cise and enjoyment of future days? It is one of the great peculiarities of our constitution that every object we look upon, or treasure up, furnishes materials for the intellect, which those two great alchemists, Memory and Imagination, reproduce upon all fitting occasions. There is scarcely any picture called forth by these faculties, belonging to earthly things, but what is composed of these old materials, blended and worked out into an infinite variety of forms. They rise, advance, and group themselves to the "music of memory," like the primogenial atoms in the fanciful theory of the philosopher of Samos. The words pronounced by the holy man on the banks of the Taff, were words of life. They were ordained to be the instruments by which men's minds were at once to be conquered, and the victory recorded. They were like the seeds carried by the pilgrim bird, and dropped upon the coral rock of the Indian Ocean,-germinating, fructifying, and reproducing their kind till the barren land became a grove of palm-trees, full of foliage and fruit, giving solace to the eye, and food to the taste; delighting the future voyager by their green beauty amidst the wide waste of

waters.

""Tis a strange mystery, the power of words!
Life is in them, and death! A word can send
The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek,-
Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn
The current cold and deadly to the heart.
Anger and fear are in them; grief and joy
Are in their sound; yet slight, impalpable :-
A word is but a breath of passing air."

I was absorbed in these reflections when I found

RARY

THE

E.Watson.

CAERPHILLY CASTLE.

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myself, on the following morning, a wanderer on the almost pathless summit of Carreg Craig, amidst the wild and picturesque scenery of a mountainous region, with the gigantic ruins of Caerphilly Castle appearing in the distance before me.

The sun's broad rays were gleaming upon this ancient pile as I entered the castle inclosure on the eastward by the barbican, from which stretched, in a line with the boundary-wall to the right, a range of buildings which had been used as the barracks of the garrison. I passed through the grand gateway, with its two towers, into the ample courtyard, on the south side of which once stood in its glory the great hall of the castle. This magnificent apartment was of extraordinary dimensions, and was ornamented in the most elaborate architectural taste of the times. It had its four grand windows with pointed arches, ornamented with double rows of sculptured leaves and fruit. The side walls were decorated with clusters of round triplet pilasters, supported at the bottom with carved busts of exquisite and fanciful workmanship, from which sprang originally the vaulted arches of the roof. At the east end were two doors of the same pointed character, and between them a large arched window with delicate tracery and highly-finished carvings. Another apartment to the west corresponded with the great hall, but of smaller dimensions, and a third in continuation, which formed the anteroom at the head of the great staircase. The central buildings sustained at their south-east angle a round tower, which was used as the mint, and close by it another of nearly eighty feet in height, which, from some cause, has subsided into a

leaning position, and has been retained for centuries in this condition by the strength of the cement which holds its masonry together. From the top, down almost to the middle, runs a large fissure, by which the tower is divided into two separate parts, so that each side hangs over its base, in such a manner that it is difficult to say which is most likely to fall first. Mr. Wood, of Bath, more than sixty years ago, measured its lineal projection by lying on his back, and found its outer part standing eleven feet out of perpendicular, resting only on one part of its side. A long gallery connects the chambers with this part of the building. A lofty wall stretched its strong buttressed line all round, like a rampart of prodigious thickness, and of such extent as to inclose a large and open space of ground, through which ran a copious stream that supplied the garrison with water. This great outer wall was fortified with massy towers, at convenient distances, which communicated with each other by embattled galleries, and the whole strengthened by extensive outworks of bastions, moats, and other defences. This fortress, in its perfect state, included two miles within its outer moat, crossed by thirteen drawbridges. Even now, though ages have rolled away since the period when Caerphilly Castle was the scene of social habitation or of fierce contention, yet are its remains more entire in their connections, and more prodigious in their extent, than any that belong to the history of former times in Great Britain, resembling rather the ruins of a city than of a single edifice.

A peaceful monastery, belonging to the piety of the ninth century, and named after its founder, St. Cenydd,