acknowledged, that at book Welsh I was stronger than himself, but I
learnt Welsh pronunciation from him, and to discourse a little in
the Welsh tongue. "Had you much difficulty in acquiring the sound
of the ll?" I think I hear the reader inquire. None whatever: the
double l of the Welsh is by no means the terrible guttural which
English people generally suppose it to be, being in reality a
pretty liquid, exactly resembling in sound the Spanish ll, the
sound of which I had mastered before commencing Welsh, and which is
equivalent to the English lh; so being able to pronounce llano I
had of course no difficulty in pronouncing Lluyd, which by-the-bye
was the name of the groom.

I remember that I found the pronunciation of the Welsh far less
difficult than I had found the grammar, the most remarkable feature
of which is the mutation, under certain circumstances, of
particular consonants, when forming the initials of words. This
feature I had observed in the Irish, which I had then only learnt
by ear.

But to return to the groom. He was really a remarkable character,
and taught me two or three things besides Welsh pronunciation; and
to discourse a little in Cumraeg. He had been a soldier in his
youth, and had served under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsular
campaigns, and from him I learnt the details of many a bloody field
and bloodier storm, of the sufferings of poor British soldiers, and
the tyranny of haughty British officers; more especially of the two
commanders just mentioned, the first of whom he swore was shot by
his own soldiers, and the second more frequently shot at by British
than French. But it is not deemed a matter of good taste to write
about such low people as grooms, I shall therefore dismiss him with