Stepping from the raft to the little pier, glancing
up at the leafy Welsh hills, rising and yet rising,
watching the six horses being yoked to the
post-carriage to draw it up the steep road, and for
several miles toil over the barriers of the
hills, until the smooth and musical high road
was reached, surely the traveller's eye would
settle with delight on the little GEORGE INN,
nestling among the trees, only a little way
above him, overgrown with ivy, with
overhanging roof, low diamond-paned bow-windows,
sanded floors, red curtains, and not so much as
the twig of " a bush," its wines being in excellent
condition. A moment's hesitation, and,
unless it were Irish anchorites bound for town, or
intending Trappists with stones in their slippers,
no one but must have ordered away the six horses,
and put up for the night at the snug GEORGE.

It is said THE GEORGE has stood where it
stands, for three hundred years. In course of
time many grudged the ferry passengers this
welcome, and have come down the heights to the
retired nook that overlooks the ferry. To meet
this call, stucco, and the pride of coffee-rooms,
and " salles à manger," have risen up, but the
old tenement still crouches modestly at the skirt
of the new building, and there are those who
prefer one of the old rooms in the quiet older
portion, though the walls are a little swelled and
awry, and the outline of the roof is marked
enough. This preservation is said to be owing
to its last hostess, who kept up the now fading
tradition that the host, not the house, was to be
the leading element in the guest's mind, and that
guests were to be dealt with, not as numerals,
but as friends, or at least acquaintances, to be
made welcome. Many came down to THE
GEORGE attracted by its mistress (now no more)
as much as by its accommodation.

Already there is talk of THE HOTEL COMPANY
(LIMITED, of course), who will presently come
in with their glib architect, "middle-aged"
Jenkinson (so called from his attachment to
mediæval treatment), and gut and sack the
place. Middle-aged Jenkinson will of course
contemptuously dismiss the old Ferry-house as
"that shed." And before another year we
shall have battlements, and balustrades, and an
enormous swelling roof, pierced all over as if
for artillery, like a ship turned upside down,
ladies' coffee-room, and " gentlemen's ditto,"
with numbers, and bells that ring by machinery,
and electric telegraphs, and, above all, " the lift.'"
Defunct and buried hostess! This would have
broken her heart.

II. OUR LITTLE TOWN.

HIGHER up is another ferry, ingeniously
constructed, with a long wooden strip of planking,
not three feet wide, running out nearly a quarter
of a mile into the sea. On bluff days, we
have to walk out to the very end of this wooden
causeway, with the waves almost tumbling
across the feet, and the wind blowing very
stiffly, and the boards quite slippery with
seaweed. Poor stranger ladies often stop short in
the middle of the passage, tottering before the
strong gale, unable to go forward or backward,
a spectacle of helpless terror. Sometimes, what
with the shipping of seas, and the blowing, and
the flying away of ladies' hats and veils, and the
wet, it becomes altogether an adventure. But
the native Welsh ladies come tripping down the
plank, far out in the water, with perfect security,
and gather up their skirts, and show their red
petticoats, as if taking great pride in the favourable
opportunity. Seen from the heights, they
seem to be walking on the surface of the waters.

Our town has been pitched in a bowl of
hills, and on the cold wintery autumn evening,
seems to burrow and nestle itself with snugness
and satisfaction under the shelter of the
great hills—which good offices, however, it has
repaid, after the usual fashion of the world, by
encroaching on its benefactors. It has been
steadily creeping up the skirts and sides,
steadily spreading, stealthily encroaching in
zigzag lines, like flounces or trimmings, yet not
such trimmings as an architectural modiste
would approve of; for it rambles about from
this side to that, now up and down, now across
and diagonally, in a fashion that would give
Elise a nightmare. It is a queer little snake of a
town; for it is literally but one street, that
curls, and struggles, and winds, crossed at
intervals by little lanes, like vertebræ, and it
seems to be, not all shops and private houses,
like other little towns, but all churches and
inns, beginning with the CATHEDRAL for a
chief church, and the Red Lion as the chief inn.
For this is a bishopric, with a chapter and
canons, and we may see a real right reverend
father in God walking about with lower limbs that
look invitingly cool in summer, and as painfully
chilly in winter, and with a magnificent " shovel"
upon his head. Sometimes we meet a heavily-built
open carriage, grinding down the hills with
the drag on, and are mysteriously informed that
it holds the bishop's lady. Another " shovel"
is said to belong to the dean. Both deanery and
episcopal palaces are pleasant residences down
in the valley, among old trees not yet cut down
to satisfy the villa-building mania.

But the "Establishment" is only coldly
received here. A very Babel of religions
obtains; and the " 'Senters," as a Welshman, with
perfect gravity, describes them to me, run riot.
Here are Congregationalists, Wesleyans,
Independents, Connexionalists, Shakers,
Methodists, housed in all the decent but barbarous
shapes of "'Senting" architecture. As every
street and path seems to run through a little
valley, the difficulty is to get fair level standing-room
for these temples. You construct a
sort of earthen shelf or bracket, and perch
your church or chapel upon it. And if there
are chapels, so are there whole herds of
ministers, excellent men, no doubt, in their
calling, but whose claims to sanctity happily
do not rest on their faces and expressions.
Over the chimney-piece of my room hangs a
large-framed lithograph, containing twenty-one
portraits of these gentlemen, and which seems
to have been intended as a sort of affectionate