"I had read thus far when the little Eliza appeared with my breakfast, and with an arch good-nature bid me good morning 'after my long sleep.' She had just been to church, had all the consciousness of being well dressed, and was waiting upon a foreigner; three things which greatly incline women to be tender-hearted. She accordingly seemed almost embarrassed when I inquired about my departure early the following morning.... After dinner I went, under her guidance, to visit the walks round the town. One of these is most romantically placed on a large rock. We saw from hence Snowdon, in almost transparent clearness, undimmed by a single cloud.... After this pastoral walk, tender mutton closed the day."
Who is not inclined to exclaim with the Welsh, according to his highness's version, "Eich dyn!" This is your man!
Skipping some more blasphemies, we find ourselves at Kennell Park, the seat of Colonel Hughes.
"Towards evening," says his highness, "I arrived at the house of my worthy colonel—a true Englishman in the best sense of the word" (from being a Welshman, we presume). "He and his amiable family received me in the friendliest manner. Country gentlemen of his class, who are in easy circumstances, (with us they would be thought rich,) and fill a respectable station in society; who are not eager and anxious pursuers of fashion in London, but seek to win the affection of their neighbours and tenants; whose hospitality is not mere ostentation; whose manners are neither 'exclusive' nor outlandish, but who find their dignity in a domestic life polished by education and adorned by affluence, and in the observance of the strictest integrity; such form the most truly respectable class of Englishmen. In the great world of London, indeed, they play an obscure part; but on the wide stage of humanity, one of the most noble and elevated that can be allotted to man. Unfortunately, however, the predominance and the arrogance of the English aristocracy is so great, and that of fashion yet so much more absolute and tyrannous, that such families, if my tribute of praise and admiration were ever to fall under their eye, would probably feel less flattered by it, than they would be if I enumerated them among the leaders of ton."—Pp. 137, 138.
Little did his highness think that a few short months only would elapse before the brow of his "worthy colonel, filling a respectable station in society," would be encircled with a baronial coronet; little did he imagine that his "country gentleman," who "played an obscure part" in London, was so soon to be converted into one of the "leaders of ton," from amongst whom he had so flatteringly excluded him; little did he think that his hospitable friend was destined so soon to adorn the British peerage as Lord Dinorben.
On the 5th of August he walked, while all the rest of the family were yet in bed, "with the charming little Fanny, the youngest daughter of the house, who is not yet out."—"She took me," says his highness, "round the park and garden, and showed me her dairy and aviary." His highness then describes the dairy, which, we presume, from a laudable desire of the "worthy colonel" to bring the article into fashion, is surrounded with lumps of copper, forming "a gorgeous bed for rare and curious plants." His highness enumerates the comforts of the colonel's cocks and hens, and the ducks and the pigeons—he feels at the sight thereof a fit of "pastoral sensibility" come over him, and "turns homewards to get rid of his fit of romance before breakfast:"—"Miss Fanny," he adds, "exclaimed, with true English pathos,
'We do but row,
And we are steered by fate.'"
"Yes, indeed, thought I," says the prince, "the little philosopher is right—things always turn out differently from what one intends, even in such small events as these." What "the little philosopher" meant by her pathetic exclamation, we cannot, of course, divine; nor what his highness alludes to as an event; but the story, as his highness has here printed and published it, may serve as a caution to Lord Dinorben how he suffers the familiar visits of princes, and subjects himself to the jokes of such illustrious personages as feel themselves privileged, in return for the honour they confer upon him by their presence, to laugh at his "want of ton," and ridicule the kindnesses which "people of his class" are so apt to bestow.
After dinner the prince tells us that he mounted the colonel's horse—"unwearied as a machine of steel,"—(copper would have been as fair a simile):—he gallops over the stones, up hill and down,—