Welsh Journals

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fcnp çjffi^ Cyf. I. CHWEFROR, 1888. Rhif. 2. CYMRU FU: A RETROSPECT. jHE Editor of the new periodical which is destined, I hope,to have a long and prosperous career,has asked me to write something for Cymru Fydd, which may be freely rendered "The Wales of the Future," and which is in- tended, I presume, to nurse, develope, and guide the public opinion and public spirit which have happily been of late awak- ened in the Principality. Wordsworth says, " The child is father of the man:" so the past is father of the present. The pre- sent has not sprung suddenly into existence fully grown and armed, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter. It is the result of a number of converging agencies and influences, which have been gradually at work for many years past, of which it is wise and just for those of the actual generation to take some account. So I thought it would not be an inapt introduction to those who are to be concerned with the Wales of the future to take a little survey of the Wales of the past, and- to show with what long-continued toil and travail the present has been prepared for, and been begotten out of the past. Those of us whose memory extends over some fifty or sixty years of retrospect see in these remote times a widely different Wales from that with which our eyes and ears are now famiiiar. Politically, the spirit of a deep sleep had fallen upon the nation. Very few indeed, of the people took any