STATION. Bring the church tower under the middle head of the mountain; and let the prison be rather above the wood adjacent to it. You must fill up the marsh which forms the right side of the picture :-perhaps some cattle, or a fog, may help you. Your inn at Dolgelle is the Golden Lion, and I found it comfortable. Chaise and post horses may be hired there: the charge is much the same in Wales as in England, but not the rate of travelling; forty miles there, even with four horses, is a day's journey. LETTER XII. MERIONETHSHIRE is the most interesting county in your route. It has not, I think, the stupendous, craggy wildness of Caernarvonshire, but is equal to it in calm sublimity, and superior in richness, variety, and beauty. The mountains, if not so high and numerous, display more varied and beautiful colouring, as well as a more correct and elegant outline. The two delicious vales of Festiniog, and of the Mawdach, may vie with any in the principality, and as much may be affirmed, perhaps, of its water-falls. It can boast two lakes, Bala and Tal y Llyn, and one majestic castle, that of Harlech. The situation of some towns is also much admired, especially of Dinas Mowddwy and Dolgelle. Two circumstances give Welch towns a preference in the painter's eye, to those of England; their irregularity, and their being generally built (the inferior ones, at least), not with brick, but with the stone of the country. They are thus less formal both in outline and detail, and their colour harmonizes better with the accompaniments of wood and mountain. Dolgelle is an instance. The houses are of grey stone, and as irregularly built as an artist could wish. It will put you in mind of Gray's description of Kendal "the houses seem as if they had been dancing a country dance, and were out." You may profit by their blunder; and, if you like sketching towns better than I do, you may find a good station on the north side, with Cader Idris for a back ground, A crowd of houses, like any other crowd, is a difficult subject for the pencil. Hear Gilpin on this point. "The management of a crowd requires great artifice. The whole must be considered as one body, and massed together—not to have the whole body so agglomerated, as to consist of no detached groups, but to have these groups (of which there should not be more than two or three) appear to belong to one whole, by the artifice of composition, and the effect of light. This great whole must be further varied also in its parts. Thus in managing a crowd, and in manag ing a landscape, the same general rules are to be observed; the whole and its parts must be combined and contrasted."* Dolgelle is a very convenient centre from which to explore the country. "I know of no place in the principality (says Sir R. Hoare), from whence so many pleasing and interesting excursions may be made; and where nature bears so rich, so varied, and so grand an aspect." The excursions most recommended are—to Machynllaeth-The Waterfalls-Barmouth-the top of Cader Idris—and as a fifth, to Dinas Mowddwy, from thence to Bala over the mountains, and back through the vale in which the river Dee takes its rise. Our route includes the three first, and also the fourth, if, as I suggested, you cross over Cader Idris from Tal y Llyn. The scenes around Dinas Mowddwy, and the adjacent village of Mallwyd, are much praised; but Bala lake is not high in favour with painters. The complaint seems to be, that its banks are * Observ. Wye, p. 77. † Girald. Cambr. vol. ii. p. 385. Ibid. |