthyr. Centuries ago, the adjoining hills were discovered to contain iron ore, which was dug and smelted with charcoal. This was of course done on a small scale, but not so small as to save the woods from destruction. When all the timber which adorned the mountain sides was cleared away, it was discovered that iron ore could be smelted by coal; and there, in exhaustless abundance, lay strata of this useful fossil in the same hills as the iron. Now commenced the true Iron Age. In 1755, or thereabouts, smelting was begun on a tolerably large scale; and in the present century, it has been extended so as to include four establishments-the Cyfarthfa, Plymouth, Pen-y-Darren, and Dowlais works. Taking my statistics from Cliff's South Wales'-one of the best local guides I have seen in England-' the census return of Merthyr in 1831 was 22,083; in 1841, 34,977; and it is believed that in 1847 it was at least 45,000' a vast population to be dependent less or more on four establishments. In 1847,' says the same authority, the place is in a state of the highest prosperity. There are now four iron-works in operationnamely, the Dowlais works of Sir J. Guest and Company, at which there are nineteen blast-furnaces; the Cyfarthfa works of Messrs Crawshay and Sons, at which there are thirteen furnaces; the Pen-y-Darren works of Messrs Thompson and Company, at which there are six furnaces (this firm possesses two other large iron-works); and the Plymouth works of Messrs Hill, at which there are eight furnaces. There are always some furnaces out of blast. Messrs Crawshay also possess the Hirwain works, six miles from Merthyr, at which there are four furnaces.' At Aberdare, in a valley extending from a lower part of the Taff, there were eight furnaces, and more were in course of erection.

From anything I could learn, the iron-masters are not proprietors of the hills from which they dig their ore and fuel. They are, I believe, holders of long leases of their respective tracts of country; and the expiry of these temporary holdings forms a serious social crisis in Merthyr. A short time ago, the lease of the lands held by the Dowlais Company expired; and the Marquis Bute, as proprietor, not readily inclining to a renewal satisfactory to the other party, for some months the works were almost suspended, to the consternation and suffering of several thousand workmen and their families. At length, after a period of lamentable privation, the contracting parties came to an amicable settlement, and the intelligence of the event was hailed with the ringing of bells and other demonstrations of universal delight. What a critical state of society does this circumstance reveal! Reckoning men, women, and children, upwards of twelve thousand beings depending for their daily bread on the uninterrupted working of one establishment! Three thousand pounds paid weekly in wages by one company! Conceive all the four concerns stopped! We hope this is not a probable contingency.

With a small proportion of shopkeepers and tradesmen, Merthyr is nearly altogether a town of working people, the bulk of the houses being inhabited by persons engaged either in the mines or iron-works. It has a few police, but no corporate magistracy to exercise the usual and necessary functions of local government. Till I visited Merthyr, I had been in the belief that the Scotch were pre-eminent in dunghills; now my opinion was shaken. Not troubled with any compulsory arrangements to insure health or cleanliness, and there being to all appearance no superior intellects to project and execute schemes of improvement, the town is very badly kept, and in some of the back lanes, crowded with inhabitants, the heaps of refuse rise to enormous dimensions. But unpaved and dirty thoroughfares are not half so melancholy a spec tacle as a dirty river. God has given mankind pure sparkling streams, and how much like a desecration

is the transforming of these living waters into a polluted gutter. Few rivers have so much reason to complain of misusage as the Taff. At Merthyr, where it ought to perform a useful sanitary function, it is an opaque dirty mass; and this dirtiness never leaves it till it pours, after a course of twenty miles, into the sea. Rinsings of coal and iron mines, and sundry torturings in the movement of machinery, are, it will be conjectured, the cause of this appearance. Besides these unpleasant sights, there is one more class of objects which help to destroy the picturesque in Merthyr. Up and down the vale, and crowding on the town as if about to bury it, are seen huge banks of black cinders and débris, the refuse of the furnaces and mines, locally called tip. Wheeled out by tramways, and continually extending its bounds, the tip is gradually covering the face of every hill and field. Green meadows and hedgerows are disappearing under the gloomy embankments; everywhere the heaps of black sterile tip wrap nature in an everlasting shroud.*

