Welsh Journals

closing appreciation: the reader hears of Hearder's subversive sense of humour and broad commitment to the education and welfare of his under- graduates. He would no doubt have been pleased that, taken individually and as a whole, the essays in this volume provide ample material for animated discussions both in the seminar room and beyond. GARETH POPKINS Aberystwyth Romilly's Visrrs to WALES, 1827-1854. Edited by M. G. M. Morris. Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1998. Pp. xxxiv, 144, unnumbered illustrations, maps and genealogical charts. £ 18.95. The shrewd purchase by Sir Samuel Romilly, the law reformer, of a 2,000- acre estate in and around Barry led to a prolonged family connection with Wales. Joseph Romilly, Samuel's nephew and the writer of the journals reviewed here, was a beneficiary of the family influence in Glamorgan and was appointed rector of Porthkerry in 1830. Joseph Romilly (1791-1864) was an absentee parson who pursued a Cambridge career and was appointed university registrar in 1832, a position which appealed to this sociable, methodical man who reorganized the university's archive and kept a journal for most of his adult life. Romilly's enjoyment of the office was apparently clouded only by a reprimand for his frequent absences from Cambridge. These absences were explained by Romilly's fondness for travelling and visiting a wide circle of friends and relatives which he chronicled in his journals. Canon Morris has now edited the Welsh portions of Romilly's manuscript journals, which are deposited in Cambridge University Library. Joseph Romilly made ten trips to Wales between 1827 and 1854, generally staying with his Romilly and Allen cousins (all identified in the genealogical charts) in Porthkerry, Pembrokeshire and Radnorshire. Romilly was not always impressed with what he saw, particularly during his censorious early visits. Bangor Cathedral was 'indifferent'; Nash's Picton monument was 'hideous', as was Wood's refashioned Llandaff Cathedral; Brecon Priory church had been 'brutified'; Llandovery was condemned as 'a beggarly place', redeemed only by a new macadamized road; St David's was a 'miserable collection of hovels'; and so on. Romilly hated the 'abominations' of the copper works at Swansea, which he describes briefly, and couldn't be persuaded that Swansea Bay was as magnificent as the Bay of Naples. Romilly liked 'prying about', but he was not really an antiquarian with a trained eye (although his nephew, John Romilly Allen,