fore took the seats which the melancholy woman affigned to us, whilst she stood afide near the open door and wiped away her tears with the duster.

The funeral is evidently on its way; a number of women and children quietly appear upon the scene, filently filling the pews lower down the middle aifle. They are all neatly dressed in black, many with apparently new crape on their bonnets. Here and there the bonnets or the shawls are not black, but in such cases the wearer has placed confpicuously some feature of mourning about her attire. There is a great preponderance of black filks, with strongly-marked folds, telling of chefts and preffes out of which many have been brought from amongst other beft things. Men, too, are now in church in confiderable numbers, in dark blue cloth coats and carefully-brushed hats, but they moftly occupy seats in the chancel and round the pulpit, having followed the bier, which half a dozen men have carried up the centre aisle, headed by the elderly clergyman in his white furplice, who as they flowly advanced, repeated by heart a pfalm in Welsh. bearers having reverently placed the bier in the chancel, the clergyman reads from the desk part of the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. To our uninitiated ears the words of the fine old language convey no confolation, but they roll on in a grand and melancholy cadence, like the notes of some deep pathetic music.

The

The exhortation ends, and pastor and people now ftand round the open grave, whilft the burial service is continued in Welsh. When the benediction has been uttered, the fexton scatters the green rushes on the coffin; the earth is fhovelled in, and the rite is over.

The company quietly and fedately begins to disperse; the women move off by twos and threes to other graves; little

knots of men turn off in the fame way. They stand and talk folemnly, as if of the departed whofe remains lie underneath, recalling with tender memories, perhaps, their words and deeds. Then one after another, with an undefined look of folemnity hanging about them, the townsfolk, men and women and children, move off to their respective homes, to put aside their mourning and turn again to their different occupations.

In the meantime we ftill linger, feated upon a gravestone, and watch the last little group which paffes out at the distant gate. It confifts of the poor folitary fifter, overcome with grief and weeping bitterly. When buxom Mrs. Griffiths Owen spoke of her to us, she had shaken her head, faying, "she took it to heart, and was very low." Here then she was, very low and heart-broken, leaning upon the arm of a kindlooking, elderly woman, with a carefully-plaited and stifflystarched frilled cap infide her black bonnet, who seemed a very efficient prop for the bereaved mourner; after them came two other female mourners, and laftly the white-headed very old uncle, leading a small child by the hand. It was a mournful little group.

So ended this Welsh funeral. There was not much in it; but it impressed us with the loveliness of human sympathythe neighbourliness of weeping with those who wept.

A scene of a different character occurred also just now in Conway, which, linking to the memory and ufages of ancient times the enlarged interefts and broader views of the present day, brought fome hundreds of spectators to the town, and filled the old caftle with life and gaiety.

An Eisteddfod was held here, which lasted three days, and

which, being marked by fome features of national life and many picturesque details, was attractive to the tourist tribe which frequent North Wales at this feafon.

We are indebted to our friend the Rev. Richard Parry, of Llandudno, for most of the following information refpecting Eifteddfods. He himself is a bard of the highest order, in teftimony of which he is poffeffed of a casket of medals, gold and filver, of large fize and great weight, and which, displayed upon his breast at the Conway Eifteddfod, made him a conspicuous and honoured object of attention.

The original Eifteddfod was the Parliament of the nation. The laws were founded by Dyfnwal Moelmud, four hundred years before the Chriftian era, and revised by Howel Dda, a thousand years ago. According to the statutes of Rhuddlan, the conftruction of the law was committed to the Commons, the executive to the Lords. The educational remains part and parcel of the law of the land to the present day.

An Eifteddfod was held at Conway Castle in the year 1461, in the reign of Henry VI., exactly four hundred years ago; and another during the fame reign at Carmarthen, under the prefidency of Gryfydd, grandfather to Sir Rhys ap Thomas, by whofe aid Henry VII. was placed on the throne. On this occafion two filver badges were provided, a filver chair and a filver harp, both of which were triumphantly won by a bard and minstrel of Flintshire. Henry VIII. himself fummoned an Eisteddfod at Caerwys, which was held in 1525. Queen Elizabeth did the fame in 1568, the tranfactions of which were carefully recorded by Dr. John David Rees of Anglesey. Of later Eifteddfods, the most remarkable are one held at Denbigh in 1828, at which the Duke of Suffex prefided; and one also at the same place in 1832, when her present Majefty, then Princess Victoria, diftributed the prizes,

and when a poem by Mrs. Hemans was read, a contribution by her to the poetical department.

After her death, an elegy to her memory being proposed as one of the fubjects of bardic compofition, the prize was won by Thomas Parry, a brother of the Rev. Richard Parry, himself also a bard of great repute, and whose medals equal, if not exceed in number, those of his brother.

Befides the more serious bufiness of the old Eifteddfods there were triennial meetings of the Bards, at which the monarch prefided and awarded the prizes.

The compofitions produced on fuch occafions, at a time when the most momentous events of the country were never committed to writing, affumed an important character, being the historical records of the time, the expreffion of public opinion, and the affertion and maintenance of whatever great truth was agitating the best minds of the nation. A chief bard, -the Bardd Cadeiriog, or chaired bard,-prefided over the order, and by virtue of his rank was placed on a seat or chair of dignity, and wore on his breast a little filver or gold chair as a badge.

Both bards and minstrels were originally a branch of the Druidical hierarchy: the bard being the composer of song, the poet in fact; the minstrel, the musician who played on the harp, or who also fang with it. The pennillion finging of Wales is very ancient and remarkable; it is improvised finging to the equally improvised music of the harper.

All knowledge, civil or religious, was anciently preserved orally, and in a metrical form for the more easy committal to memory. The metre of their verfe was a triad or stanza of three lines, each line composed of seven syllables; the first and second containing only the fubject of the poem, and the third conveying fome divine or moral precept. The bards ftill

remained even after the Druids were expelled or flaughtered by the Romans; and in the fixth century, great men being amongst them, such as Aneurin Gwawdrydd, Taliesin, Llyarch Hên, and Merddyn ap Morfryn, they used their power in endeavouring to aroufe their countrymen to a last great effort against the Saxons. With the conqueft of Wales and the death of the last Prince Llewellyn, however, the bardic spirit was completely broken; nor did it again revive in anything like its priftine force, although it fhewed figns of life in the insurrection of Owen Glyndwr. In vain the monarchs of the Tudor line, though Gray's bard beheld them as "vifions of glory," endeavoured to reanimate it by royal patronage; it could not be done. In the reign of George II., however, Powell, a Welsh harper, played before the monarch, and fo delighted Handel, that that great master of mufic compofed for him feveral pieces, which are given in the first set of Handel's concerts. But although the old bardic spirit, in its original form, may be dead, and every effort to revive it in that form may be fruitless, because it does not belong to the character of the age, it yet exists nationally in a far wider and nobler field, throughout the Welsh people, amongst the lower orders of whom poetry is loved and cultivated, whilft their taste and feeling for music proclaims itself everywhere—in every wayside chapel and village choir.

It is judicious, therefore, in the promoters of the present Eisteddfods, to make them rather means of general enlightenment, and moral and focial improvement, than attempts to revive that which is dead and belonged only to a bye-gone and femi-barbarous age. The Eifteddfod of the nineteenth century has somewhat the character of a literary institution and a socialscience meeting combined. Hence, at Conway, not only were poetry and music represented, but the arts and the knowledge