in their gay, shocking costume, (the colour of blood,
and devised for its concealment,) from angles of rocks, and mouths of
bowered avenues, where the mild fugitive from civil war, and faithful
devotee of his throneless king, had often wandered, meditating on "Holy
Dying"--of "Holy Living" himself a beautiful example--where even still,
nothing gave outward and visible sign of incendiarism and murder lurking
among those hermitages of rustic life; yet were both in active, secret
operation!

In that very park of _Dynevor_, whose beauty we were admiring from the
bridge, a little walk would have led us to--a _grave!_--no consecrated
one, but one dug ready to receive a corpse; _dug, in savage threatening
of slaughter, for the reception of one yet living_--the son of the noble
owner of that ancient domain--dug in sight of his father's house, in his
own park, by wretches who have warned him to prepare to fill that grave
in October! The gentleman so threatened, being void of all offence save
that of being a magistrate--a sworn preserver of the public peace!

Equally abhorrent to rational piety, if less shocking, is that air of
sourest sanctity which the groups now passing us bring with them out
from the meeting-houses.

Ask a question, and a nasal noise between groan and snort seems to
signify that they ask to be asked again, a sort of _ha--a--h?_ "long
drawn out." The human face and the face of nature, at that hour, were as
an east of thunder fronting a west of golden blue summer serenity. The
Mawworms of Calvinistic Methodism have made a sort of monkery of all
Wales, as regards externals at least. To think a twilight or noonday
walk for pleasure a sin, involves the absurdest principle of ascetic
folly, as truly as self-flagellation, or wearing horsehair shirts. Not
that these ministers set their flocks any example of self-mortification.
The greater number of preachers show excellent "condition," the poorest
farmers' wives vying with each other in purveying "creature comforts"
for these spiritual comforters. Preparing hot dinners, it seems, is not
working on the Lord's Day when it is for the preacher; though to save a
field of corn, which is in danger of being spoiled if left out, as in
some seasons, would be a shocking desecration of that day. Yet, to
observe the abstracted unearthly carriage of these men, who seem
"conversing with the skies" while walking the streets, one wonders at
the contrast of such burly bodies and ref