We visited, and were conducted over, the Cyfarthfa works, close to the town; and also the Dowlais works, which are situated at a distance of two miles above nearly the whole way to the last-mentioned being lined with workmen's dwellings. The operations need no particular description. The only thing new to me was the hot-blast apparatus. Instead of cold air being blown into the furnaces, as was till lately the case, a powerful steam-engine is employed to force air into a species of oven, where, being heated to a high degree, it proceeds through pipes into the furnaces, by which greater efficacy is given to the process of smelting and working the rude masses of metal. From ore to the finished manufacture, the iron goes through several stages, the last thing done being to draw it into shape between grooved rollers. Bar iron, long rods for nails and bolts, and rails, are among the articles produced. The making of a railway rail, from the time it is a rough mass till it is drawn out and laid on the floor finished, costs only two or three minutes. Halfdressed, with begrimed perspiring faces, each handling a pair of long pincers, or toiling with long pokers in the fiercely blazing furnaces, the men employed at these works labour with a diligence which seems to be almost supernatural. It is a dreadful struggle, too exhausting to be long sustained, and therefore relays of men shift every six or eight hours. The make of blastfurnaces,' says the authority already quoted, varies greatly, according to circumstances, and according to the quality of iron produced. Thus a furnace that will make 120 tons of forge iron, is not capable of producing more than sixty-five tons of foundry iron. The average make of pig-iron at Dowlais, where no foundry iron is made, amounts, we believe, to between 80,000 and 87,000 tons per annum; the average make of pig-iron at Cyfarthfa and Hirwain somewhat exceeds 60,000 tons.' Staffordshire and Scotch iron are imported to a small extent, to be used in some instances as a mixture. No iron is produced fit for cutlery or tools; all is of a coarse nature. At Dowlais, I was informed that the consumption of coal amounted to 1700 tons daily. Mr Cliff gives the following statement as to wages in 1847: Colliers earn from L.3 to L.5, 10s. per month, averaging about L.1 per week; miners earn about 18s. per week; furnace-men at the blast-furnaces, 20s. to 30s.; finers and puddlers, from 25s. to 35s.; ballers, from 20s. to 45s., averaging 30s.; rollers, from 25s. to, in a few cases, L.5, averaging to about 50s. per week. The average earnings are considerably reduced through the hill country of Glamorgan and Monmouthshires by intemperance, which leads to much loss of time.'

The larger proportion of the workmen are Welsh, and accordingly the Welsh language is generally spoken, though large numbers, here as elsewhere, speak also

* By removing the soil, and afterwards placing it on the levelled surface of the tip, might not a good purpose be served: the making, for example, of gardens for the workmen ?

English. That Welsh should still be a prevalent tongue, must be considered a serious evil. For anything I know, it may be the most ancient and copious language in the world, but it unquestionably retards the moral and social advancement of the people; and it would have been well for Wales, as it would have been for the Highlands, that its aboriginal Celtic had long ago given way before modern English. Conserved in their primitive prejudices and superstitions, the lower Welsh are with difficulty moved to adopt enlightened usages. It is amusing to hear of schools in which children are taught to repeat English lessons without understanding a word of what they are reading; but when such things are heard of in connection with the church services, they are something worse than grotesque. In a rural district where I resided for a few days, the clerk of the parish could make the responses in the service only by rote. On the late occasion of a new and special prayer being issued, he could not, after a two hours' hammering by the clergyman, be made to read or follow it; and the divine, as a last resource, induced a gentleman of the neighbourhood to undertake the office of clerk when this particular prayer came to be uttered! What would be thought in Scotland of a parish precentor not being able to read? or of a church, such as I visited in one part of the country, from the funds of which a number of clergymen draw a revenue, and which yet is honoured with a service only one day in the year? These are painful things to reflect upon; and, united with the recent evidence, as laid before parliament, on the state of morals and education in Wales, demonstrate the utter hollowness and inefficacy of the system of polity which has for centuries afflicted this fine section of the United Kingdom. The Church is said to be at length rousing from its torpor, but is it not too late? Everywhere one goes in Wales, he sees the chapels of dissenters, without whose vigilant labours, it is acknowledged, there could have been in many places no public profession of Christianity for the mass of the population. Such at least is distinctly said of Merthyr by Mr Lingen in his report respecting the town; and considering the low state of education, with the general absence of a superior class in the great seats of manufacturing industry, the wonder is, that the people behave so well as they do. The cementing element in their social state seems to be money-the receipt of weekly gains; and while this lasts, not much is to be feared. But it may be regretted that the enormous sums paid and received in and about Merthyr should come to so little good. The houses of the workmen, which generally open to the street, have a clean and neat appearance; but they are said to be overcrowded, and the family means are ineconomically expended. Much, I was told, is squandered on gay and expensive female dress for the sake of Sunday show; and the inordinate drinking of tea, purchased mostly on credit from hawkers, is described as a prevalent cause of impoverishment. In the gossipping tea meals the men do not participate; and when they return home, and find nothing to share with their family, they are the more ready to resort to the public-house.' On Saturdays and Sundays there is a good deal of heavy drinking, and drunken brawls are frequent. It will scarcely be credited that in Merthyr there is no savings' bank, in which the savings of the thrifty might be deposited. Formerly there was one, but the manager ran away, and carried L.2000 in deposits off with him; and the effect of this loss has operated very unfavourably on the people.' Why is there not a national security savings' bank in the place? or why do not the employers unite to establish and guarantee such an institution? We may, however, as pertinently ask, why the employers take so little trouble to cultivate humanising feelings in their men, and give them neither libraries nor reading-rooms? To provide for the education of the young, there are no schools of public institution except Sir John Guest's at Dowlais, and the National Schools at Merthyr. For the children of the men employed at the Cyfarthfa, Plymouth, and Pen-y

