"Nearly six centuries have elapsed since the first Edward crossed the lofty mountains of North Wales, which, before him, no King of England had trodden, and in the citadel of Caernarvon received the submission of the Welsh people; and more than three centuries have passed away since the country was incorporated with, and made part of, the realm of England; and although, for so long a period, English laws have been enforced, and the use of the Welsh language discouraged, yet, when the question is now asked, what progress has been made in introducing the English language? the answer maybe given from Part II. of the Reports of the Education Commissioners, page 68. In Cardiganshire, 3000 people out of 68,766 speak English.[16] The result may be yet more strikingly shown by saying that double the number of persons now speak Welsh who spoke that language in the reign of Elizabeth." It is a mistaken idea to suppose that the Welsh language is hard to be acquired,--the very reverse of this is the fact,: there is probably no spoken language of Europe, not derived from the Latin, which may be so soon or so agreeably acquired as the Welsh. A good knowledge of it, so as to enable the learner to read and write it currently, may be attained certainly within a year by even a moderately diligent student; and the power of conversing in it with ease and fluency is to be gained within the course of perhaps a couple of years. The language is daily studied more and more by persons not connected with the Principality, and acquired by them; nay, what is a remarkable fact, next to the galaxy of the Williamses,[17] the best Welsh scholar of the present day is Dr Meyer, the learned German librarian at Buckingham Palace; while Dr Thirlwall, the present bishop of St David's, has made himself, with only a few years' study, as good a Welsh scholar as he had long before been a German one. We believe that, if the present system of education be steadily carried out, with its consequent developments, in the Principality, the two languages, English and Welsh, will become _equally_ familiar to those who may be born in the second generation from the present day; and that the inhabitants of Wales, becoming thoroughly _bilingual_--for we do not anticipate that they will abandon their ancient tongue--this apparent obstacle to a more complete amalgamation of interests between the two races will be entirely removed. One thing is certain, that the aptitude of Welsh children to learn English, of the purest dialectic kind, is very remarkable--and that the desire to acquire English is prevalent amongst all the people.