Welsh Journals

THE GLAMORGAN KEYEL. (gwyl a gwledd mabsant.) If the nineteenth century has been a marvellous period for the development of commerce, of manufactures, and of science, it has— as a set-off—been most destructive to many an old custom, to old habits of rural life, to many a harmless and fanciful superstition and belief. The whistle of its Locomotives, the whirr of its Spinning Wheels, the strokes of its Steam Hammers, and the shocks of its new Electric development, have scared away our Ghosts, our Fairies, and our death omens. If we have become richer in material wealth, we are poorer in fancy. If we feed and clothe our bodies better, we starve our imaginations. The sources of our enjoyments and pleasures are changed, and not always for the better. Even our children don't read the Arabian Nights or Robinson Crusoe with anything like the zest and appetite their grand-dads did. Jack the Giant Killer no longer rouses any enthusiasm in the juvenile mind—nay, are there not six-year-old sceptics to be met with, who regard both Jack and his Giants as being wrhat Mr. Weller would call nothing better than " faberlous animals." A dull uniformity threatens to overwhelm us; for just as Railways are said to have equalised the prices of commodities all over the kingdom, so does the progress of the age threaten to level all our ideas to the same utilitarian standard. Changes are like purchases; they must be paid for in some kind of coinage; and the beauti¬ fully poetic sentiment, that "nothing dies but something mourns," is perfectly applicable to the uprooting of old and venerable customs. We have become so mercenary that even our holidays must be endorsed by the bank before we can feel free to indulge in them. The old saint's day, or the anniversary of some notable event, either local or general, has now no force, unless backed by an Act of Parliament. A few days annually, called Bank Holidays, are forced upon us rather than voluntarily hailed and welcomed, when, as it were, we are ordered to make merry, free from the fear of the bill or promissory note that might have fallen due on that day. " Saint Lubbock " has displaced Saints James, or Andrew, or David, and Lombard Street dictates