My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

In one of the Welsh counties is a small village called A-----. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

Faith builds in the dungeon and lazarhouse its sublimest shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--prayer.

In solitude the passions feed upon the heart.

The more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances - the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers.

Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.