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E have at length quitted Glamorgan

WE shire, and parted with our friends, the

Th-m-s's, circumstances which we cannot revert to without feeling considerable regret. No district, perhaps, in the three kingdoms exhibits such a variety in its scenery, as this

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county; we have all the beauties of nature and all the charms of art, the richness of a fertile well-peopled valley, the wildness of rocks, the thundering of cascades, the elegances of mo dern architecture, and the august remains of ancient abbeys and castles. In my last, I attempted some description of the monuments of former art, which, having survived the injuries of time, still adorn the southern part of Glamorganshire. I have now to conduct you to its northern division, to scenes of a different, and, perhaps, of a more impressive kind, where untamed nature

"Reigns supreme,

" 'Mid dreary solitude and sombrous shade.
"In awful majesty, she here displays
"Her wonder-working energy to man."*

The appearance of Neath, from whence I last addressed you, does not prepossess the traveller much in its favour. It is seated at the

* Glamorganshire, exclusive of its scenery, is remarkable on other accounts. The prodigious increase of its population, and the growing consideration of its sea-ports, arise from its mineral and metal trade, which every year increases beyond calculation. This county and Monmouthshire are become the centre of the iron-trade of the whole kingdom; Shropshire being in a great measure exhausted, and Staffordshire considerably fallen off. Iron, copper, lead, lapis calaminaris, brass, and tin-plates, are either found or manufactured in Glamorganshire.

bottom of a valley, and on the banks of the

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river of the same name; the streets are irregular and narrow, and the houses, with very few exceptions, ill-built and incommodious. Its population may be estimated at between two and three thousand. The small ruins of its old castle, built, probably, by Richard de Greenfield, Fitz-hamon's companion, attracted our notice; from the circumstance of one narrow piece of wall, which rises to a great height, and being unsupported by other parts of the building, threatens to crush the surrounding cottages on the first hurricane that shall happen. We also paid a visit to the remains of its abbey, situated about a mile to the southward of the town. This religious house was founded in the time of Richard de Greenfield, who united with Constance his wife in giving certain lands and tithes, around Neath, to the abbot and convent of Savigny in France; the brethren accordingly erected a spacious monastery on the spot, and dedicated it to the Holy Trinity, but do not appear to have exercised any power over its members. It shared the fate of similar institutions at the Reformation, and was then valued at one hundred and fifty pounds

The ruins are of prodigious ex

per annum.* tent, but being in the immediate neighbour hood of the metal works, and inhabited by the squalid families of the workmen employed there, they do not produce the pleasing emotions that religious remains, under different circumstances, so naturally and generally inspire. We easily traced the ichnography of the old church, which was of elegant architecture and an immense size. A vulgar tradition respecting the latter circumstance still exists in the neighbourhood, that seven parsons could preach in different parts of it at one time, without being heard by each other; a proof,, if it be a fact, that these worthy pastors had neither the lungs nor energy of some of our modern pulpit-orators.

We next visited the iron and copper works, manufactories that promise to render Neath, at" no distant period, a very different town in point of appearance, to what it is at present. Two immense blast furnaces, belonging to Messrs. Fox and Co. are constantly at work, each of them producing upwards of thirty tons of pig

* Tanner, Not. Mon. 714.

iron every week... They are blown by iron bellows, worked by a double engine,* constructed on the plan of Messrs. Boulton and Watts, with a steam cylinder forty inches in diameter. A foundery also, belonging to the same firm, attracted our attention; as well as another blast furnace, and a foundery, the property of Messrs. Raby and Co.; two considerable copper-works, the one belonging to Messrs. Roe and Co. of Macclesfield, the other to the MinesRoyal Company; and a noble chemical work, the property of Messrs. Bewick and Horne, in which are manufactured sugar of lead, vitriol, and the best and purest allum in the kingdom. In addition to these sources of wealth, Neath has a most productive colliery in its immediate neighbourhood, which gives an incalculable advantage to all its manufactories; as well as a canal running twelve miles up its beautiful valley, and conducting to its port all the product of the different mines and manufactories that enrich this extensive cwm.

Having received very minute instructions from our obliging landlord, our party proceeded

* A double engine is one in which the steam acts under, as well as above the piston.

These at present are at a stand.

H

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