Cymry scarcely cared to covet, and would perhaps have pushed their multitudes still farther westward had they not found a hardy race before them, embattled by a line of mountains and hedged in by the sea. While they were engaged in internecine warfare for extended rule, Wales was keeping watch and ward over its own rights, interesting itself in the establishment and maintenance of law and order, the encouragement of literature, music, &c., and held itself in free independence. Its inhabitants were not cooped up as in a pen in the narrow district they inhabited-that was their chosen home, and there they set up their "Ebenezer," and fixed their political and domestic institutions. So far we have succeeded, we hope, in giving a "new reading" to one of the loose assertions of history, and having shown the essential antiquity and independence of the Welsh, we may assert, without fear, that an ancient and independent people, whose language, customs, and literature have held their place upon the same soil for so long a time, can scarcely be destitute of a value almost unspeakable, for historic purposes in general, but for the purposes of English history in particular, as giving in some part the evidence of spectators, or of contemporary writers, while they themselves had none at all. The evidence of a fact may either be internal or external. To different men these different kinds of evidence do not bring the same conviction. One man gives greater attention to outward manifestation; another seeks his chief proof from inward consciousness, or something under the surface. Whatever species of evidence is to be inquired into, different judgments will be passed according as the party judging is influenced by external or internal evidence. The facts produced in evidence, combined with other facts of a like kind already catalogued among the acquisitions of the mind, produced conviction, or an impression of likelihood on the mind; or, contrariwise, they do not meet with a corresponding course of thought or knowledge, and they are effectless. The best evidence is that which is formed by the concurrence of both-when the external or mani

fest, and historical or actual, agrees with the internal, the under surface, the theoretical, and the implied. The evidence which we have given in the foregoing paragraph, does, we believe, fulfil the main conditions of this mode of judgment; for we apprehend that we have shown that the facts of history and language coincide with the deductions made by our suppositions, and they have been found at one. We cannot doubt, therefore, the antiquity of the people and the language of Wales; neither the advantageousness of a knowledge of these facts, and others implied in them; and consequently the advantageousness generally of a knowledge of the Welsh language, not to Englishmen only, but to all investigators into historic phenomena, the characteristics of languages, and the illustration the early languages of mankind gives of the customs, manners, and mode of life, and status in civilization, of those who used the words which constitute its elements. Besides, there must be in that literature so much that would show the kind of thinking predominant in those early times, and those primitive stages of society, that the interest must be awakened, and attention sustained, by the glow of morning light which suffuses their pages.

We must pass on to an argument of a different nature, viz., that which proves, from the external facts of geographical nomenclature, and internal facts of the Welsh language, the indisputable antiquity of that tongue.

The names of places and natural objects, as they are found to be always significant, and little liable to radical change, are generally regarded as the surest evidence we can have regarding the language spoken in any country at the time the names were given. The oldest geographical nomenclature of Britain is, by universal consent, held to be Celtic; and the late Rev. Richard Garnett, in his papers in the "Proceedings of the Philological Society," maintains that the earliest and least corrupted names in South Britain belong to the Cambrian tongue. We have not been able to gain access to these papers at the time and in the place we write, and we have been

compelled therefore to throw together hastily, from the resources within our present immediate reach, a few evidences of this fact, which will be found in Appendix No. I.

These geographical names, almost chance-gleaned in an hour's thought, seem to us to prove incontestably that a Celtic population imposed these names, and that as the Welsh form of Celtic is the most ancient in Europe, they prove the early occupation of the country by them and their co-geners. The Welsh, however, of all these Celts, have most religiously and enthusiastically held by their mother speech, and within the narrow limits of the domain they chose as their especial home, have preserved at once their independence and their literature. Without asserting, then, that the Cymraeg is the original derivative speech from which the English sprung, it must be admitted that it is the only surviving member of its family in Britain which has maintained its integrity, and has refused the enervating alliance of other and more modern outgrowths of the human mind and change. As an aid in the unravellment of etymological and historical details, the study of the Welsh language could not fail to be advantageous to an Englishman.

Let us here take one or two corroborative examples only e. g., in the following lines of Thomson's Seasons, there are a few Cambrian names, viz. :

"Amid Caernarvon's mountains rages loud
The re-percussive roar; with mighty crash
Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks
Of Penmaenmawr heaped hideous to the sky,
Tumble the smitten cliffs, and Snowdon's peak
Dissolving, instant yields his wintery load."

Summer, line 1161.

But the exquisite beauty and appropriateness of the whole can scarcely be felt unless the picturesque elements of these topographical names be known. But let us once learn that Caernarvon signifies the fort (Caer) opposite (erbyn) Vonn, the island of Anglesea; that Penmaenmawr means (Pen) the mountain of vast (mawr) stones

(maen); and that Snowdon is the snow-hill (dinas), there is a new interest attached, and a new beauty realized, in the power and accuracy with which the poet repaints to the English ear and eye what the original Welsh words already expressed. So,

Pen-y-gwyn, in Yorkshire-the mountain of winds. Craig-y-pistyll, in Merioneth-the waterfall rock. Mynyddmoel, in Merioneth-the bald mountain. Eglwysfair, in Caermarthenshire--the church of St.

Mary.

Dolgelley, in Merionethshire-the vale of the hazel

grove.

Trefycoed, in Cardiganshire--the town in the wood. An examination of the Appendix will farther show the excellent and pure light which a knowledge of the Cymraeg would throw upon the topography, not of Wales only, but of the whole of Britain, and the many suggestive associations it would be able to recall to our thoughts when the name and its signification leaped at once into mind, and gave a double charm to each word.

It is not in names relative to places only that a knowledge of the Cambrian language would add interest and expressiveness. Many of our most common words are the early vocables which the Welsh brought with them from the far East, from which they, as all other races, erstwhile migrated.

Their exceeding commonness may have prevented us from feeling their full force, or value; but were we to know their primitive power, we should then find that those pleasing home words, through which we so often transfuse our affections, were the gift of an olden time, and bore with them the balm of the air of centuries. We may name at hazard a dozen or two in illustration. Mam (mamma), tad (father, daddy), brawd (brother), gafr (a goat-hence our gaffer, an old grey-bearded man), gŵydd (a goose), glyn (glen), llyn (linn), pwll (pool), du (dusk), gwan (weak, wan), canwyll (candle), ysgol (school), fynnel (an air-hole, a funnel), cic (the foot, a tick), gartus (a garter), gweddu (to join, to wed), ystrad

(strulch), &c., basgawd (a basket), neidr (adder), bachgen (a bachelor), rhuddgoch (ruddy), cawl (cole, kale), cloch (clock).

As much has now been quoted as may serve to show the truth of the statements made above; but full and convincing proof of the very large proportion with which Welsh has impregnated the English language, in the shape of the primitive elements of speech, will be found in Appendix No. II. It will be sufficiently obvious, from an examination thereof, that the old British tongue may more justly claim to be the fountain source of many of the more common words of the present English language than the Saxon; at the same time that it may be admitted that they were indeed derived thence, as being the family who came over from the North of Europe, and occupied the lands most widely; while yet the comers from the South of Europe must have the eldest and least changed forms of the words which the races brought from the East-home they left. The acknowledged greater affinity of Welsh than Saxon to the Oriental Saxon, may be taken as proof of this statement, of which the following are a few illustrations, culled from various sources, viz.:

But the advantage to Englishmen in learning Welsh is not measurable by the amount of derivations which any essayist may be able to point out, or the delight of knowing one of the earliest tongues which have been spoken in his native land and ours. There are others of which we must yet speak, and to a consideration of which we must now pass.

It is the entrance gate to a literature in which there