My dear young friend and god-daughter adds, “I was very much impressed by the charge with which my dear father concluded, and, that I might be the better able to fulfil it, I wrote down the whole relation when I returned home, of which the above is a copy.”
I very gladly comply with a hope expressed by Mr. Mortimer’s eldest daughter that I will insert in the memoir of her dear father, a letter addressed to her by him when she was about ten years of age; and, as it was written during his residence at Madeley, I insert it here before we take leave of that place:—
“We returned to Madeley on the evening of last Thursday week; and I am thankful to state that we have all of us received considerable benefit from our journey. Your brothers and sisters seemed to enjoy themselves exceedingly. The latter part of the time we were joined by your uncle, who spent about eight days with us; and having hired a car for that time capable of holding eight or nine persons, we were enabled to see all that was worth seeing in the neighbourhood. We often wished that you and C— had been with us in our excursions; but more particularly while we were going over the castle of Aberconway, for it struck us as conveying one of the most perfect ideas of both the extent and uses of a castle of any we could recollect to have seen. The town also is surrounded by a strong and turretted wall, and gives a good notion of a walled city, such as we read of as connected with former times.
“We greatly prefer Glan y don to Barmouth. It is about six miles from Abergeley, in Denbighshire, North Wales. It is situated in a delightful recess termed Llandrillo Bay, and the scenery all around is picturesque in the extreme. Such a pleasing combination of the sublime and beautiful I have seldom seen. The sea-shore, however, after all, presented us with the chief attractions. I collected and fixed the names of many of our English shells, and that also in a state far more perfect than before. I began also a collection of marine plants. These I shall have pleasure in showing to you when you return home. You will be surprised, perhaps, when I tell you that they amount to upwards of sixty different sorts, and these are exceedingly few in comparison of those I should have met with had we been there a longer time, or had we waited for the equinoctial winds, which, perhaps you know, bring the greatest quantity of marine substances to the shore, tearing them from the rocks to which they adhere and grow.