conceit of the merits of it, and had firmly persuaded them it was highly conducive to their future happiness to be thus interred."

A singular instance of fecundity is recorded on a plain stone: "Here lyeth the body of Nieh. Hookes, of Conway, gent. who was the forty-first child of his father, William H. Esq. by Alice his wife; and the Afather of twenty-seven children: who died the 20th of March, 1637."

In Castle-street is a very old house, having a singular window, with several coats of arms of the Stanley family; one an eagle pouncing a child; it is called the college, and inhabited by a few poor families; it might perhaps have been a school, endowed out of the abbey lands at the dissolution of the house. Near the market-place is a very large building called Plas Mawr, or the great mansion, built by Robert W Tynne, Esq. of Guedir, 1585;* the Greek inscription over the gateway Avex, ATEX, and the letters J. H. S. X. P. S. in front of the building, lead me to conjecture, that it was a house crected for charitable purposes; the inscription calls upon the reader to support the institution, or at least to abstain from any sacrilegious alienations. The initials, which may be read, Jesus hominum salvator Christiani populi salus, favours the idea that it was an hospital for the reception of the infirm, as well as the indigent. Within are numbers of rude stuccoed arms of the patrons;

* The arms of England over the door indicate that it was erected under the royal patronage.

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and swans, owls, ostriches, crows, and bears with ragged staves, the supporters of the arms of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, adorn the walls and ceilings.

Prior to the Reformation, the poor depended upon the monasteries and the alms of the religious for their support; after the dissolution, in Henry the 8th's time this support being removed, many statutes were passed and regulations adopted for the relief of the distressed part of the community; public hospitals, as St. Bartholomew's, &c. were erected in London and other places; these having been soon found inadequate to the relief required, proper laws were enacted and new appropriations made: in Elizabeth's reign these laws were revised, a new plan was suggested, that of a general parochial rate adopted, and the maintenance of the poor began to wear the appearance of a system.

This building, therefore, might probably have been one of those built by subscription for the same purpose as that of St. Bartholomew's in London; it is at present occupied by a few families, who, we were informed, paid rent for their miserable accommodations.

The poor are more numerous and more wretched in their circumstances here than in any part of North Wales; the want of employment daily increases their number and adds to their distress; there is no kind of manufactory and little maritime trade; we found many of these poor creatures on the beach,* gather

*On the shore grows the CHENOPODIUM MARITIMUM, GERANIUM MARITIMUM: and, at a small distance, the delicate LATHYRUS SILVESTRIS, and L. NAPELLUS exhibited their beautiful crimson flowers.

ing the different species of fuci, commonly called seawreck, thrown up by the tide, or growing upon the breakers; the wreck vegetates and clings about the · stones of the rocky beach till it grows to maturity, which it does every second, or at furthest every third, year, when it is gathered for the sake of the ashes. This wreck they place in a kind of square fire-places, made on the sand, and burn to a state of liquid,. which being stirred with an iron rod, dries into a cake, and when cool appears like cinders, and is called barilla, or impure fossil alkali; in this state it is sold to the manufacturers of soap and glass.* It has, of late, become a great article of export; the expence of gathering, burning, &c. is about 11. 11s. 6d. per ton, and the price for which it is sold from 31. to 51. per ton, according as it is more or less freed from sand and gravel. This, under proper encouragement, might be advantageous to the poor of the neighbourhood; but, at present, the necessitous Kelper, obliged to sell the produce of the day to procure sustenance for himself and family, cannot avail himself of the advantage of a proper market; this the purchasers know, and the price they proffer is so small as hardly to be a proper equivalent for the necessary labour; the industrious only, therefore, will engage in this

It is a very curious fact, that the ashes of all plants, growing at a distance from salt water, afford the vegetable alkali or potash; while such as grow near the sea, or on the borders of salt lakes, afford the fossil alkali or soda; if, however, these same plants be cultivated in the interior of the country they produce potash only.Vid. Jacquim. Chym.

laborious undertaking, and to them necessity alone can be the incentive to industry.

Though the river is one mile over when the tide. flows, at ebb it is not more than fifty yards, nor more than eight feet deep; spring tides rise from fourteen to eighteen feet, so that vessels of three and four hundred tons may ride close to the town; the port, though well sheltered, is not safe in its entrance, owing to the shifting sand banks: its present trade is very inconsiderable: slates, copper from the Llandudno mines, lead and calamine from the mines between this place and Llanrwst, and potatoes, constitute its principal exports; the imports are still more inconsiderable.

A ferry to the opposite shore, once considered as royal property, now belongs to the Mostyn family.

Conway, being a great thoroughfare to and from Ireland, enables it to support three or four good inns, but when the road, now making through the Ogwyn mountains shall produce a saving of ten miles in the distance from Llanrwst to Bangor, this advantage will cease. We put up at the Bull's Head, and had the fair damsels to wait upon us mentioned by a former tourist. (Vid. Walk in Wales.)

"Ther is, by Conway, on the hither side of Conway water, an arme like a peninsula caulled Gogarth leying against Prestholme, and ther be the ruines of a place of the Bishops of Bangor." Leland.

This rocky peninsula, a neck of land about eight miles long and three broad, stretches out in a northwesterly direction, forming a horn of the bay of

Beaumaris, and shelters the harbour of Conway. The parish of Llandudno extends about four miles, in which is the promontory or cape, called the Great Ormeshead; this was formerly an island. Leland says, "This Commote (i. e. Credine) partely be Conway ryver, partely by the Se, is yn a maner as insulatid, and one way owte of Denbigh land; the way is over a made causey, over a marsch often overflowen." (Vol. V. p. 49.) There are persons still living in the neighbourhood, who say they can remember when the present marsh,which forms the communication, was usually washed over by high tides; the whole is chiefly composed of schistose and cal

careous strata.

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Passing the shell of a large house, belonging to the Mostyns, a few years since, gutted by fire, at a small distance stands Bodscallen, a seat of Sir Thomas Mostyn the situation is commanding, and the house embosomed in venerable woods. It is a place of great antiquity, being mentioned in the records of Caernarvon, and from the ruins of a castelet near the present house, appears to have been a place of residence at a very remote period.

About a mile further is Gloddaeth, another fine seat of Sir Thomas's, on the slope of a very extensive lime-stone hill, now covered with fine modern plantations, and the plain beneath planted with foresttrees; while the walks on the declivity are directed by the flexure of the hill, those on the plain are straight, diverging from a centre, in which is placed a statue of Minerva. If we take into the account the