d corn-stacks, trees, and orchards,
stretched across the irregular street, without a causeway, in unbroken
quiet; not a sound was heard but the voice of an owl from a "fold" in
the very heart of "the town," and the low murmur of the river chafing
against the buttresses of an antique bridge at the end of the said
"street;" while an humble bow window of a shop, where at nightfall I had
observed some dozens of watches (_silver_, too!) displayed, without a
token of "Rebecca" terrorism appearing, was seen jutting into the road,
only hidden, not defended, by such a weak apology for a shutter, as
would not have resisted a burglar of ten years' old.

It was now Sunday morning, and the clean-swept neatness of the sleeping
village, whose inhabitants we had seen busily engaged in this pleasing
preparation for the day of rest, as we strolled there at twilight,
confirmed the assurance of profound and fearless peace; for only in that
happy condition of society could the mind be supposed disengaged enough
to regard those minute decencies of rural English life. With a smile of
well-pleased wonder at the exaggerations of the press, which were
persuading the Londoners that the "dogs of war" were really "let slip"
among these our green mountains and pastoral valleys, after enjoying
this prospect of a village by moonlight at the foot of the majestic
_Mynydd Du_, (black mountain,) whose range is seen by day, towering at a
few miles' distance, and hugging myself in the security of life and
purse, which warriors (if they would cross-question their own great
hearts) do really prize as much as I do, I returned to bed, (the heat of
which had first driven me forth to this air-bath of half an hour.) "And
_this_ is the seat of insurrection!" I reiterated sarcastically against
all English and all Welsh purveyors of "news" for terror-loving readers.

I have a huge deal of patriotism in my composition--also, a great love
of rural quiet, joined to some _trifling_ degree of cowardice, as my
family pretend; but that I impute to my over-familiarity with them. "No
man is great to his valet," has been remarked. The domestics of
Alexander wondered what the world found to wonder at, in the little man
their master. However this may be, I confess it was very pleasant to me
to find peace unbroken in these my old haunts. Here I had many a summer
night enacted, as recorded in my "Mountain Decameron," the
amateur-gipsy, "a long while ago," _bivouacking_ in their wi