Darren works, no provision has hitherto been made, further than some trifling subscriptions by the proprietors to the National Schools.' When this was written by Mr Lingen, an effort, he says, was making. I did not hear that it had sensibly altered the situation of affairs. Where there are schools connected with iron works, they are supported by compulsory stoppages from the men, whether they have families or not. Besides the objectionableness of this practice, it says little for the considerate benevolence of the employers, one of whom, an absentee, I was told, makes upwards of a hundred thousand pounds annually by his works, and is reckoned as worth a couple of millions of money.

So ends my chit-chat on Merthyr-Tydvil. From this seat of energetic industry, we proceeded by railway down the vale of the Taff to Cardiff-a line of communication which offers an immediate outlet to the great iron trade of the district. Cardiff is also pretty much a creation of recent times. Until not long ago a poor Welsh town, it has arisen, under the fostering care of the late Marquis of Bute, to be a large, cheerful, and prosperous seaport. Cardiff Castle, a modern mansion built within the grounds of an ancient fortalice, may be said to form the kernel of the town; and here the late marquis died, lamented by the whole population. What this nobleman did from his own private resources exceeds in magnitude any private undertaking in the United Kingdom, the Duke of Bridgewater's canals excepted. Owning a large open moor between the town and the sea, he, with the aid of an act of parliament, caused a large portion of the land to be made into a series of wet docks, fit for the reception of vessels of all classes. These docks, extending about a mile in length, and entered by sea-gates forty-five feet wide, having a depth of seventeen feet at neap, and thirty-two feet at spring tides, present an imposing spectacle of shipping. Along one side runs the railway from Merthyr, and by this means the manufactured iron is transferred at once to the vessels which are to carry it to all parts of the world. The outlay in money on the whole of the works has, it is understood, exceeded L.300,000; to which should be added the value of the ground, and of the lime and stone, and piles, all of which belonged to the marquis.' I could not observe without regret that between the docks and the sea there exists at low water an extensive tract of sludge, composed of the matter with which the Bristol Channel is in all its conditions charged, and through which a passage for vessels will require to be artificially maintained.

I have little farther to say regarding our excursion. From Cardiff we proceeded across a pretty piece of low-lying country to Newport, a considerable town on the Usk, where large shipments are made from the Monmouthshire iron-works. By a screw-propelled steamer, more swift than pleasant, we were carried across to Bristol in the space of less than two hours.

W. C.

A HONEYMOON IN 1848. ONE of my friends, who had never arrived at doing anything, from having been for the last ten years in a happy state of expectation of a consulship in the East, made up his mind some time since to settle in Paris. He is yet young, and much given to day-dreams. However, though he passed for somewhat of a visionary, he was taken up seriously by a banker in that matter-offact region the Bourse; the worthy gentleman having ascertained that my friend Henri Delmasures had some hundreds of acres of land in Beauce and Normandy on which to build his castles in the air. He was a romantic visionary, but yet a landed proprietor. The banker, after a whole night spent in convincing himself that his daughter must be happy with such a man-a conclusion he arrived at by a process of adding, multiplying, and subtracting-consented to bestow her hand upon him. Mademoiselle Matilda Hoffman was not merely a young lady wrapped up in bank-notes or cased in

bullion; she had, on the contrary, in the atmosphere of the three per cents., imbibed somewhat of the aerial grace of nature and poetry. The chink of the guineas had not prevented her hearing the airy voices that in every varied tone-but all soft, sweet, cheering-whisper the young heart, and fill its spring-time with delight. The dark, dull, close house in which she lived had not shut out from her all fairy visions of the

Gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play in the plighted clouds.'

