parliamentary session. In a moment the spell of the Celtic genius
was forgotten, the Philistinism of our Saxon nature made itself felt;
and my friend and I walked up and down by the roaring waves, talking
not of ovates and bards, and triads and englyns, but of the sewage
question, and the glories of our local self-government, and the
mysterious perfections of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

I believe it is admitted, even by the admirers of Eisteddfods in
general, that this particular Eisteddfod was not a success.
Llandudno, it is said, was not the right place for it. Held in
Conway Castle, as a few years ago it was, and its spectators,--an
enthusiastic multitude,--filling the grand old ruin, I can imagine it
a most impressive and interesting sight, even to a stranger labouring
under the terrible disadvantage of being ignorant of the Welsh
language. But even seen as I saw it at Llandudno, it had the power
to set one thinking. An Eisteddfod is, no doubt, a kind of Olympic
meeting; and that the common people of Wales should care for such a
thing, shows something Greek in them, something spiritual, something
humane, something (I am afraid one must add) which in the English
common people is not to be found. This line of reflection has been
followed by the accomplished Bishop of St. David's, and by the
Saturday Review, it is just, it is fruitful, and those who pursued it
merit our best thanks. But, from peculiar circumstances, the
Llandudno meeting was, as I have said, such as not at all to suggest
ideas of Olympia, and of a multitude touched by the divine flame, and
hanging on the lips of Pindar. It rather suggested the triumph of
the prosaic, practical Saxon, and the approaching extinction of an
enthusiasm which he derides as factitious, a literature which he
disdains as trash, a language which he detests as a nuisance.