religion spoils one day out of seven, destroys the seventh part of possible happiness, would find strong illustration in Wales. It is not my purpose to argue whether the illustration would prove or disprove Stendhal's assertion, though one might fairly ask whether religious people are not, perhaps, as happy in going to church on Sunday as irreligious people are in staying away. II. Let it not be supposed that there is any lack of amusement on Christmas-day for people who are willing to be amused in a God-fearing manner. Although you cannot go to the theatre or the circus, you can have a wide liberty of choice among oratorios, concerts, examinations, exhibitions, eisteddfodau, and other odd diversions. Concerts especially thrive. The halls in which they are held are decorated with evergreens, and the familiar custom is in Wales habitually and commonly associated with the ancient Druids, who viewed the green twigs as the symbols of perennial life. Thus a peculiar poetic grace rests with a custom beautiful in itself, and capable in any land of being poetized by any one poetically inclined. Many of those unique gatherings called eisteddfodau are held in different parts of the principality, when poetry, music, and essays, in Welsh and in English, are put forth by the strivers in these Olympian games of intellect and culture, after the prizes which in Hellas would have given them crowns of olive-leaves instead of gold-coins of the realm. When Pindar and Sophocles handed in poems, and Herodotus competed among the essayists, and Phidias and Praxiteles among the cutters of stone, there was no Christmas,--but it is claimed there were eisteddfodau, here in Wales; ay, and before that; for has not Herodotus spoken of the British bards who held them? III.