The Englishman accustomed to life in country districts cannot fail to be impressed with the intellectual superiority of the Welsh peasant to the English country bumpkin. The Welsh of the labourer and small farmer class are brighter, quicker, keener than those occupying the same position in Saxon land. The working man has an intellect higher developed than the little farmer in England. This, in a measure, is due to his being bilingual. The acquisition of a second tongue undoubtedly gives flexibility to his mind. No English labourer dreams of learning another language than his own, but the Welsh peasant must do this, and this fact gives to his mind aptitude for fresh acquisitions, and affords a spur to learning. He reads more, above all, thinks more. He leads an inner life of thought and feeling; he is more impulsive and more sensitive. He is more susceptible to culture, more appreciative of what is poetical and beautiful, and does not find in buffoonery the supreme delight of life. The horse-play, the boisterous revelry that characterise the enjoyment of country Hodge and Polly, as well as town-bred ’Arry and ’Arriet, when taking a holiday, are never present on a similar occasion among the Welsh. The great gatherings of the latter are their Eisteddfods, and not races and football matches. They assemble in thousands to hear music and poetry, and such gatherings are entirely free from the vulgarities and riot of a collection of Anglo-Saxons out for a junketing. A friend of mine, an incumbent for many years in a purely Welsh parish, who was transferred at length to one that was more than half English, remarked on the difference to me. There had been an entertainment in a neighbouring place, and the English performers had given music-hall songs of a vulgar type, not without _double entendres_, which were rapturously applauded by those of the audience who were of English blood, whereas the Welsh sat mute and disgusted. And my friend said to me, “Such an entertainment would have been impossible in a purely Welsh village. The Welshman has a sense of decorum and a higher standard of taste, which would make him shrink from such an exhibition. But possibly it may be this coarseness and animality that have made the Englishman so masterful and so successful. It is the outward token of the tremendous vital force within, that makes him carry everything before him, undeterred by shyness, unhampered by sensitiveness, the qualities which hold back the Celt from the rough-and-tumble struggle of life.”