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ian stone jar lately from the bottom of some Irish bog. Great romance (_i.e._ absurd innocence of character) one must have looked for; but it was confounding to find this mixed up with such eager curiosity, and enormous knowledge of the tattle and scandal of the world they had so long left. Their tables were piled with newspapers from every corner of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the deaths and marriages of the antipodes at their fingers' ends. Their albums and autographs, from Louis XVIII. and George IV., down to magazine poets and quack-doctors, are a museum. I shall never see the spirit of blue-stockingism again in such perfect incarnation. Peveril won't get over their final kissing match for a week. Yet it is too bad to laugh at these good old girls; they have long been the guardian angels of the village, and are worshipped by man, woman, and child about them.'"
In July, 1828, the charming vale of Llangollen was visited by a German Prince (Puckler-Muskau of Prussia), who has thus left on record the impressions which his excursion in that vicinity excited:--
"The most beautiful reality, however, awaited me this morning in Wales. The vision of clouds seemed to have been the harbinger of the magnificence of the vale of Llangollen,--a spot which, in my opinion, far surpasses all the beauties of the Rhine-land, and has, moreover, a character quite its own, from the unusual forms of the peaked tops, and rugged declivities of its mountains. The Dee, a rapid stream, winds through the green valley in a thousand fantastic bendings, overhung with thick underwood. On each side high mountains rise abruptly from the plain, and are crowned with antique ruins, modern country-houses, manufactories, whose towering chimneys send out columns of thick smoke, or with grotesque groups of upright rocks. The vegetation is everywhere rich, and hill and vale are filled with lofty trees, whose varied hues add so infinitely to the beauty and picturesque effect of a landscape. In the midst of this luxuriant nat