sorrows connected with poor Iolo had not only passed away, but were nearly forgotten; the old shepherd had long lived in a parish at a considerable distance amongst the hills from Llan-. One cold December Sunday evening, he and his fellow-parishioners were shivering in their seats as the clerk was beginning to light the church, when a strange burst of music starting suddenly from beneath the aisle, threw the whole congregation into confusion, and then it passed featly along to the farther end of the church, and died gradually away, till at last it was impossible to distinguish it from the wind that was careering and wailing through almost every pillar of the old church of Llan. The shepherd immediately recognized this to be the tune Iolo had played at the mouth of the cave, though, whatever was the cause, whether that Iolo was traversing a smoother surface, or that he now, like other spirits, wandered o'er nothing but unresisting air, certain it is that the tune, as the shepherd heard it the second time, and as the parson of the parish, a connoisseur in music, took it down from his whistling, was much less abrupt and mountainous than on the former occasion. The Rev. Mr. Ap -presented my grandmother, of whom he was an admirer, with a copy of it, and I hope Mrs. Hemans will sometime favor us with a vocal strain worthy of this keepsake of a sonata dug from amongst the subterraneans.

Blayney, a minstrel of Powis land, (and one, too, as much respected as Parry, domestic harper to the late Sir Watkin, or Gryffydd Owen, of Meirion,) favored us with this specimen. The Earl of Powis has not been indifferent to his merits, and Blayney now enjoys the otium cum dignitate of the harper's corner at Walcot: he deserves it, for there is not a more obliging and unassuming man living.-EDITORS.

Now what became of Iolo ap Hugh, after the infernal Orphean finale, no one knows; though many and positive have been the decisions on the subject. Some maintain that he was chosen huntsman by Gwynn ap Nudd (the Fairy King), and that every Hallow-eve night he is to be seen cheering the hounds of Annwn (the world unknown, or the world of darkness,) over the peaks of Cadair Idris, and that his fiddle was changed into a buglehorn. Some again maintain, that Iolo stumbled into a fairy ring in the middle of the cave, and that he will be kept there, curvetting and scraping, till the day of doom; and it is said that, in certain nights in leap-year, a star stands opposite the farther end of the cave, and enables you to view all through it; and to see Iolo and its other inmates. In support of this hypothesis, it is also urged, that if on Hallow eve you will put your ear to the aperture, you may hear the tune, "Farwell! Ned Pugh," as distinctly as you may hear the waves roar in a sea-shell. But I lean most to the opinion of Eneas Mac Doyle, an Irish serjeant, who was recruiting in the village he thought that "Ned was only gone to spend a few thousand years in larning the music of the sphares."

Many a time have I listened, with all the wistfulness of boyhood, but never could I hear any thing but the moaning of the imprisoned gusts of wind; and I have shouted into the cave a shout that would have reached a mile on level ground, but never did I receive any other reply than the reverberation of its organ-toned echoes, like a clamorous laugh of fiendish and tumultuous scorn, at the mortal step or mortal voice that should hope to penetrate their dark and unfathomable abysses.

BEUNO.

MEDIOLANUM.

THE notices of the Roman stations in this island, which have descended to us, are confessedly very erroneous in many respects. The discrepancies in the iters, given in Antoninus and Richard, show that dislocations have taken place; that some stations have been transposed; and that numerous errors have occurred in the list of numerals, occasioning altogether great incongruities.

From these causes, it appears to me that the station of Mediolanum has been hitherto involved in much obscurity. Great assistance has been afforded, in the discovery of other stations, either by the antiquities discovered, or the preservation of their ancient names; and by these means some of the bordering stations on Mediolanum have been recognised: Chester as Deva Colonia; Bangor as Banchorium; Wroxeter as Urioconium; but the same clue has not succeeded in leading us to the discovery of the one under consideration.

Camden considered it to be Llanvyllin. Methlen, he says, among the Belgi, is synonymous with Mediolanum. Unfortunately, Methlen is his own corrupt reading of Myllin, the saint to whom the church is dedicated, and who may have been born, perchance, some centuries after Mediolanum had been in ruins. More probable conjectures have removed it to Meivod; but I think it has not yet satisfactorily been proved to have been situated there.

