We are disposed to deal leniently with an unsuccessful rival, and inured though Aberglaslyn must now be to picturesque description, we will spare it further adjectives. There was a poor woman once in the county of Cork who was shown a dazzling array of wedding-presents. Speech first failed her, and then she said: “Mother of God! it’s like a circus.” Thus, and with such a humble reverence, do we say of Aberglaslyn Pass, that it is like a circus.
There is something at once gallant and touching about the way in which the English tourist places his hand in that of convention, and is led by her, uncomplaining, through very arid places. This elderly generalisation does not, by so much as a backward glance, include Aberglaslyn, with its cliffs and fir-trees, and mountain-sides flushed with blossoming heather; it is for the moment concentrated upon the grave of Gelert, its railings and
little stone pillars, erected possibly by the Town Commissioners to supply a want long felt by tourists of an object for a short walk. The selectors of the site have been carried away by a sense of fitness probably adhering since the days when they buried their pet rabbits in the back-garden, and, with guileless convention, they have erected the tomb of Gelert under a tree, a healthy one in the prime of life, standing discreetly and yet conveniently in a roadside field. The sentiment of the back-garden has been added at a touch by the railing, and the result suffices to the tourist. Forth to it, in duteous pilgrimage, go the brides and bridegrooms, seeking in the long vague forenoons of holiday for some occupation that shall savour of the compulsory, and at all events make them glad to get home again for luncheon. The mile of road between Gelert’s grave and his village was punctuated with the newly married; and, even at the risk of supporting another conventionality, it must be recorded that the distance that separated each bride from her groom was noticeable, and seemed to indicate a desire to economise conversation.
Do the brides and bridegrooms support the venerable fraud who sits outside the Goat Hotel in full Welsh costume, selling rag-doll replicas of herself? It would seem so, for she apparently prospers, and we cannot believe that the hotel-keepers, who form the balance of the population, can buy many rag dolls.