194 SCHOOL OF MINES AND MUSEUM CHAP, vi 



LONDON, \Wi November 1851. 



MY DEAR RAMSAY Yours of yesterday I have just received in 

 time to say, may you be as happy as I wish you, and may your 

 intended wife value your right sterling honest self as I do. If she 

 does this last, you will be sure of the first. May God prosper you 

 in all ways. Your ever sincere H. T. DE LA BECHE. 



Ramsay's yearning for a quiet home, with a con- 

 genial spirit upon whom he could pour out the full 

 flow of his affectionate nature, was now about to be 

 realised at last. A quotation from his letter to Mrs. 

 Cookman, one of the Dolaucothi family, will best 

 describe how he came to make his choice, and what 

 he himself thought of it : 



' From the first setting of my foot in Wales I was 

 a doomed man. I was fated not to escape from it 

 free. Only think of it ! I was done for in the last 

 remaining corner of Wales, where my geological work 

 was to be done, and just about the completion of that 

 work, too. It was in the far north-west corner of 

 Anglesey that I tumbled in head over heels, and was 

 enchained by a maid of Cymru, as thoroughly Welsh 

 as you are, for she speaks, reads, and readily trans- 

 lates Welsh, and, like all Welsh folk, is desperately 

 fond of her country and people. ... I made their 

 acquaintance accidentally when on a visit to Mr. and 

 Mrs. Fitzgerald of Mapperton (Somersetshire) at 

 Beaumaris. Mrs. Williams asked me to call if I 

 came their way, which I did. I was staying at a bit 

 of a public-house some miles off. Being hospitable 

 folk, they asked me to leave these comfortless quarters 

 and stay with them. I did so ; have been back sundry 

 times since, and behold the result ! a result that con- 

 siderably surprised both the young lady and myself, 

 but principally the former, for, as is befitting in such 



