Uppingham by the Sea: A Narrative of the Year at Borth

ta'en?" said t

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g of T

me empty-handed, but that one of his men found, entangled in the poles of the weir, a coracle, and a fair child in it. This was none other than he who was to be the father of Cymry minstrelsy, and whom then and there his rescuers named Taliesin, which means Radiant Brow. His mother, Ceridwen, seeking to be rid of

*

old stage. Thirteen centuries and a half after the finding of Taliesin, the same shore

-line with half a mile of straggling cottages; but the eye is caught at once by a massive building of white stone, standing at the head of the long street, and forming a landmark in the plain. This building is the Cambrian Hotel, reared on a scale that would sugge

masters-were seen mounting the steps of the porch, it was a sight to make the villagers wonder by what chance so many guests came to knock at the door in that dead season. Had

d been only on a small and tentative scale, it was thought that the school, if secure on its own premises, might safely be recalled, in spite of remaining deficiencies outside those limits. But, tua res agitur-the term began with three weeks of watchful quiet, and then the blow fell again. A boy sickened of the same fever; then, after an interval of suspense, two or th

e dismissed again. How many would return to a site twice declared untenable? But neither could it be kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably, throug

ad the situation been less acute, was suddenly started in common talk and warmly entertained. Why should we not anticipate calamity by flight? Before the school melte

xecution. On Tuesday, March 7th, a notice was issued to parents and guardians that the school would break up that day week for a premature Easter holiday, and at the

notice-was no doubt a novel one. But the resolve, if rapidly formed and daring, was none the less deliberate and sane. Its authors must not be charged either with panic or a passion for adventure. All the data of a judgment were in view, and de

t assignable limit, landless and homeless men, and the Headmaster almost as much disburdened of his titular realm as if he were a bishop in partibus or the chief of a nomad caravan. It was a sharp

nd, swell billow

p, and all is

sing was not to arrange a number of independent reading-parties in scattered country retreats. Such a plan would hardly have been practicable with a system in which, as in our case, the division of the school for teaching purposes has no reference to the division into boarding-houses. It was proposed to pluck up the school by the roots and transplant it bodily to strange soil; to take with us the entire body of masters, with, probably, their families, and every boy who was ready to follow; to provide teaching for th