er, being then in England, made a pilgrimage from
London to Llangollen in the early autumn of 1865.

It was Saturday afternoon when I arrived at the little Welsh inn. The
next morning I found my way to the classic cottage. The fingers of
Time had indeed been busy on it. The vestiges of its former glory
were still apparent, but the ornaments were crumbled and dim. The
prismatic lantern over the door was a mixture of garishness and dust.
The bowers were broken, the vines and plants dead, the walks draggled
and uneven, the gates rickety, the fences tottering or prostrate. The
numerous tokens of art and care in the past made the present
ruinousness and desolation more pathetic. I could not help recalling
the final couplet of Miss Seward's poem, prophesying the fame of this
place:

While all who honor virtue gently mourn Llangollen's vanished Pair,
and wreathe their sacred urn.

Threading the briery dell, and following the brook that prattled down
the steep slope, I climbed the hill which directly overhangs the
hamlet. It was church-time as I sat down on the top, and slowly drank
in the charms of that celebrated landscape. To such a scene, at such
an hour, the very heart-strings grow. The fields were clothed with a
dense velvety-green. Across the narrow glen, on the strange cone of
Dinas Bran, frowned threateningly, in dark mass, unsoftened by
distance, the huge, bare fragments of an old castle, the immemorial
type of an iron age when the hearts of men were iron. Beneath my
feet, the vapors of the morning floated here and there in the
sunshine, like torn folds of a satin gauze. A hundred smokes curled
from the village chimneys, and the tones of the sabbath bells were
wafted up to me with no mixture of profane toils. The very cattle
seemed to know the holy day, and to browse and gaze, or ruminate and
look around, with an unusual assurance of repose and satisfaction.
But the spell must be broken, however reluctantly.

Descending into the village, just as the religious service was ended,
I went into the churchyard, and copied from the triangular tomb in
which the Ladies of Llangollen sleep, with their favorite servant,
amid the magical loveliness of the pastoral scenery, these three
inscriptions. On the first side:

IN MEMORY OF MRS. MARY CARRYL,
Deceased 22 November, 1809,
This Monument is erected by Eleanor Butler
And Sarah Ponsonby, of Plas Newydd, in this Parish.

Released from earth and all its transient woes,
Sh