In 1849 I lived at Cardiff. I had come there to edit _The Principality_, a paper started, I believe, by Mr. David Evans, a good sort of man, who had made a little money, which, I fear, he lost in his paper speculation. His aim was to make the paper the mouthpiece for Welsh Nonconformity. I must own, as I saw how Cardiff was growing to be a big place, my aim was to make the paper a good local organ. But the Cardiff of that time was too Conservative and Churchified for such a paper to pay, and as Mr. John Cassell offered me a berth on his paper, _The Standard of Freedom_, my connection with Cardiff came to an end. I confess I left it with regret, as I had some warm friends in the town, and there was a charming little blue-eyed maid—I wonder if she is alive now—the daughter of an alderman and ex-mayor, with whom I had fallen desperately in love for a time. At that time Cardiff had a population of some 14,000. Lord Bute had built his docks, not by any means as extensive as they are now, and it was beginning to do an extensive trade in coal brought down by the Taff Vale Railway. There was no rail to Cardiff then. To get to it from London I had to take the rail to Bristol, spend the night there, and go to Cardiff by the steamer which plied daily, according to the state of the tide, between that port and Bristol, at that time the commercial capital of the South Wales district. The mails from London came by a four-horse coach, which plied between Gloucester and Cardiff. I felt rather miserable when I landed at the docks and looked at the sad expanse of ground behind me and the Bristol Channel. A long street led up to the town, with shabby houses on one side and a large expanse of marshy land on the other. I had heard so much of the romance of Wales that when I realised where I really was my heart quite sank within me. At the end of St. Mary Street was a very primitive old town hall, where I gave a lecture on “The Progress of the Nation,” the only time I ever gave a lecture in my life. The chairman was Mr. Vachell, father of the late Dr. Vachell, an old resident in Cardiff, a man of considerable eminence in the town—as he was supposed to be very wealthy—and in the Cardiff of that day wealth was regarded as the only claim to respect; he, at the end of my lecture, expressed an opinion favourable to my talents, but at the same time intimating that he had no sympathy with much I had uttered. Especially he differed from me in the estimate I had given of the “Rights of Man,” by Tom Paine. Once more I had an opportunity of lifting up my voice in the Old Town Hall. It was on the subject of Teetotalism. My opponent was a worthy, sturdy teetotaler known as Mr. Cory, whose sons still flourish as the great coal merchants of our day. Cardiff was a town of publicans and sinners, and I am sorry to say I secured an easy triumph; and Mr. Cory created great laughter as he said, in the course of