fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem to
be "sharp arrows of the mighty;" but their last gifts are "coals of
juniper."

And yet I cannot--though there is no part of my subject that I feel
more--press this upon you; for we made so little use of the power of
nature while we had it that we shall hardly feel what we have lost.
Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and your
Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of
Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the
deep sea, once thought of as sacred--a divine promontory, looking
westward; the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its
red light glares first through storm. These are the hills, and
these the bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have
been always loved, always fateful in influence on the national mind.
That Snowdon is your Parnassus; but where are its Muses? That
Holyhead mountain is your Island of AEgina; but where is its Temple
to Minerva?

Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had achieved under the
shadow of our Parnassus up to the year 1848?--Here is a little
account of a Welsh school, from page 261 of the Report on Wales,
published by the Committee of Council on Education. This is a
school close to a town containing 5,000 persons:-


"I then called up a larger class, most of whom had recently come to
the school. Three girls repeatedly declared they had never heard of
Christ, and two that they had never heard of God. Two out of six
thought Christ was on earth now" (they might have had a worse