the bottom, to ascend visibly. This is owing to the resistance of the air on the surface, which reduces it into foam, and at last into light vapour. The water, at the moment of rounding over the edge of the fall, is of the most lively green, or sometimes bright blue. A sort of silver gauze soon covers its surface in graceful folds, growing whiter and thicker as it descends lower ;-the real fall, and its accelerated motion, are ultimately hid by this kind of veil of vapour.

We passed to-day the foot of Snowdon, and intended another poney expedition; but it rained, the ponies had been forestalled by other tourists, and the fatigue and bruises of Cader Idris were not altogether over; therefore we had only a sight of Snowdon,-and a good-looking mountain it is, with its cluster of inferior mountains about it, all bare rocks. Snowdon is 3500 feet.

This moderate climate is certainly much fitter for bodily exercise than that of America. We think nothing of five or six miles a-day on foot. The flies, however, begin to be almost as numerous and inconvenient out of doors as there, but not in the house. Musketoes are by no means unknown. We see snakes, but the viper is the only one deemed dangerous. America is usually thought to be full of these reptiles, and that you are exposed every moment to tread upon a rattle

snake; the fact is, that the sight of a snake is not much more common there than here, and most of them are as harmless. A child armed with a stick will attack and kill the rattle-snake, which is very sluggish ;-it is met only in dry stony places. The snakes of moist places are not

venomous.

We are now arrived at St Asaphs, in the beautiful valley of Clwydd, (pronounced Cluid) only 28 miles to-day, through the finest country ima ginable :-glorious views of the sea,―ruined castles, with the usual stories about Cromwell's cannon. He was a great master of the picturesque, and his ruins are always in the best taste. The Castle of Aberconway, 600 years old, is still nearly entire.

July 27.-On our way from St Asaphs to Denbigh, we stopped at the house of a gentleman we had seen in Norfolk; he was not at home, but one of the ladies of the family accompanied us to Denbigh. From this house the view takes in the whole valley of Clwydd, 20 or 30 miles long, and about six broad, with hills of moderate and irregular height on each side.. A great number of gentlemen's houses were in sight, with their usual accompaniments of wood and lawn, but no cottages,-I mean real dwellings of the poor. If there ever was here a revolution à la Françoise, declaring guerre aux châteaux, paix aux chau

miéres, the chateaux would certainly carry it, being a hundred to one. This general appear ance of the country brings to my mind a bonmot of Carlin, the famous harlequin : "Quel dommage que pere Adam ne se soit pas avisé d'acheter une charge de Secretaire du Roi,nous serions tous nobles!" I do not know what office the Father Adam of England bought, but every body here seems rich. Whenever I have asked proprietors of land, or farmers, why they did not build houses for their labourers, the answer has generally been, that such houses are "nests of vermin, pilferers, and poachers;" and that, far from building, they would rather pull down such houses. The labourers reside in some small town or village in the neighbourhood. Denbigh, for instance, has doubled in extent within a few years by this accession of inhabitants. Labourers have often several miles to walk to and from their work, which is so much out of their labour, or out of their rest. This, I own, has lowered a little my ideas of universal felicity, which the appearance of this country encourages one to form. There are then, it seems, obscure corners, where the poor are swept out of the way, as the dust of the walks of the rich, in a heap out of their sight; and, to judge properly of this general prosperity, it would be ne