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Gloucester, with Keble and Pusey; while externally a beautiful tower, with enriched and embattled parapet and a crown of lofty pinnacles, rises high above the buildings of the town, proclaiming the pious munificence of some merchantprince of the fifteenth century, when already the port of Cardiff was acquiring wealth and fame.

And on the northern side of the great road, opposite to the church which brings down to us the ecclesiastical life of the middle ages, is the superb monument in which something of the feudal life of those days still survives. The shops and houses of the street are built against the turreted angle of the castle walls, where once the moat defended them; and a little farther is the chief entrance-gate, flanked with a Norman tower; and then the restored curtain-wall of the remaining portion of the castlefront, the encumbering buildings being cleared away, and the site of the moat spread over with turf and garden-beds; and at the farther angle, overtopping the adjacent antiquities, rises the lofty clock-tower, rich with the glories of modern medievalism, the twelve signs of the zodiac, with Mars and Jupiter and the rest of their presiding deities standing in arched niches on its several sides, and all depicted in gold and glowing colours. Still more gorgeous are the splendours of painting and sculpture and costly marble, and pictured glass and inlaid woodwork, and elaborate metal-work that appear within; for the chief rooms of the castle itself, the library and banqueting-hall, the private sitting-rooms and the oratory, the entrance-hall and the grand staircase, are all adorned with the same magnificence as the rooms of the clock-tower, and made resplendent with portraitures of

myth and legend, history and allegory.

The castle proper stands along the western side of the rectangular enclosure. Its front shows a fine specimen of the domestic architecture of the middle ages, with the chief features of its original workmanship carefully preserved and the decayed portions skilfully reproduced in accordance with the old. If the roofs and parapets and angle-towers wear the look of modern work, they are still a fitting framework around the three projecting semi-turrets with their traceried openings grey with age which form bay-windows to the banqueting-hall and library; the whole being surmounted by a lofty tower and spirelet which rises in the centre.

Beyond these domestic buildings and at the north-west angle of the courtyard, rises the keep. It is a lofty tower of ten sides, with a projecting turret on its southern front, built upon an artificial mound and encircled by an inner moat. The keep remains at present in its half-ruined condition; but the steep flight of steps leading downward from its entrance has been renovated, and a wooden bridge crosses its moat in place of the ancient drawbridge. From this there was a line of walls and buildings with a second gateway, passing obliquely across to the Norman tower at the outer entrance, and thus dividing the enclosure into two wards or bailies. The western or inner ward was thus shut in on all sides by the buildings of the castle; while the outer and much larger ward beyond the division is surrounded on its other three sides by an embankment thrown up against the outer walls which defend the entire fortress.

The old tower standing beside the great entrance-gateway is

the most interesting of the his probability the Norman strongtoric portions of the castle; for hold occupied the site, as it carin its basement is a dismal dun- ried on the traditions, of the fort geon, lighted only by a small of Aulus Didius. aperture high in the stone vault above, and formerly descending some feet below the level of the present floor and of the surrounding ground. It is the room in which Henry I. confined his rival brother, Duke Robert of Normandy, under custody of Earl Robert of Gloucester, the lord of the castle; and here the vanquished captive died after twenty-eight years of incarceration, bequeathing to his prison the name which it still bears of Duke Robert's Tower. But the line of walls which connected this tower with the keep is only traceable now by its carefully preserved foundations, and the shire-hall which stood in the outer court a century ago is swept away, and the wards are thus thrown together into a green, park-like enclosure. The surrounding bank is planted with forest-trees, many of them of massive growth and bent with age, while between them and the low embattled wall which surmounts them there is a shaded promenade, connecting them with the mound of the keep, which is overgrown with the same luxuri

ance.

The moat of the keep has become an ornamental water, peopled by swans and rare birds of varied plumage; while numer ous brilliant peacocks lead their mates and their broods beneath the trees and across the greensward, where once the courtyard was trodden by the horses and armed retainers of the old feudal lords, and where the chieftains of a still older period had borne rule before them; for the antiquaries of the last century discovered a coin of Trajan and the hypocaust of a Roman mansion in the same courtyard-showing that in all

VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DOCCLXXXVIII.

