<g>Carmarthenshire</g>.
“Let them pass--
I cried: the world and its mysterious doom
Is not so much more glorious than it was,
That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false and fragile glass,
As the old faced--phantoms ever new
Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;
_We_ have but thrown--as some before us threw--
Our shadows on it as it passed away.
But mark how chained to the triumphal <g>Cross</g>
Were the great figures of an elder day!”
<g>This Castle</g>--one of the oldest in Wales--crowns a bold eminence
projecting into the bay of Carmarthen, and defends the entrance of the
river Towy, which falls into the sea at this point. It is a military
fortress of great strength and antiquity, but by whom founded--whether
by Roman or Briton--or to what precise era it belongs, are questions
which have never been satisfactorily answered. Yet the very obscurity
which hangs upon it imparts to its dilapidated walls, mouldering
turrets, and grass-covered courts, an interest which is seldom or never
felt in the survey of those castellated ruins which make a prominent
figure in the pages of history. All that has yet been advanced by
archæologists regarding the founder of Llanstephan, is only based on
plausible conjecture. It is not improbable, however, that the present
castle occupies the position of a Roman fort; for it is not to be
supposed that, during their occupation of the Silurian territory, a
situation presenting so many natural advantages, and commanding the
embouchure of the Towy, would be neglected by a people so prone to
conquest, and so circumspect in all the means that could secure and
fortify them in their new possessions. Nor were the Normans--who were
equally observant and expert in the distribution of their military
posts--likely to lose sight of the advantages which a castle on this
promontory would afford in facilitating their operations, and widening
their encroachments beyond the Welsh frontier; and in the citadel which
now covers the steep, we have ample
[Illustration: _Kidwelly Castle._