Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/214

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CHAP. XII.

THE MOUNTAIN INN.

Ὡς ἡδὺ τῷ μισοῦντι τοὺς φαύλους τρόπους
Ερημία.

How sweet to minds that love not sordid ways
Is solitude!
Menander.

The Captain wandered despondingly up and down hill for several days, passing many hours of each in sitting on rocks; making, almost mechanically, sketches of waterfalls, and mountain pools; taking care, nevertheless, to be always before night-fall in a comfortable inn, where, being a temperate man, he wiled away the evening with making a bottle of sherry into negus. His rambles brought him at length into the interior of Merionethshire, the land of all that is beau-