When in Westminster Abbey we pass from the tombs of the earlier kings to the magnificent chapel of King Henry VII., it is a striking thought to any one, especially to any one who has a drop of the ancient Welsh blood in his veins, that he enters there on a new field of the history of England, inaugurated by a succession of princes whose boast it was to be descended, not from Edward the Confessor or William the Conqueror, but from Arthur and Llewellyn, and that about the tomb of the first Tudor sovereign, intertwined with the emblems of his English descent, is to be seen the Red Dragon of Cadwallader. That Tudor race, in their quick understanding, in their fiery temper, the true representatives of their ancient Celtic lineage, were the instruments raised up by God’s providence at the critical season of the new birth of England in the Reformation, for guiding, stimulating, freshening the Church and the nation to the performance of new duties, the fulfilment of new hopes, the application of new truths. The sharpness of wit and liveliness of mind which were amongst the precocious gifts of Henry and Edward and Elizabeth, were common to them with their Welsh ancestors, and contributed in no small degree to the fresh start which England then made in the movements of that moving age. These qualities, whenever found, though they are not the highest of gifts, are inestimable for enlivening, cheering, enkindling the more powerful and the more highly civilised to action and to enquiry. Cherish them, even if they sometimes outrun discretion; correct them, if so be, not by repressing them, but by striving to develop the opposite gifts which are needed to balance and to chasten them. II. And this leads us to two general remarks in conclusion. (1) First let us remember that these graces of the Cambrian or Celtic character, which our Heavenly Father has thus vouchsafed to us, are also by His good providence blended in the English race with exactly those qualities which furnish their counterpoise—with that self-control, that moral discipline, that solid steadiness of purpose, without which poetic sentiment, religious fervour, mental vivacity are often useless, or worse than useless. The old hermit in his solitude, the preacher in his fervid appeal, was good; but the honest, manly Christian, doing his duty faithfully and truthfully in his own station of life, is better. The sailor who remembers on the broad sea that God’s eye is always upon him; the workman or tradesman who endeavours to render to his Maker the best of all services, the offering of honest labour, the offering of unadulterated food, the offering of an upright conscientious traffic; the railway official or partner who cheers and encourages friendless travellers by a kindly word or by a helping hand, not for reward, but for love of his fellow creatures,—these are the modes by which, far more than by sudden conversion or enthusiastic hymns, we can fulfil God’s goodwill towards us.