for a confirmation of these views; we find ample evidence in support of them in the pages of these very reports. All through these volumes--in almost every page--there is the same complaint that the difference of language impedes the communication of knowledge; and, indeed, we very much doubt whether any _English_ parent or schoolmaster, who wished to convey all ideas of religious and secular knowledge to his children through the medium of the _Welsh_ language,--to be taught them by an _Englishman_,--from the age of eight years old and upwards, would not arrive at the same negative result as the _Welshman_ who makes the same experiment by means of the _English_ tongue. We may here quote the following important observations from the report of Mr Lingen--by far the most able, and the best digested of the three. And we take the opportunity of pointing out this gentleman's introductory remarks, as conveying the most valuable information which we have met with concerning the actual state of Wales,--as well as for the highly enlightened and philosophic spirit in which they are conceived. Mr Lingen observes:-- "My district exhibits the phenomenon of a peculiar language isolating the mass from the upper portion of society; and, as a further phenomenon, it exhibits this mass engaged upon the most opposite occupations at points not very distant from each other; being, on the one side, rude and primitive agriculturists, living poorly, and thinly scattered; on the other, smelters and miners, wantoning in plenty, and congregated in the densest accumulations. An incessant tide of immigration sets in from the former extreme to the latter, and, by perpetuating a common character in each, admits of their being contemplated under a single point of view. Whether in the country, or among the furnaces, the Welsh element is never found at the top of the social scale, nor in its own body does it exhibit much variety of gradation. In the country, the farmers are very small holders, in intelligence and capital nowise distinguished from labourers. In the works, the Welsh workman never finds his way into the office. He never becomes either clerk or agent. He may become an overseer or sub-contractor, but this does not take him out of the labouring and put him into the administering class. Equally in his new, as in his old, home, his language keeps him under the hatches, being one in which he can neither acquire nor communicate the necessary information. It is a language of old-fashioned agriculture, of theology, and of simple rustic life, while all the world about him is English.