In those days we may suppose that the west front of the castle stood near to the shore of the estuary, though now between the buildings and the contracted stream of the Taff large gardens intervene. They are the site of the monastery of the Black Friars, which perhaps was built upon an island between the channels of the stream. Along these gardens, and also along the northern wall of the castle, a portion of the outer moat is still preserved, fed by a stream derived from a higher point up the river; and the stream which thus served for medieval defence, and now fills the moats for ornament, is at the same time converted to utilitarian purposes by being made to carry its water into the dock. It passes beneath the highroad at the south-eastern angle of the castle, where we note the latest of the additions which the series of buildings is receiving; for at this point another great tower is rising, which in its completion is to rival the existing clock-tower at the south-western angle.

Opposite to the entrance of this princely abode, and at right angles to the ancient street which passes before it, the chief modern street of Cardiff leads directly down to the railway station and the customhouse and other public offices, and the vast docks beyond. Formerly this street led also to St Mary's Church, a large cruciform structure of Norman date, standing between the south gate of the town and the river, some distance below the "key" of those days. But a flood swept this church away in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and its site, like that of the old quay, has been absorbed

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in the great network of modorn docks and wharves. It is a curious contrast which the two extremities of the mein street of Cardiff now present to us on the one hand the ancient castle, the abode of Welsh and Roman and Saxon and Norman lords, each in his day, the scene of their fierce fighting and their barbaric splendours; then half ruined and almost forsaken, and then again re edified in such superb magnificence for a quiet country home, with its peaceful courtyard, by the skill and taste of the present Marquis of Bute; and then down the busy street the hurry of active life in the chief coaling-port of the world, with the docks upon whose construction the late Marquis of Bute staked all his wealth, and brought himself aimost to poverty while laying the foundations of a colossal fortune for his son, and a future of vast prosperity for his town. Father and son alike will hand down their names to posterity as the makers of Cardiff.

Cardiff lies near the extremity of a tract of level ground which extends westward along the shore of the Severn sea all the way from the rocks about the estuary of the Wye. Thus its surroundings, over which the homes of its dense population are continually spreading, must formerly have been a dismal swamp. Beyond the level, and diverging thence at an angle towards the south, the sea-coast continues in a line of rocky cliffs commencing with the bold promontory of Penarth; while to the west and the north are ridges of hills stretching back into the more distant mountains. Across the marsh is the outflow of three converging rivers, the Rhymney a short distance eastward, bordering the county; the Taff at Cardiff itself; the Ely, almost uniting with it immediately under the hills upon the west.

Down the valleys of these rivers the various lines of railway converge also; the central one of the district being that along the Taff, from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff, which has attained the patriarchal age of fifty years. And down the same valleys, running alongside the rivers, and sometimes carried in aqueducts over them, are the canals which were the predecessors of the railways-constructed for the most part at the close of the eighteenth century, when the coal and iron works of the hills were rapidly developing. It was in the middle of that century that they were first becoming important, when the first smelting - furnace was erected in the neighbourhood of Merthyr, by Mr Anthony Bacon, who contracted with Government for the supply of guns to the arsenals during the American war. And so valuable for the purpose at the present time is the coal-supply of that metropolis of the industry, that even Spain sends her iron hither to be smelted in the furnaces of Merthyr.

Between the valleys of the Ely and the Taff, backed by the bare summit of the great Garth mountain, a thickly wooded ridge slopes gradually down to the borders of the plain. Beneath the front of this ridge, where the descending rivers approach together before diverging across the level ground, lies the quaint village-city of Llandaff, two miles to the north-west of the great seaport town, though now the numerous villas and mansions of their separate suburbs have almost linked them into one.

There may or may not be scraps of history in the old ecclesiastical legends, which tell that in the second century Lleurig ap Coel, the first Christian king in Britain, known as Lucius or Lever Mawr, the "Great Light" of his people, founded the primitive "Llan-Daff," or Church of the Taff, the first edi

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fice of Christian worship in the land; that St Fagan and St Dyfan, who have left their names, one at the adjoining village of St Fagan's on the Ely, the other at MerthyrDyfan, a few miles westward, were sent by the same king to be ordained priests by St Eleutherius at Rome; that another Christian native, St Mellon, who was Bishop of Rouen a century later, has left his name also to the village of St Mellon's, near the mouth of the Rhymney. But there can be little doubt that Llandaff, nestling in the corner of the valley, and having these rivers for its lines of communication with the hills, was a place of chief importance to the district when Cardiff did it service as a haven through which it could hold communication with the world beyond.

