restored with the king in 1660; but its work had been done, and it
came to an end in 1689. The Great Sessions came to an end in 1830;
and, though we now see that their disappearance was a mistake, the
bill abolishing them passed through Parliament without a division.
The last difference between England and Wales was deleted; and if
Wales has no separate existence left, why should we write or read its
history?

Because the two centuries of apparent settlement and sleep were the
period of a silent revolution, more important, if our aim is to
explain the living present rather than the dead past, than all the
exciting plots and battles of the House of Cunedda from the rise of
Maelgwn to the fall of the last Llywelyn. During these centuries,
the history of Wales ceases to be the history of princes and nobles,
it becomes the history of the people. Owen Glendower's few years of
power were a kind of prophecy; but Owen once appeared to the abbot of
Valle Crucis, so tradition says, to declare that he had come before
his time. We pass then, very gradually, from the history of a
privileged class, speaking literary Welsh, with a literature famous
for the wealth of its imagination and the artistic beauty of its
form--we pass on to the history of a peasantry, rude and ignorant at
first, retaining the servile traits of centuries of subjection, but
gradually becoming self-reliant, prosperous, and thoughtful.

The real history of a nation is shown by its literature. Its records
and its chronicles are but the notes and comments of various ages.
In the period of the princes and nobles, you can trace the rise and
decline of a great literature; watch how it gathers strength and
beauty from Cynddelw to Dafydd ap Gwilym, and how the strength begins
to fail and the beauty to wane, from Dafydd ap Gwilym to Tudur Aled.