use party on the occasion comprised
only eight persons, and there was, so I gathered, no room for more. Lord
Bute was by temperament a man of extreme shyness, who naturally shrank
from obtruding his own person in public, but on this occasion he rose to
a full sense of his obligations. He prepared and delivered an address,
most interesting and profoundly learned, on Welsh musical history. He
and his house party were conveyed to the place of meeting in quasi-royal
carriages, preceded and followed by outriders, and for a series of
nights he provided the inhabitants of the town with balls, concerts, or
entertainments of other kinds. No host could have been more gracious
than he. On the last night of my visit there was a gathering practically
private. The heroine of this was old Lady Llanover, who, though not a
native of Wales, was an enthusiast for all things Welsh. She had brought
with her in her train a bevy of her own female domestics, who wore
steeple-crowned hats, and also an old butler dressed up like a bard.
These were all arranged on a dais, and sang national melodies; and when
the performance was finished Lord Bute, with a charming smile, presented
Lady Llanover with a ring. This bore on its large gem an engraving of a
Welsh harp, below which was the motto in Welsh, "The language of the
soul is in its strings."

Among my fellow guests at the Castle was a singularly interesting
personage--Mr. George Clark of Talygarn. Mr. Clark, in alliance with
Lord Wimborne, played a prominent part in the development of the Dowlais
steel works, and he was at the same time one of the greatest
genealogists and heraldic antiquarians of his day. I was intimate with
him till his death, and have been intimate with his family ever since.

Apart from St. Michael's Mount, there are two old houses in Cornwall
which year after year I visited for some part of December, proceeding
thence to a third for a Christmas gathering in Worcestershire, and to a
fourth--this was in Yorkshire--for the celebration of the New Year.

The Cornish houses of which I speak were Heligan, near Mevagissy, the
home of the John Tremaynes, and Trevarthenick, near Truro, the home of
Sir Louis and Lady Molesworth. Pale externally with the stucco of more
than a hundred and fifty years ago, neither of these substantial houses
has any resemblance to a castle; but the ample rooms and staircases, the
dark mahogany doors and the far-planted woods of each represented in
some