and having scarcely an object except to
see what was to be seen and to please himself. He got, as he probably
counted on getting, the consideration due to a gentleman who can pay his
way and meets only the humbler sort of people, publicans, farmers,
drovers, labourers, sextons, parish clerks, and men upon the road. He
seldom stayed more than a night or an hour or two anywhere. His
pictures, therefore, are the impressions of the moment, wrought up at
leisure. His few weeks in Wales made a book of the same size as an equal
number of years in Spain.

Sometimes he writes like a detached observer working from notes, and the
result has little value except in so far as it is a pure record of what
was to be seen at such and such a place in the year 1854. There are many
short passages apparently straight from his notes, dead and useless. The
description of Llangollen Fair, on August 21, is of this kind, but
superior, and I shall quote it entire:

"The day was dull with occasional showers. I went to see the fair about
noon. It was held in and near a little square in the south-east quarter
of the town, of which square the police-station is the principal feature
on the side of the west, and an inn, bearing the sign of the Grapes, on
the east. The fair was a little bustling fair, attended by plenty of
people from the country, and from the English border, and by some who
appeared to come from a greater distance than the border. A dense row of
carts extended from the police-station, half across the space. These
carts were filled with pigs, and had stout cord nettings drawn over them,
to prevent the animals escaping. By the sides of these carts the
principal business of the fair appeared to be going on--there stood the
owners, male and female, higgling with Llangollen men and women, who came
to buy. The pigs were all small, and the price given seemed to vary from
eighteen to twenty-five shillings. Those who bought pigs generally
carried them away in their arms; and then there was no little diversion;
dire was the screaming of the porkers, yet the purchaser invariably
appeared to know how to manage his bargain, keeping the left arm round
the body of the swine and with the right hand fast gripping the ear--some
few were led away by strings. There were some Welsh cattle, small of
course, and the purchasers of these seemed to be Englishmen, tall burly
fellows in general, far exceeding the Welsh in height and size.

"Much b