Welsh Journals

VOLUME XVI WELSH OUTLOOK Where there is no vision the people perish" NOTES OF THE MONTH THE month of October seems to be fateful in the history of higher education in Wales. It was on October 26th, 1863, that Dr. Nicholas, Sir Hugh Owen, and George Osborne Morgan met in Morgan Lloyd's chambers in Mitre Court and outlined faintly in their own minds their first plans for the education of their countrymen. As one of the historians of Aber- ystwyth College said, "They were the pioneers assembling for a great task. Before them and the friends who came to share the labour lay many years of hard, patient spade work." Nine years afterwards, on October 7th, 1872, the College was opened to the public with twenty- five students housed in the old Castle Hotel under a principal, two professors, a librarian, and a registrar. The first victory had been won, but had those pioneers known what terrific forces they had still to contend with, through what sorrow, travail, and anxiety they and their successors had still to pass, even they, dauntless as they were, might have felt faint in their hearts. But as each tempest broke upon them they planted their feet firmer in the earth, and their courage transformed every disappointment and every reverse as they came into final rejoic- ing and ultimate triumph. THE heroes of those great days, of which t can, indeed, be truly said Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven," have, almost to a man, gone to their last and well-earned rest. But what a magnificent tribute to their labours and sacrifices was paid on another October morning this year when, sixty-six years NUMBER XI THE NOVEMBER 1929 almost to the day from that small but portentous meeting in Mitre Court, it was announced at the Court of Governors that, through the generosity of Mr. Davies-Bryan, an old student of the College, who had himself reaped some of the harvest of those heroes' sowing and had realised the magnificence of their spirit and the only pos- sible worthy memorial to their efforts, an estate of some eighty-five acres had been acquired on the hill above the town for the rebuilding and development of the College and the extension of the National Library which had already found its home there. The first College was destroyed by fire, but the common people of Wales saw to it that a new and more spacious one rose from its ashes, appropriately enough, at that time, almost on the very spot where the flames devoured the first. The very success of the second College brought, in these latter days, its own penalties. The science side, it is true, through the munifi- cence of a family to which Wales owes so much, was splendidly housed and efficiently equipped years ago, but the rest of the institution has been cramped for years for want of space and funds, and those responsible for its organisation and management have had to live from hand to mouth and from day to day. This manner of living warps vision and slays the imagination. The spirit of adventure, all freedom and daring in experiment, and that spacious calm which so often blossoms into great artistic glory, are all impossible where it exists. But at last the College at Aberystwyth has been given its chance of making a new home in a fine open campagna, and also at the same time to fashion for itself a new life on a far larger scale and wider outlook.