human hamlets, old ruinous castles with their ivy and their daws, gray
sleepy churches with their ditto ditto: for ivy everywhere abounds; and
generally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things; hanging, in
rude many-colored festoons and fringed odoriferous tapestries, on your
right and on your left, in every lane. A country kinder to the sluggard
husbandman than any I have ever seen. For it lies all on limestone,
needs no draining; the soil, everywhere of handsome depth and finest
quality, will grow good crops for you with the most imperfect tilling.
At a safe distance of a day's riding lie the tartarean copper-forges of
Swansea, the tartarean iron-forges of Merthyr; their sooty battle far
away, and not, at such safe distance, a defilement to the face of
the earth and sky, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least;
encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if he only would.

The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but peaceable and
well-provided; much given to Methodism when they have any
character;--for the rest, an innocent good-humored people, who all drink
home-brewed beer, and have brown loaves of the most excellent home-baked
bread. The native peasant village is not generally beautiful, though
it might be, were it swept and trimmed; it gives one rather the idea
of sluttish stagnancy,--an interesting peep into the Welsh Paradise of
Sleepy Hollow. Stones, old kettles, naves of wheels, all kinds of broken
litter, with live pigs and etceteras, lie about the street: for, as
a rule, no rubbish is removed, but waits patiently the action of mere
natural chemistry and accident; if even a house is burnt or falls, you
will find it there after half a century, only cloaked by the ever-ready
ivy. Sluggish man seems never to have struck a pick into it; his new hut
is built close by on ground not encumbered, and the old stones are still
left lying.

This is the ordinary Welsh village; but there are exceptions,
where people of more cultivated tastes have been led to settle, and
Llanblethian is one of the more signal of these. A decidedly cheerful
group of human homes, the greater part of them indeed belonging to
persons of refined habits; trimness, shady shelter, whitewash, neither
conveniency nor decoration has been neglected here. Its effect from
the distance on the eastward is very pretty: you see it like a little
sleeping cataract of white houses, with trees overshadowing and fringing
it; and there the cata