16 
VISIT TO CHIRK. 
landscapes by Wilson, the father of the English landscape 
school, as he is called, attracted especial attention. A 
curious painting of Orpheus charming the brutes was 
particularly droll. One of the chief of his charmed listeners 
was a full-grown unicorn, which would not have disgraced any 
Boyal arms with which he might have been connected, while 
the lion had a singularly human face, with an aquiline nose. 
Most of the furniture of the show rooms of the castle was 
very fine, and in good condition. In one of the rooms was 
a magnificent cabinet or prie-Dieu, presented by Charles II. 
to Sir Bobert Myddelton. At the Bestoration the King 
offered him a peerage, which he declined, upon which the 
King said, “ Then take this cabinet home with you as a 
memorial of my regard.” The cabinet is made of ebony, and 
contains twenty-five or thirty panels, in every one of which 
is an exquisite painting by Bubens. They are upon copper. 
Those on the outside are classical, while those within are 
scriptural subjects. On a large flap inside, about twenty 
inches by ten, is an exquisitely painted representation of 
Christ blessing little children, which contains many figures. 
The interior of the cabinet has many drawers, and is veneered 
throughout with tortoiseshell and choice woods. The frames 
and fittings of the pictures are all of richly chased silver, and 
it is estimated to be of the value of at least T10,000. 
Charles I. slept in the castle in the year 1645, and the bed¬ 
room he occupied was shown, but the bed was not as it was 
then in use. 
The painting which was the object of the greatest curiosity 
is a landscape and a marine view combined. It was painted 
by a foreign artist, who was commissioned to paint the 
Waterfall of Pistyll Bhaiadr, in Montgomeryshire. The 
Myddelton for whom it was painted suggested that the 
introduction of some sheep would materially improve the 
picture, but in his Welsh pronunciation he said he wanted 
some sheeps in it. The artist accordingly altered the picture, 
and made the water as falling into the sea, on which he 
painted some ships lying at anchor close to the rocks. Now, 
considering that the Pistyll Bhaiadr is more than thirty miles 
from the sea in any direct line, the picture is as curious an 
anomaly as was ever perpetrated on canvas. A descent into 
the dungeon was made by most of the visitors. It was a 
gloomy chamber about thirty feet below the surface, the only 
air or light obtainable being through an aperture a few inches 
square at the top of a shaft in one of the walls of the room. 
A more horrid place for a human being to exist in can 
scarcely be conceived. Watt's dyke passes through the castle 
