Another very interesting monument is that of a Templar, of the year 1220, with this Norman inscription: “Ici gist syr guilleaume de harcourt fys robert de harcourt, et de Isabel de camvile.” The figure of the knight (whose costume, by-the-by, is totally different from that of Count Brühl’s Templar at Berlin[94]) is an admirable piece of sculpture, and reposes with an ease and ‘abandon’ which would do no discredit to antique art: his dress consists of boots or stockings (whichever you choose to call them) of mail, and golden spurs; the knee is naked; above the knee is again covered with mail, which so completely encloses the whole body, and even the head, that only the face is visible. Over this shirt of mail is a long red mantle, falling in folds below the calf; and over this a black baldrick, from which hangs a sword in a red scabbard: the left arm supports a narrow pointed shield bearing the family arms, and not the cross of the Temple. This is found only on the tomb. The whole figure is, as you perceive, painted; and the colours are from time to time renewed.
As the greatest of all curiosities, strangers are shown Prince Arthur’s tomb, the intricate stone tracery of which is really like the most exquisite carvings in wood or ivory. On one side of the chapel are fine rows of small figures, one above another. The order is as follows: on the lowest row the abbesses; above them bishops; above them kings; then saints; and at the top of all, angels. ‘Quant à moi, qui ne suis encore ni saint, ni ange, souffrez que je vous quitte pour mon diner.’
Llangollen, July 15th.
If I had the honour to be the wandering Jew (who of course must have money ad libitum), I should most certainly spend the greatest part of my immortality on the high road, and specially in England. ‘’Tis so delightful’ for a man of my opinions and character. In the first place, no human being troubles or constrains me. Wherever I pay well, I am the first person (always an agreeable feeling for the lordly sons of men), and meet with none but smiling faces and obliging people, full of zeal to serve me. Continued motion, without fatigue, keeps the body in health; and the rapidly succeeding changes in beautiful, free nature have the same strengthening influence on the mind. I must confess that I am partly of Dr. Johnson’s opinion:—he maintained that the greatest human felicity was to drive rapidly over an English road in a good postchaise, with a pretty woman by one’s side.
It is one of the most agreeable sensations in the world to me to roll along in a comfortable carriage, and to stretch myself out at my ease while my eye feasts on the ever-changing pictures, like those of a magic lantern. As they pass, they awaken fancies serious and gay, tragic and comic; and I find an intense pleasure in filling up the sketches thus presented to my eye. What strange fantastic shapes often start up with the rapidity of lightning, and flit before my mind like figures in the clouds! Then if my fancy droops her wings, I read and sleep in my carriage. I am little troubled with my baggage, which from long practice is so well arranged that I can get at every thing I want in a moment, without tormenting my servants. Sometimes, when the weather is fine and the country beautiful, I walk for miles together: in short, I can desire no more perfect freedom than I enjoy here. Lastly, it is no slight pleasure that I can close the day by devoting a tranquil hour to conversing with the friend of my heart on all that has passed before me.
But to return to my narrative.—I travelled all night, after witnessing an extraordinary sport of nature in the clouds. From the top of a hill I saw what appeared to me a gigantic range of black mountains, and at its foot a boundless lake: it was long before I could persuade myself that it was only an illusion, created by mist and cloud. The sky above was of an uniform light grey; upon it lay a coal-black mass of clouds thrown together in the form of the wildest mountains, the upper edge of which shaped itself into a bold and abrupt outline, while the lower was trans-sected by a horizontal line of mist. This wore the appearance of a boundless extent of silvery water; and, as the green foreground of sunny wooded plains which lay beneath my feet was immediately bounded by it, the illusion was indeed complete. As I descended the hill, step by step, the magic picture faded from before my eyes.
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 form 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 every where 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 nature, arises, with a grandeur heightened by contrast, a single long, black, bare range of mountains, clothed only with thick, dark heather, and from time to time skirting the high road. This magnificent road, which from London to Holyhead, a distance of two hundred miles,[95] is as even as a ‘parquet,’ here runs along the side of the left range of mountains, at about their middle elevation and following all their windings; so that in riding along at a brisk trot or gallop, the traveller is presented at every minute with a completely new prospect; and without changing his position, overlooks the valley now before him, now behind, now at his side. On one side is an aqueduct of twenty-five slender arches, a work which would have done honour to Rome. Through this a second river is led over the valley and across the Dee, at an elevation of a hundred and twenty feet above the bed of the natural stream. A few miles further on, the little town of Llangollen offers a delightful resting-place, and is deservedly much resorted to.
There is a beautiful view from the churchyard near the inn: here I climbed upon a tomb, and stood for half an hour enjoying with deep and grateful delight the beauties so richly spread before me. Immediately below me bloomed a terraced garden, filled with vine, honey-suckle, rose, and a hundred gay flowers, which descended to the very edge of the foaming stream. On the right hand, my eye followed the crisped waves in their restless murmuring course through the overhanging thicket; before me rose two lines of wood, divided by a strip of meadow-land filled with grazing cattle; and high above all, rose the bare conical peak of a mountain crowned by the ruins of the old Welsh castle Dinas Bran, or the Crow’s Fortress. On the left, the stone houses of the town lie scattered along the valley; the river forms a considerable waterfall near the picturesque bridge, while three colossal rocks rise immediately behind it like giant guards, and shut out all the more distant wonders of this enchanting region.
Permit me now to turn to some less refined and romantic, but not less real, enjoyments of sense—to my own room; where my appetite, enormously sharpened by the mountain air, was most agreeably invited by the aspect of the smoking coffee, fresh guinea-fowls’ eggs, deep yellow mountain butter, thick cream, ‘toasted muffins’ (a delicate sort of cake eaten hot with butter), and lastly, two red spotted trout just caught; all placed on a snow-white table-cloth of Irish damask;—a breakfast which Walter Scott’s heroes in ‘the highlands’ might have been thankful to receive at the hands of that great painter of human necessities. ‘Je dévore déjà un œuf.’—Adieu.
Bangor.—Evening.