Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/16

 singular combinations of beauty and grandeur, the contrast of wildness and improvement, to be found within the circuit of your estate, first disposed me to extend my excursion through the remaining counties of South Wales, and to attempt a description of its picturesque scenes. Your kind offer to facilitate the historical and antiquarian objects of my enquiry, on my second tour, furnished me with my original introduction to your domestic circle: and it was principally to suggestions there enforced, that this volume owes its appearance. Its first duties should therefore be paid, where they so naturally belong.

You may perhaps recollect, that while I was staying with you last summer, our conversations were nearly as rambling and as various, as our rides over your new mountain-farms, or as the subject matter of these preliminary remarks seems likely to be. We were naturally carried forward, from the rugged sublimity of nature, interspersed here with the opening promise, and