Some articles said to be relics of Henry V. are preserved here: the bed in which he was born, the cradle in which he was rocked, and the armour in which he fought at Agincourt. There is also a carved oak chimney-piece from Raglan Castle.
Soon the hills approach nearer, and, covered with rich foliage, sweep down more suddenly towards the river. On the right bank is Penalt church, standing on a wooded eminence; and behind it, an extensive common distinguished for a superstitious custom, derived, as is supposed, from the days of the druids. When a funeral passed that way, the cortege stopped at an oak tree, and placed the corpse on a stone seat at its foot. The company than sang a psalm, and resumed their procession. It may be remarked that wherever an old oak tree is found in this part of the country, in an insulated or otherwise remarkable situation, there is sure to be connected with it some religious tradition, or some observance whose origin is lost in antiquity. The churches are usually an interesting feature in the landscape, for it would seem as if their founders had sought purposely out for them solitary places, by the banks of rivers or in the midst of groves or fields. In general they are exceedingly simple in appearance, many having the marks of great antiquity, and almost all being whitewashed from top to bottom. An antiquary has ingeniously accounted for this peculiarity, by the custom the Normans had of constructing even large buildings of pebbles and rag-stone, which obliged them to cover the inequalities, outside and inside, by a coat of lime and sand. However this may be, the effect is not unpleasing; more especially when the rural temple, as is frequently the case, is shaped like a barn, and without a belfry. Such churches, more especially in the mountainous districts, still present the rounded arches, and other peculiarities, which denote that their rude walls were raised by our Saxon ancestors, if not by the ancient Britons themselves.
We find the white walls, so common in Wales, alluded to as a poetical circumstance by one of the bards of the fourteenth century, in a piece of considerable beauty; and in the succeeding paragraph there is an allusion to another Welsh custom, of more classical authority, that of strewing the graves of the dead with flowers. The poem is an invocation to summer, to shed its blessings over the country of Gwent. The following is the paragraph referred to, with the second allusion, terminating the ode by an abrupt and pathetic transition.