12 LLANDDWYN 



slowly. Inert, reserved, unapproachable, unin- 

 telligible, he is to a large extent to be described 

 in negatives. Unintelligible, I find him, because 

 there appears in many of his ways a strange incon- 

 sequence. Thus, as I sat there watching the birds; 

 a moment before all still white statues on the dark 

 background of leaves, they fell of a sudden into 

 unaccountable excitement, lifting their huge wings, 

 and uttering continuously sounds more like the 

 jarring of worn-out machinery than cries issuing 

 from living throats. Again a moment, and the 

 white figures composed themselves, and all was 

 once more statuesque repose. 



Yet, be it never so ungainly, the figure of the 

 Heron, by mere or marsh or sea, is the last touch 

 and emphasis of solitude. Without it, or some such 

 point of convergence, the scene remains but un- 

 possessed expanse ; with it, that solitary point of 

 life, silent and motionless, focusses and transmits the 

 spirit of the scene, and we have sense of it through 

 him. 



Passing through Menai, we bore westward along 

 the Holyhead road, though Llanfair-Pwllgwyngyll 

 (vulgo Llanfair-P. G.), Gaerwen, and on to Holland 

 Arms. The road a piece of Telford's work from 

 Menai onwards has little interest other than such as 

 attaches to a broad highway sweeping straight ahead, 

 often with miles of it in view, across the island, and 

 rising and falling in broad curves as it crosses a 

 succession of low ridges and hollows, all having a 

 north-east and south-west trend, with a general dip 

 of the land southwards. 



This north-east and south-west trend is the 



