mines of Cardiff, whose tall shafts may be seen at night before the glow of the smelting works of South Wales at a far view across the Severn. The women of the west country, like the women of Wales, love to sing in the little square chapels that lie scattered over their dales like sparks from some celestial anvils; but there is no time for that now. Christmas as it is, the mines must work at full speed if the furnaces and factories of the kingdom are to be fed.
Then we glance along the midland counties from the coast of Norfolk, with the salt spray on its face, to where, beyond the Black Country, the green mountains of Merioneth look into the blue waters of St. George's Channel. War has been here, too, and some of the memorials of it remain in the grim old castles which looked brave and formidable, perhaps, in the days when the Ironsides stood under them, or in the nights when Elizabeth and her followers went up into them by the light of torches, though they seem
