FATHERS MEMOIRS OF HIS CHILD. BY BENJ. HEATH MALKIN, ESQ. M. A. F. A. S. Great loss to all that ever him did see Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me. ASTRO H EL. LONDON PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST,, RES AND ORME, PATERNOSTER ROW r, sovr COITRT, FLEET STREBS. 1806. TO THOMAS JOHNES, OF HAFOD, ESQ. M P LORD LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF CARDIGAN, C. C. C. MY BEAR FRIEND, I HAVE been influenced by se veral motives, in prefixing your name to the following pages. My pen seems destined to owe its employment, in some shape or other, to Hafod. When I first traversed your mountains, it was without the most distant thought of engaging a set of readers as the companions pr followers of my journey. The fever of authorship never preyed upon my better sense, till your magic creation in the wilds of Cardiganshire gave veat to its fury. The 11 singular combinations of beauty and gran deur, the contrast of wildness and improve ment, to be found within the circuit of your estate, first disposed me to extend my ex cursion through the remaining counties of South Wales, and to attempt a description of its picturesque scenes. Your kind offer , to facilitate the historical and antiquarian objects of my enquiry, on my second tour, furnished me with my original introduction to your domestic circle and it was princi pally to suggestions there enforced, that this volume oWes its appearance. Its first duties should therefore be paid, where they so naturally belong. You may perhaps recollect, that while I was staying with you last summer, our conversations were nearly as rambling and as various, as our rides over your new mountain-farms, or as the subject matter of these preliminary remarks seems likely to be. We were naturally carried forward, from the rugged sublimity of nature, inter spersed here with the opening promise, and Ill there with the thriving luxuriance of judi cious cultivation from the forest and the field before us, into the track of human life, implicated as it is with pleasures which blossom but for a season, and pains which are indigenous, and grow rank and wanton in the soil. On these occasions, it was impossible for me not to dwell on an event, which had drawn a deep furrow over the level of my happiness. It would have been unnatural, to have concealed the mark of an afflicting dispensation, in society so ca pable of consoling the survivor, and appre ciating the merit of the departed. In the interchange of our thoughts on this subject, the task of furnishing the public with the following facts was urged upon me, at once as a tribute to the latter, and a relief to the feelings of the former. This had been repeatedly mentioned by others but I as often declined it, at least in detail. Yet, that I might not altogether oppose the wishes of my friends, I trans mitted a short sketch of this little life, to be IV inserted in a periodical publication, and meant with that to have closed the subject on my part for ever. Though I thought to have acquitted myself of every claim by this account, there were some persons so far interested in it, as to express through the same channel a desire, to receive the original documents from my hands They represented with sufficient reason, that character of such high, yet vague preten- sions, required the sanction of some avowed authority to confirm its truth, and of some particular and as it were tangible facts, to exemplify its general justice. Still I felt a reluctance, especially at that early period, to so melancholy and ha zardous an office. I strengthened my pre vious determination by considering, how differently the world estimates the effusion which give pleasure by the family fire-side At home, they derive a mixed value from in trinsic merit, from the partiality of kindred,, and from the evanescent circumstances of local application... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.