And thus when my friend spoke to her a language not very usual before the 24th of February, till which epoch nothing was more rare than a union of hearts, it was little wonder that she listened to it, then learned to love it and him who spoke it.

The only unions taking place of late in France were marriages between rank and ready money-between position and pelf. Nor, incredible as it may seem, was this altogether to be laid to the charge of too cruellyprudent papas and mammas; for the young ladies themselves had more than their full share of the fault. A rage for titles, or a passion for gold, possessed every heart, and had dispelled all the delightful illusions, all the bright-glowing romance of life. It is not long since I heard a young creature, who had scarcely seen seventeen times the budding of the hawthorn, say in confi dence to a friend, I will marry no man that is not either a nobleman or a stockbroker;' while the friend on her part reciprocated the trust reposed in her by a whispered determination 'never to marry any one but a prince or a banker.' But Matilda Hoffman troubled not herself either about the titles her Henri had not, or the money that he had: she was in love, just as the young were wont to be in the Golden Age. She was delighted to find that he did nothing, could do nothing, and wanted to do nothing. At all events,' she said to herself,' he will not immure me in a bank; and we can go where we like, free to love and live for each other.'

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It is but due to my friend Delmasures to say that he was quite ready to live for her. Matilda Hoffman had suddenly shone out upon him as the visible image of his beau-ideal of grace, goodness, and loveliness his taste personified. The matter was soon settled, and the marriage fixed to take place on the 24th of February.

On the evening of the 23d, after repeated calls, we at length succeeded in finding the mayor at home. Whilst the young lady was signing the necessary documents, the functionary entertained her with a lecture on politics and morality. He did not find it a very difficult matter to prove to her satisfaction that a government which thus sanctioned love by marriage was the best of all possible governments, in the best of all possible worlds, and might defy any attempt to subvert it. On leaving the mayoralty-house, however, neither M. Hoffman, the bridegroom, nor the witnesses, could find their carriages. Whilst the mayor, in all the loyalty of his tricoloured scarf, had been proving that there was nothing serious in this ebullition of boys and sucking children, the heroic and patriotic gamins had seized upon every hackney-coach, cab, ommibus, and other vehicle to make barricades.

That night Matilda passed alone in prayer for the dying. The next day at eleven o'clock Henri Delmasures presented himself at the banker's in the dress of the evening before, which it was evident he had not taken off all night, but with the addition of sabre and pistol, and no small quantity of mud.

But, my dear friend,' said the banker, without raising his eyes from three or four newspapers he held in his hand, my dear friend, we cannot marry to-day." Not marry to-day! Who says so?'

'Do you not know what has happened? The people have been making barricades. M. Molé succeeds M. Guizot; M. Thiers succeeds M. Molé; M. Odillon Barret is in place of I forget whom-but no matter-the

people will soon be in everybody's place. Just glance at these papers really some of the predictions are quite terrifying.'

them, whether true or false, of a new edition of a revolution there as well as in Holland, where the people were demanding a little, and the king granting a great

But, my love, you must change this dress. We shall have to make our way to the church over the barricades.'

Before an hour had elapsed, the curé of the parish had pronounced the nuptial benediction in a small chapel, the humble walls of which were wont to witness only the plighted vows of those who had no wealth save their strong arms and true hearts.

Now,' said Henri to Matilda, let us leave your father to finish his discussion with the curé on the present state of affairs, and let us fly to some steamcarriage that, swifter than the wind, will take us somewhere I care not whither, provided it be to a country where we can peacefully enjoy our honeymoon.'

'Suppose we take the railway to Rouen ? Well do I remember in the woods there an old château; it was enchanting, dear Henri. I spent six weeks there last summer wandering in its groves, with no one to speak to but the trees. I am only afraid it is too near Paris: let us go to the other end of the world.'

Henri and Matilda were soon on their way to Rouen, at the full speed of a train baptised that very morning 'the Republic;' and through the window of their carriage they were witnesses of the general flight attesting the magnificent national co-operation that had accepted the new institutions,' and the sincerity of the adhesions to the republic, and evincing the universal confidence in the proclamations that order, liberty, and equality had been established. 'Hurrah! the dead can ride apace,' says the poet Bürger; but fallen courtiers can ride still faster. Only look,' said Matilda, 'at that servant in livery gallopping so furiously, that I should not wonder at his outstripping us. Do you see him?’ 'I see him,' answered Henri: it is one of the exministers.'

