PICTURESQUE SCENERY IN WALES, Illustrated by Thirty-seven Engravings on Steel, BY H. ADLARD, ALLEN, GASTINEAU AND OTHERS. WITH DESCRIPTIONS BY JOHN TILLOTSON, AUTHOR OF "THE ALBUM OF Scottish SCENERY," "BEAUTIES OF ENGLISH SCENERY," "THE NEW WAVERLY LONDON: T. J. ALLMAN, 42, HOLBORN HILL. 1867. PREFACE. THE interesting Principality which forms the South-west portion of our island, offers many attractive features to the Artist, the Poet, the Antiquary and Tourist. Amid its magnificent scenery, its noble acclivities and soaring heights, its narrow valleys, its patches of rich lowland, its rivers, lakes and woodland, there is much to charm the least susceptible, and to indelibly impress itself on the minds of those who have eyes to see and taste to appreciate the wild grandeur and romantic beauty of a mountainous country. For many years past, Wales has been the studio of our greatest landscape painters; they have there studied Nature in her endless versatility of aspect, and have enriched our treasuries of Art by transcripts of the picturesque landscape of that country. The engravings which embellish this volume are faithful copies of some of the best of their pictures, and no effort has been spared to render these illustrations worthy of their originals. The Antiquities of Wales are, next to its Scenery, its great attraction. It was here that our ancient British forefathers made their final stand against the Romans, and here that they bade defiance to the Saxon, when those wild tribes had reduced the neighbouring land to complete subjection. The Danes made an occasional descent upon their coast, but were unable to maintain a hide of land, and not until an overwhelming force of Norman English chivalry came down upon the country like a flood, was the old home of British Liberty held by a conqueror. Even then, the conqueror-our great Edward—immediately endeavoured to conciliate the vanquished people; and the better to reconcile them to his authority, gave them a Prince born in their countryEdward II., surnamed of Carnavon, first Prince of Wales. All over the country are the remnants of the old feud-old British camps and cairns and Druid temples, and broken Roman spears and Saxon swords, and ruined abbeys, and old cloister walls, and huge stones with which tradition has associated |