Fourth, domesticity. For centuries the Welsh nation has been like a wax candle in a solitary room, spending its whole life in burning itself out; consuming the wick of its life, and throwing its light out on nobody—a light to itself. That was all. This long life of social and intellectual detachment has cost the nation dearly; it has cost it a larger circle of ideas to draw upon, and an earlier national maturity. Association touches the reason, the social affection, and the moral sense. As the human mind is cultivated it becomes more and more sensitive to association. China is emerging out of her long-continued lethargy in proportion as she absorbs the elements of Western civilisation. The rise and progress of Japan may be attributed to the same kind of influence. We cannot, of course, ignore the internal element-the potential capacity of the people. That the Welsh nation possesses the sources of well-being, and the attributes that make for progress, its history during the last twenty-five years clearly shows. Welsh university life is only thirty-five years old; and it may be assumed that it has not yet spoken its last word, nor uttered its last thought. The ability of a people in any given direction is not necessarily proportioned to their instruction; but instruction augments the power of ability. Instruction has to do with manhood; it sends it up many grades. Instruction brings knowledge; and knowledge is power. The value of school or university life does not lie merely in the fact that there are masters and professors who teach, but that there are scholars who teach each other,— who quicken each other's ambitions, and rub off each other's angularities. The school gives intelligence, it gives the atmosphere of intelligence and the sentiment of intelligence; but it gives more, it gives the enthusiasm that comes from association.

There is much in the coming together of divers spirits, for culture is a matter of association quite as much as a matter of intelligence. Association gives the instrument by which to resist the warpings and the bias of undue selfishness and interest. It inspires indolence with activity and enterprise; it tends to soothe, to soften, and to reconcile conflicting interests. It is not ability that the Welsh people need: there

What the nation

is plenty of this raw material in the land. needs is the associative mood-"education by collision," as Carlyle said. Not that I believe the demands of the general intellect, or the claims made by the spirit of any given age, should be permitted to completely overshadow the sacred traditions of a people, or to rob the individual of his characteristics; true education consists in a combination of both. Herein lies the secret of whatever degree of greatness or of power there may be within the reach of the Welsh nation. Its environment will always be limited; but if the Welsh nation is to be more effectual in politics, poetry, science, literature, and philosophy, it must seek a larger environment, and not only a larger, but a different environment. It is a notable fact that the average Welshman who seems to be of very little account at home, develops when he goes abroad the most extraordinary qualities of industry and organisation, especially the latter.

The tribes that reached the highest state of material development in Greece were those that were most susceptible to foreign influence. Even a species confined to itself will degenerate. Superior results in the animal world are produced by what is known as cross-breeding. Hereditary tendencies are influenced and modified by contact. Not that the English, the Scots, and other nationalities are without their defects, social and intellectual, and that association has its bad as well as its good side. Greece gave Rome her poetry and her philosophy, and taught her how to read and write; but Greece gave her also her sophistry and her moral insincerity. But the predominance of what is weak over what is strong is the exception and not the rule; otherwise, we might despair of all true progress. Milton, it is said, owed much to his acquaintance with Italy and her literary writers; and even Shakespeare, we are told, borrowed largely from early British sources, and from personal acquaintance with foreign countries. Voltaire borrowed from Shakespeare. England gave America her learning, and Germany is imparting her scientific genius to England and to the rest of the world. If Wales is to count for anything among the nations, she must adopt the best elements that are in other nations,

and add them to her own native genius. She must counterbalance her own deficiencies by an exchange of ideas, customs, and ambitions. No nation, however talented, can attain to the full measure of its power by an isolated existence.

If the Welsh want to secure a better heredity for the incoming generations, they must seek not only for higher material advantages, but seek also to improve the breed or the race. Merely to reproduce the type as it stands, is to reproduce its defects as well as its excellences. This can come through the process of intermingling of habits, ideas, and blood. Greatness comes by association. It is with nations as it is with individuals; and it is with men as with animals. Fire left to itself burns itself out. To preserve the vigour of vital forces, it is necessary to excite and restore them by submitting them to the action of other forces. There is no such thing as a pure race, a pure language, or a pure blood. If any race is deemed pure from all mixture, it is simply because we are unable to disentangle its constituent elements. As civilisation advances, the intermingling of blood and of races will become more common. As to its value, we need only point to the fact that much of the progress of England, America, and Europe is due to mixed types. Edgar Allan Poe, Whitman, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Lowell, and Longfellow are descendants of mixed families. Edison also, it is affirmed, belongs to the same class. of Ibsen there was a mixture of Scottish and Norwegian blood. The ancestors of Grieg, the great Norwegian composer, came from Scotland, the original name being Greig, a well-known name in Aberdeenshire. Victor Hugo was a man of mixed blood; so were Tennyson and Millais. History teems with examples of the fact that the renewing of blood nearly always gives the best results. The superior type ameliorates the lower. America is the supreme test in modern life. Under normal conditions, inferior types improve without degenerating the superior. This is the great central fact in the progress of humanity. The Welsh nation has lived too long on the reserve of its own intellect and blood. It has fed itself too much on its own social prejudices, and intermarried into their own virtues, defects, and vices.

In the veins

What the Welsh need, and what they must have, is the commingling with other peoples and races, the renewing of their blood by additions from the outside; a sympathetic change that will link them to other nationalities, to whom they can give the virtues that they have, and with whom they can share the virtues they have not.

OF

CHAPTER II

HISTORICAL SURVEY

F all the nationalities that are included in this work, Wales is the smallest, and geographically the most insignificant. It covers an area of 7378 square miles, its greatest length from north to south is 135 miles, and its breadth from east to west is 95 miles. At no period in its history has it been populous. Several statisticians have from time to time given us various estimates covering different periods, but no trustworthy information as regards the number of population was obtainable until 1801, when it was given as 587,000. At the time of the Conquest it appears to have been 150,000, and, in comparison with that of England and Wales, proportionately smaller than it is to-day. In the census of 1901 the population of Wales, including Monmouthshire, was given as 1,720,533, the largest apparently in its history.

According to the census of 1911, the population of Wales, including Monmouthshire, is no less than 2,032,193, which shows an increase, in the course of a decade, of 311,660. The census of 1881 shows a population of 1,360,438; the increase in thirty years has thus been 671,755. In four of the counties there have been large decreases; these are purely agricultural counties. The bulk of the increase is confined to Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire. The latter has a population fourteen times as large as that of a century ago, and, if the increase continues at the present rate, it is reasonable to expect that in a hundred years hence Glamorganshire alone will have a population of 2,000,000. It is the richest, busiest, and most enterprising county in Wales. The following table represents the returns