And that poor young woman who is dragging her feet so slowly along the rough road, and from time to time looking back with such a terrified air?'

'I see her,' replied Henri : she is a princess.' Thus they beheld pass along before them all that, for nearly twenty years, had been the court and the administration. A dark page of history was unrolled upon the high road-the last unfinished story of kings and queens-Once upon a time.'

Journeying in this way, the two lovers arrived at Havre. While strolling on the sea-shore in the evening, they perceived an old gentleman hurriedly making his way towards a steamer a little apart from the rest of the shipping. Henri and Matilda paused to observe him. It was the Monarchy leaving the soil of France; and the most determined republican would scarcely have chided the respectful salutation of the young pair -the respect of pity.

But they gave up an intention they had formed of going to London. Was it from reluctance to follow in the track of the fugitive monarch, to come in contact with the hoary head from which a crown had so lately fallen? Or was it the fear that the ex-king might carry about with him, however involuntarily, the seeds of a successful revolution? Perhaps each of these reasons had some influence in changing their route. Neither would they venture to Brussels, for reports had reached

However, as go somewhere they must, they went to Switzerland-the classic land of honeymoons. Switzerland being already a republic,' said they to themselves, we need not be afraid of its wanting to make itself one.' In the confidence of this hope, Henri and Matilda rented a châlet by the side of a mountain, where they might place themselves and their love under the protection of the Landamann and the old Helvetian Confederacy. But they were hardly on their way to it, after a short stroll by the side of the lake, when they perceived a band of armed nationalists wheeling about them. It was at Neufchâtel.

They now turned their thoughts to Germany. 'Let us go to Germany,' said they. There no one troubles himself about anything but waltzing or metaphysics.' They set out, but they were scarcely half-way, when they were warned, 'Do not go to Vienna; do not go to Berlin.'

As their carriage was about to cross a bridge, a female equestrian, with her hair floating over her shoulders, and her long graceful velvet drapery falling over her Arab horse, yet withal of a martial air that might have become the queen of the Amazons, gallopped up so suddenly to them, and threw herself so directly in their way, that the postilion had scarcely time to pull up the leaders. Back there!' she cried, as she presented in his face a little pocket-pistol.

The terrified postilion fell back upon the horse he was riding, while Henri, putting his head out of the carriage-window, recognised in the desperate Amazon the Countess de Landsfeld.

'Madame,' he said with a courteous smile, 'I beg to assure you that we are neither Prussian gensdarmes nor Bavarian municipal guards. Have the goodness, then, to reserve your powder and ball for some greater political emergency, and allow us to pursue our route.'

Lola Montès broke into a merry laugh, which made the mountains ring with its echo. They were like old courtiers, but a little more genuine-perhaps the last courtiers.

Take good advice,' said she, 'wherever you get it. Go not to Germany: they have burned my hotel."

And straight

So saying, the Countess de Landsfeld set off like an arrow from the bow, leaving Henri and Matilda to exchange glances of surprise, and to ask each other, in utter despondence, whither they were now to bend their steps-what country would receive them? Let us go straight forward,' at last they cried. forward they went, through woods, and meadows, and ravines, till the Rhine became the splendid barrier to further progress, unless they committed themselves to its waters. They did so, and stopped not till they came to Johannisberg, where they met an old man seated in an arbour, with his bottle and glass before him.

It was M. de Metternich, who was drinking his last bottle of Johannisberg.

'Your excellency,' said Henri, respectfully salutingthe bottle-your excellency will pardon me if, in presuming to address you, I derange the balance of power in Europe; but we are a young couple from France, who are in search of some pretty little cottage where we may give a few short weeks to each other. Your excellency-who knows all news better than any telegraph, any newspaper-will have the goodness to tell us whether there are any cottages in Germany?'

The diplomatic eye of M. Metternich flashed somewhat angrily; but seeing nothing but artless simplicity in the faces of the young couple, he filled a fresh bumper, tossed it off, and buried his face in his hands. 'My Lord Minister,' said Matilda timidly. 'I am no longer minister,' answered he. 'My Lord Prince,' stammered Henri. 'There are no more princes.'