The Elwy loses the shadow of its willows and hazels a mile or so below St. Asaph, which is five miles upwards from Rhyl. Winding among deep banks of rich soil, it makes the necessary part of a pretty picture when, flowing under a fine stone bridge of five arches, it forms a foreground for one of the smallest cities, crowned by the smallest cathedral, in all these islands. St. Asaph may be satisfactorily explored in half an hour’s time. It spreads itself over a hill, which is called Bryn Paulen, after some legendary Paulinus, a Roman general. The cathedral, which is no more than an average-sized church, is the central and highest object. St. Kentigern is said to have built a church of wood on the site about the middle of the sixth century, when he was driven from Scotland by a prince who declined to be won from Paganism. St. Asaph, who was a native of Wales, succeeded as bishop when Kentigern returned to Scotland. He built a church of stone, in which he was buried in 576. For five hundred years the see has no dependable history; but in the period of the Civil Wars there was a cathedral in which horses and oxen were stabled, and a see whose revenues were sequestrated by Parliament. The building was restored, when Charles II. came to the throne, by Bishop Griffith, and a bishop’s palace was erected by his successor, who was none other than the learned Isaac Barrow. The cathedral of St. Asaph contains the tomb of this distinguished prelate, and a monument to Mrs. Hemans, who spent a large portion of her life in the Vale of Clwyd, as readers of her poems may easily discover. In front of the cathedral stands a tall red-sandstone monument, erected in memory of Bishop Morgan, the first translator of the Bible into the language of Wales.
From a couple of miles above St. Asaph to the meeting of the waters above Rhuddlan, the Clwyd and the Elwy pursue an almost parallel course, the Elwy in long bends and sweeps, the Clwyd with almost infinite small windings. To that point their streams have been almost at right angles to each other, the Elwy rising not far from the hills above Llanrwst, overlooking the Conway valley, the Clwyd flowing down by Ruthin and Denbigh, a thin thread of water, except in very rainy seasons, with its course worn so deep, after the lapse of ages, into the rich, yielding soil, that it is sometimes scarcely to be discerned as a feature in the landscape.
Denbigh, say the etymologists, hazarding a guess, means “a small hill.” In that case, the older designation, Caledfryn-yn-Rhos (“a rocky hill in Rhos”), was much more appropriate, for the town ascends by one long street to heights that appear mountainous to the tired pedestrian; and from Denbigh Castle, the ruins of which occupy the summit of this “small hill,” the land slopes off suddenly to an immense depth of rich pastoral landscape, enclosed in a basin of lofty but graciously rounded hills. Like Carnarvon, Denbigh Castle is to some extent being rebuilt; but it is immeasurably a more hopeless sort of ruin. It was dismantled by order of Charles II., and the work seems to have been thoroughly accomplished, for the walls were of great strength, and it must have been a very determined act of destruction that reduced them to such fragments as now remain. Here, within the actual walls of the castle, but in a cottage that has now been destroyed, was Henry M. Stanley born. The special distinction of Denbigh, however, is that it was the last castle which held out for Charles I. It was, indeed, only surrendered at the king’s own order, dated from Newcastle, when Charles was himself a prisoner there.
ST. ASAPH (p. [227]).
Eight miles further on is Ruthin, which is another town that clusters about the summit of a hill. The castle here, which has been restored, and is still inhabited, was in existence in the reign of Edward I., and how much earlier is not known. We are now in the richest and most fertile portion of the Vale of Clwyd, with its highest mountain not far away. To the summit of Moel Fammau, 1,845 feet above the level of the sea, is only five miles. The mountain is crowned by the ugly ruin of a tower which was erected at the jubilee of George III. Hence may be seen the valleys of the Dee and the Mersey, and, by aid of a telescope, the coasts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Looking down the Vale of Clwyd, the eye ranges over a landscape that is dotted about with farmhouses and herds of kine; the white, tapering tower of Bodelwyddan Church rises high above its trees, and Rhyl, Llandudno, and Great Orme’s Head stand out clearly on the sea margin far away. At a greater distance, and in another direction, one may behold Snowdon and Cader Idris, with their summits buried in brooding clouds.
The river DEE rises in a country which has been immemorially associated with the Arthurian legends. Here, indeed, was the infant king committed to the care of old Timon, and here his boyhood was spent—
“In a valley green,