Here is a secluded hollow, overshadowed on the south and west by a steeply rising bank, with a tributary streamlet of the Taff flowing a few yards below; and a little well springs up in the nook beneath the bank. This is the Llan, or sacred enclosure, of the Taff, which has given its name to the city. It may be that in the mythology of the primitive races this was a holy well dedicated to the spirit which animated the beneficent life of the river. Still more probably, it may have been the spot at which the primitive Christian missionary brought his converts to the baptismal water. One might conjecture also, that in early days a separate baptistery, may have been erected over the spring; for the church, even in the Norman period, stopped short at some distance east of this: but at any rate the builders of later days have enclosed the little well within their walls, and there it is springing still beneath the tower at the south-western angle, while the font in which its water is used stands beside it. The church in

deed has no ancient font-perhaps the natural well continued to be used for ages-but there is one of late date and poor design; and this is now superseded by a modern one, sculptured with symbolical adornments of almost more than medieval quaintness-for it has the story of Noah's deluge in conventional designs upon its eight panels, in one of which, for example, there is a casement-window opened in heaven through which an angel is pouring water from a pitcher upon the earth beneath.

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Passing on from legends and conjectures, we find that the church which now encloses the sacred spring has a long history. here it was that St Dyfrig, the son of Brychan, king of Brecknock, built his church at the close of the fifth century; and when he became Archbishop of Caerleon, St Teilo was his successor here; and he, becoming archbishop in his turn, kept his primatial see here at Llandaff, which is often called from him Bangor Teilo, the great choir of Teilo. Medieval art has adorned the west front of the existing church with sculptured figures of these early founders; the one in a niche at the summit of the lofty gable, the other on a curious pendant dividing the arch 'of the central doorway. For the church of former days gave place to one of superior design when Urban became bishop in the early years of the eleventh century; and a Norman arch, richly ornamented with chevron moulding and flowered circlets, still remains between the choir and the eastern Ladychapel to show the elaborate character of Urban's work. Two other richly sculptured Norman arches form the principal entrances of the church on its northern and southern sides, dating from the second half of the eleventh century, though these are said to

have been removed from their original places when the aisles were rebuilt at a later date. Then, in the simple and even severe transition style, which seems like a reaction from the profuse ornamentation of the Norman period, a chapter-house of square form with pointed roof is added on the south side of the choir, perhaps early in the thirteenth century. And of a little later date is the main fabric of the church, its western front being adorned with two arcades and lancet-windows, and with the figures of the first and second bishops above and be low; while internally it has a series of lofty piers, with sculptured capitals surmounted by well-moulded arches, carrying what seems to be an ordinary clerestory with lancet-lights outside, though these lights are combined inside with a continuous arcade, as if the architect had taken the triforium and clerestory which most large churches possess, and had thrown them into one, lest he should sacrifice the dignity of the principal arcade below. Then there is the Lady - chapel, extending beyond the eastern end, looking bare and cold, as if the dreary taste of the eighteenth century had robbed it of its life, but substantially restored in recent years to the chaste beauty in which its fabric was erected late in the thirteenth century; for this was the work of a kinsman of the great lords of Abergavenny, Bishop de Braose, whose tomb, or rather coffin-lid, still lies within it—a fine effigy in low relief, holding his staff with a cluster of well-cut foliage for its crook, and canopied with a flat trefoil arch. Benefactors of the next age raised the walls of the aisles, inserting windows of three lights with traceried heads in the fully developed style of the decorated period, some of

which are recently filled with pictured glass of good design; and in the same decorated period, the choir was completed in its present form, and a panelled reredos painted with angels and lilies was erected behind the altar; but this having been disfigured and mutilated, is now set aside as a curiosity of the past, giving place to a modern design of three gabled panels, enriched with paintings of considerable excellence David slaying Goliath, the Magi at the Nativity, and David as the royal harperbut the whole fitting in somewhat incongruously beneath the early arch of Bishop Urban.

The latest of the ancient portions of the cathedral is its northwestern tower, built by Jasper Tudor in the closing years of the fifteenth century. It is surmounted with corner turrets and elaborate parapets, and possesses a character which renders it a fitting adjunct to the works of previous periods; though now, indeed, after its four centuries of existence, the marshy nature of the soil has loosened its foundation, and some portion of it needs rebuilding. The second tower had been of earlier date and of humbler character; and in the old days when the fabric was neglected, it had been destroyed by a tempest; but lately it has been built anew, decorated with richly sculptured ornament, and crowned with a tapering spire, so that it now surpasses the older tower as this had surpassed its predecessor.

The absence of transepts must prevent this from taking equal rank with most of the chief churches of our land; while, on the other hand, its twin towers, its chapter - house, and its Ladychapel extending beyond the choir, mark it at once as a structure worthy of its ancient dignities; while the length and grandeur of

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