Time. If I had not thought of his wearing it hereafter, I should have
been content with a much inferior one. No. 39,620.


September 20th.--I went back to Rhyl last Friday in the steamer. We
arrived at the landing-place at nearly four o'clock, having started at
twelve, and I walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The
children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat some time in our
parlor before anybody came. The next morning I made an excursion in the
omnibus as far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, Denbigh,
and reaching Ruthin at one o'clock. All these are very ancient places.
St. Asaph has a cathedral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is
a very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its square
battlemented tower has a very fine appearance, crowning the clump of
village houses on the hill-top, as you approach from Rhyddlan. The
ascent of the hill is very steep; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin,--the
steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. Denbigh is a place of
still more antique aspect than St. Asaph; it looks, I think, even older
than Chester, with its gabled houses, many of their windows opening on
hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with an open porch beneath.
The castle makes an admirably ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the
village. I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, but as it
began to rain just then, I concluded to get into the omnibus and go to
Ruthin. There was another steep ascent from the commencement of the long
street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which is of nearly
triangular shape, and an exceedingly old-looking place. Houses of stone
or plastered brick; one or two with timber frames; the roofs of an uneven
line, and bulging out or sinking in; the slates moss-grown. Some of them
have two peaks and even three in a row, fronting on the streets, and
there is a stone market-house with a table of regulations. In this