up like new creations from among the litter of dead leaves and grasses. We have been there, too, "when the winds of departing spring have scattered the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer has dimmed in the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold." We have seen it, too, in the rich glow of autumn, when the bracken is rusted on the crag and the leaf reddens to the fall; when the mountain ash is heavy with clustered berries of the brightest scarlet, and the heather is purple on the moorlands. But we had never seen it in the icy grip of winter, when its forests are leafless and its meadows flowerless, and the mountains, those "grave and reverend seigniors," are bearded with icicles and clad in raiments of snow.

So when in a year that is past Erasmus suggested that we should spend Christmas at Pen-y-gwryd we consented to go; girded on our knapsack and travelling boots, and in two hours after the compact was made found ourselves seated in the train en route for Conway, and in company with a crowd of other Christmas travellers. It was the afternoon of the day before that which brought the eve of Christmas, and the atmosphere, which hitherto had been murky, smoke-laden, supersaturated with moisture, and altogether of the kind best described as "muggy," had suddenly become bright, crisp, and frosty. There was a fine wintry sunset over the whitened moss at Barton, and after nightfall glimpses of the hoar-frosted landscape through which we were flying. Then the moon rose, and, as we skirted the Welsh coast, its pale light was cast on rippling waters and showed us stretches of frozen marshland against a dark background of mountains. In due time we found ourselves within the walls of the picturesque old town, and took up our quarters at the Castle Hotel, while a band in front was rehearsing the old familiar strains, "Christians awake."

At the tourist-frequented hotels a traveller in winter is a rara avis, and as such is the object of special attention. In the season he often feels himself lost in the crowd, and is conscious that he has no special individuality; but in winter it is otherwise. All the resources of the establishment are at his command. For him the fire is lighted in the coffee-room, and the best bedchamber prepared. He notes, too, with pleasure that that bane of his holiday life, the white-throated swallow-tailed waiter, with his

ghastly napkin, has fled the scene, and that his wants are ministered to by gentler and more acceptable hands. Coming as he does to break the monotony of the dull time, he finds in his host a courteous and communicative companion. So at least we found it at the Castle, at Conway. In that cosy little bar, familiar to artists and not unknown to literary men, there was a glowing fire before which a grand hound was stretched in luxurious ease, and there was also much seasonable talk among the company of local guests gathered there. For ourselves it was pleasant to learn, in view of our expedition, that the mountains inland were covered with snow. There is something peculiarly appropriate in a fall of snow at the season of the - Nativity, because, as some one has said, the raiment which the earth then puts on is not of its own weaving, but given to it in spotless purity from above. It is Milton who says:—

Nature in awe to Him,

Hath doft her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathise ;
Only with speeches fair,

She woos the gentle air,

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw.

To one accustomed only to summer travelling, it is a novelty to rise in his hotel on a cold morning by the light of a candle, and before those in heaven are extinguished. It certainly requires an effort so to rise and turn out before breakfast, and perhaps the experiment will not be repeated after the first morning of such a holiday. But in this case there was ample recompense. How peaceful the quaint old town looked in the bright frosty light of early morning, with every picturesque feature revealed in clearest outline. There was the glimpse of the river through the water gate, the quay, where the ships were lying, and the cold seaward flowing wave that lapped the frozen river wall; the grey old towers, with their gloss of ivy and evergreens tipped with hoar frost; the jackdaws wheeling about them in the silent air; the opposite shore, with the green slopes and the dark fir plantations, the white-crested hills, and over all a sky flushed from east to west with the tenderest rose of dawn.

By-and-bye we had donned our knapsacks, and our feet were upon the hard, frost-bound, ringing road, and crashing through the ice of frozen pools, as we strode along through the keen, bracing air towards Trefriw. As we walked,

We talked

Of men and minds, the dust of change,
The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walked
Beside the river's wooded reach,
The castle, and the mountain ridge,
The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.

Winter though it was, the landscape was not without variety of colour. In the far distance were the snowy summits of the mountains standing out clear against the blue sky, and below the snow line among the rock ledges and wooded hollows, a rich depth of deepest purple. We always thought that by the introduction of this colour Charles Potter had idealized some of his Welsh landscapes, but having seen it with our eyes we think so no longer. In the foreground were long, reed-fringed river reaches of mead and pasture and bare plantation, displaying that lowness of tone and blending of green and grey so much in favour with a particular school of landscape painters; an aspect of nature not untinged with gloom and pervaded by a pensiveness suggestive of sadness rather than joy, the expression of which in art seems to us to be, in some measure at least, the offspring and reflection of the melancholy temperament of the northern mind.

We halted at the inn at Trefriw for refreshment, and there fell into conversation with a traveller of modest garb and manner, who was walking to Conway. He was a Welshman, and to all appearance a farmer, whose home must have been in some out-of-the-way place, for in asking for information regarding the Eastern Question, he remarked that he had seen little or nothing of newspapers for near six months. In some way the talk drifted to the consideration of certain peculiarities in the Welsh language, when it transpired that our friend was in his way a Latin scholar, who had studied his favourite poet Virgil while following the plough, and who had even essayed to translate him into Welsh. The Mantuan poet had gained his affection by the intimate