cenery soon palls unless it is associated with remarkable
events, and the names of remarkable men. Perhaps there is no country in
the whole world which has been the scene of events more stirring and
remarkable than those recorded in the history of Wales. What other
country has been the scene of a struggle so deadly, so embittered, and
protracted as that between the Cumro and the Saxon?--A struggle which did
not terminate at Caernarvon, when Edward Longshanks foisted his young son
upon the Welsh chieftains as Prince of Wales; but was kept up till the
battle of Bosworth Field, when a prince of Cumric blood won the crown of
fair Britain, verifying the olden word which had cheered the hearts of
the Ancient Britons for at least a thousand years, even in times of the
darkest distress and gloom:--

"But after long pain
Repose we shall obtain,
When sway barbaric has purg'd us clean;
And Britons shall regain
Their crown and their domain,
And the foreign oppressor be no more seen."

Of remarkable men Wales has assuredly produced its full share. First, to
speak of men of action:--there was Madoc, the son of Owain Gwynedd, who
discovered America, centuries before Columbus was born; then there was
"the irregular and wild Glendower," who turned rebel at the age of sixty,
was crowned King of Wales at Machynlleth, and for fourteen years
contrived to hold his own against the whole power of England; then there
was Ryce Ap Thomas, the best soldier of his time, whose hands placed the
British crown on the brow of Henry the Seventh, and whom bluff Henry the
Eighth delighted to call Father Preece; then there was--who?--why Harry
Morgan, who led those tremendous fellows the Buccaneers across the
Isthmus of Darien to the sack and burning of Panama.

What, a buccaneer in the list? Ay! and why not? Morgan was a scourge,
it is true, but he was a scourge of God on the cruel Spaniards of the New
World, the merciless task-masters and butchers of the Indian race: on
which account God favoured and prospered him, permitting him to attain
the noble age of ninety, and to die peacefully and tranquilly at Jamaica,
whilst smoking his pipe in his shady arbour, with his smiling plantation
of sugar-canes full in view. How unlike the fate of Harry Morgan to that
of Lolonois, a being as daring and enterprising as the Welshman, but a
monster without ruth or discrimination, terrible to friend and foe, who
pe