a much longer visit to Wales. He took his wife and
daughter as far as Llangollen, which he used as a centre during August.
Then he had ten days walking through Corwen, Cerrig-y-Drudion, Capel
Curig, Bangor, Anglesey, Snowdon, Beth Gelert, Festiniog, and Bala. After
three weeks more at Llangollen, he had his boots soled and his umbrella
mended, bought a leather satchel with a lock and key, and put in it a
white linen shirt, a pair of worsted stockings, a razor, and a prayer
book, and with twenty pounds in his pocket and his umbrella grasped in
the middle, set out on a tour of three weeks. He travelled through the
whole length of Wales, by Llangarmon, Sycharth, Bala, Machynlleth,
Devil's Bridge, Plinlimmon, Pont Rhyd Fendigaid, Strata Florida,
Tregaron, Lampeter, Pumpsaint, Llandovery, Llangadog, Gwynfe, Gutter Fawr
(Brynamman), Swansea, Neath, Merthyr, Caerphilly, Newport, and Chepstow.
He had loved the Welsh bards and Wales from his boyhood up, and these
three months kept him occupied and happy. When at Llangollen he walked
during the day, and in the evening showed his wife and stepdaughter a
view, if he had found one. His wife reported to his mother that she had
reason to praise God for his condition.

Borrow was happy at seeing the places mentioned by the bards and the
houses where some of them were born. "Oh, the wild hills of Wales," he
exclaimed, "the land of old renown and of wonder, the land of Arthur and
Merlin!" These were the very tones of his Spanish enthusiasm nearly
twenty years ago. He travelled probably without maps, and with no
general knowledge of the country or of what had been written of it, so
that he did not know how to spell Manorbier or recognise it as the
birthplace of Gerald of Wales. He remembered his youth, when he
translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in
the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with
which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse
translations. "Nice man"--"civil man"--"clever man . . . has been
everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good
fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and
not being recognised, said, "I am the chap what certain folks calls the
Romany Rye." Bejiggered if the Captain had not been thinking it was he,
and goes on to ask after that "fine young woman and a vartuous" that he
used to keep company with, and Borrow in hi