The Land of Morgan

Of tlie forty shires of England there are certainly not a score of which good histories have been written, and not above five or six and twenty of which there are any tolerable histories at all.Even Yorkshire, so rich in antiquities of every kind, ethnological, ethnographical, architectural, and genealogical; in prse-historic tumuli; in proper names given by the Briton, the Roman, and the Northman ; in march dykes •; Roman and other encampments ; military roads and moated mounds; in the ruins of glorious abbeys and mighty castles ; in its noble cathedral and grand parish churches, upon two of which the brevet rank of cathedral has been imposed ; in its venerable and splendid country seats, and in its ancient and often historic families: even Yorkshire, so rich in all these varied and tempting subjects, and rich too in material wealth, has yet met with no historian.Divisions of the county, as Richmondshire and Hallamsliire, Doncaster and Sheffield, are the subjects of works quite of the first class, but neither the great Shire, nor even one of its Ridings, has been placed upon record.If such be the case in wealthy and cultivated England, it is no great shame in Wales to be, as regards county histories, in a still more unprovided condition, as indeed the Principality must be admitted to be.There is but one history, Jones's " Brecknock," of any Welsh county, at all worthy of the name, for assuredly neither Fenton's " Pembrokeshire" nor Meyrick's " Cardigan" merit that title.And yet, as is abundantly shewn in the volumes of the '•'Archseologia Cambrensis," and in the copious though incidental notices of Wales in Eyton's excellent " History of Early Shropshire," it is not the material that

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