Sir Richard Hoare and Mr. Fenton, after a careful investigation of those places, were satisfied that neither of them was likely to have furnished the site of the Roman town; and from consideration that one of the two routes from London to Segontium led through Mediolanum, they carefully investigated the Vale of Tanat, through which the road would probably course; but no vestiges of a Roman station could be found, and they conjectured that the stream might have buried in its bosom the traces of this fortress. This result has left the subject involved in its former obscurity, and has been the inducement to collect such notices as remain of this station, which must have been one of the most important in the western division of the island.

Richard says, "Ultra hos et Silurum terminos siti ordovices, quorum urbes Mediolanum et Brannogenium." Brannogenium, in Antoninus, is called Bravinium, a station ascertained to have been situated between Ludlow and Knighton. Richard mentions a Brannogena likewise, but he places it on the left bank of the Severn, and assigns it to the Dobuni: it therefore was distinct from the Brannogenium, or Bravinium, of the Ordovices.*

The importance of this town may be inferred from its being made the subject of the tenth iter, in Antoninus, from "Glanoventa to Mediolanum." The subject of the second iter, in Antoninus, is the road from the northern wall to Richborough. This is traced to Mediolanum, and then, in a very singular manner, it diverges angularly to London. Upon a comparison of this iter with the tenth in Richard, it is probable that some error has crept into the former, and that it ought to have been continued to

I

In the Anonymi Ravennatis Chorographia, there are five cities apportioned to this district, Lavobrinta, Mediomanum, Segontia, Canubia, and Mediolana. Lavobrinta and Mediomanum are found in this list alone; and their situations, I believe, have not been ascertained. Mediomanum is placed by Gale at Maentwrog, inerely, suppose, for the same reason that Camden fixed Mediolanum at Llanvyllin, some similarity in sound; and is objectionable for the same reason that militated against Camden's hypothesis. Maen Twrog, or the Stone of Twrog, obtained its name from Twrog, a saint who flourished about the seventh century. It is unlikely. also, that Mediomanum should be in the vicinity of Heriri Monte, unless identical with it. I should conjecture it to be the station at Caer Gai, an undoubted Roman work, which otherwise would want a name. The appellative Mediomanum would likewise favor the supposition. Caer Gai is as nearly as possible midway between Mediolanum and Segontium. Med answers to the Latin medio, and man to the concluding manum, and, both combined, signifies the midway station.

Ricardi, iter i.
Virioconio.

Exeter, and the road from Richborough to Mediolanum to have formed a distinct iter.

It may assist us here to collect the notices and distances, in the iters, of the stations in this district:

Antonini, iter ii.
Condate.

Ricardi, iter ii. Seguntio Virioconium.

Here it appears, that the distance, according to Richard, from Wroxeter to Chester was thirty-six miles; according to Antoninus, coursing through Rutunium, Mediolanum, and Bovio, it amounted to fifty-three. These two stations being ascertained, we see the numerals in Richard must be erroneous, and the intermediate stations given in Antoninus probably omitted. The distance in Antoninus appears to be the correct one, and would be about the number of Roman miles between Wroxeter and Chester, and perhaps a tolerable direct line. We have afterwards the distance from Condate to Mediolanum, both in Antoninus and Richard, set down at eighteen miles; completely at variance with the other in Antoninus, which places them at a distance of fifty.

If we examine the iter in Richard, which gives us the route from Segontium to Wroxeter, we should be inclined to search the Vale of Tanat for Mediolanum, and place it twenty-three miles from Wroxeter, in that direction; but then it would be very incongruous to take such a line, as the direct road to Chester; and, as four iters agree in placing Mediolanum on the northern road from Wroxeter, we may conclude it could not be far removed from that direction. The Severn, liable to be swollen by floods, and at all times a formidable obstacle, would not be twice unnecessarily crossed by the Romans, on their route from Wroxeter to Chester; more particularly when it would cause an extension of the distance, and expose them to the attacks of the mountain dwellers, probably at no period completely subdued, when the object would be better attained, and the route shorter and more secure, by not crossing the Severn at all.