This has given occasion to some witty verses by an old Welsh judge, Mr. Leycester, and I venture to quote a few of them, though they have already been enshrined in that most delightful of all handbooks, The Gossiping Guide.
“It has truly been said, as we all must deplore,
That Grenville and Pitt have made peers by the score;
But now, ’tis asserted, unless I have blundered,
There’s a man who makes peeresses here by the hundred.
By the stroke of a hammer, without the King’s aid,
A Lady, or Countess, or Duchess is made.
And where’er they are seen, in a palace or shop,
Their rank they preserve, they are still at the top.
This Countess or Lady, though crowds may be present,
Submits to be dressed by the hands of a peasant,
And you’ll see, when Her Grace is but once in his clutches,
With how little respect he will handle a Duchess.”
An interesting example has been observed in the quarries of the direction in which a seismic wave passes. The slates are arranged in a long series. When a shock of earthquake comes it has been noticed that the slates click, click, click in succession, showing the course taken by the vibration of the earth, from east to west or from north to south.
The quarry presents a busy scene. A horn gives the signal for the blasting. When it sounds, at once the workmen disappear under sheds, till the explosion is over with its consequent rush and rattle of débris.
BETHESDA
At Penrhyn died quite recently an old workman, Albert Davies, whose life’s story may be told, as it illustrates the intellectual and especially the theological bent of the Welsh mind. This mind is speculative and disputative, and it exercises itself by choice in political and theologic fields.
Albert Davies in his early years was a collier in South Wales, a member of a Calvinistic Methodist family, and could speak no other tongue but Welsh. From boyhood his great craving was for books, and, above all, for books that treated of sacred matters. In the dinner-hour it is very general for miners, quarrymen, and labourers to argue points of divinity, and Davies became a strong controversialist against the Unitarian and Socinian notions which were gaining ground among his associates. By degrees an idea germinated in his brain that as Calvin, Wesley, Luther, and other great founders had created organisations to maintain and propagate their opinions, so, in all probability, the great Founder of Christianity had formed a corporate body to carry on His teaching unto the end of time. He had never been brought into direct contact with the Church of England, and had an inherited prejudice against it, as purely English, and as representing Saxon domination over Wales, and he could think of no Body that would answer his requirements but the Roman Church. He accordingly took up the study of its teaching and claims, and became convinced that if Christ did found a community, it must be the Catholic Church, which the Roman Body asserted itself to be; and Davies was received into that communion.
After some years, however, his confidence gave way; he found, as he thought, too much credulity, too great demands made on faith; and he took to a study of the Fathers.