the scene for a short period. We were undetermined for some
time with respect to where we should go. I proposed Wales from the
first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering
after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable
to go to Harrowgate, or Leamington. On my observing that those were
terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn
had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in
our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into
fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as
fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I
would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them
either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish,
even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed,
that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though
not so fashionable as either Leamington or Harrowgate, was a very nice
picturesque country, where, they had no doubt, they should get on very
well, more especially as I was acquainted with the Welsh language.

It was my knowledge of Welsh, such as it was, that made me desirous that
we should go to Wales, where there was a chance that I might turn it to
some little account. In my boyhood I had been something of a
philologist; had picked up some Latin and Greek at school; some Irish in
Ireland, where I had been with my father, who was in the army; and
subsequently whilst an articled clerk to the first solicitor in East
Anglia--indeed I may say the prince of all English solicitors--for he was
a gentleman, had learnt some Welsh, partly from books and partly from a
Welsh groom, whose acquaintance I made. A queer groom he was, and well
deserving of having his portrait drawn. He might be about forty-seven
years of age, and about five feet eight inches in height; his body was
spare and wiry; his chest rather broad, and his arms remarkably long; his
legs were of the kind generally known as spindle-shanks, but vigorous
withal, for they carried his body with great agility; neck he had none,
at least that I ever observed; and his head was anything but high, not
measuring, I should think, more than four inches from the bottom of the
chin to the top of the forehead; his cheek-bones were high, his eyes grey
and deeply sunken in his face, with an expression in them, par