III.

In the family circle, the rules which regulate the Sabbath in Wales--which are almost as repressive as those of bonnie Scotland, where, by the way, Christmas-day is scarcely observed at all--are relaxed, and the aspect of the home is as bright as can be. The rooms are elaborately decorated with flowers and evergreens, holly and ivy, ferns and rare plants. In Glamorganshire, and other of the southern counties looking on the sea, roses and hawthorn-sprays may be sometimes seen in full bloom out-of-doors at Christmas. The decoration of churches is also elaborate beyond anything I have elsewhere seen. It is a sight to behold, the preparations for and the work of decorating a vast pile of ecclesiastical buildings like Llandaff Cathedral--the huge quantities of evergreens and holly, flowers, cedars, etc., which are day by day accumulated by the ladies who have the business in charge; and the slow, continual growth of forms of grace--arches, crosses, wreaths, festoons; green coverings to font, altar, pulpit, choir-stalls, pillars, reredos, and rood-screen; panels faced with scarlet cloth bearing sacred devices worked in evergreen; the very window-sills glowing with banks of colour--until all the wide spaces in chancel, nave, and transepts, are adorned.