But our brief excursion was over. Some of the most picturesque parts of South Wales were, perforce, left unvisited--especially Tintern, that loveliest of British abbeys. Yet much had been seen to quicken the sense of beauty; while the glimpse of busy industry given us along the south coast, had quickened our desire to learn something more of the great population gathered by its docks and ports, its mines and furnaces. For it is the human interest which, wherever we may travel, must gradually become supreme, and nowhere more truly than in South Wales. The heroism often manifested in the midst of lowliest toil was never more strikingly illustrated than in a recent incident which has made the name of Pontypridd a household word in England. All know the story of the imprisoned miners, and the men who bravely volunteered to rescue them, daring the peril of compressed air, inflammable gas, and the pent-up floods of water. "Four men"--let the tale never be forgotten at British firesides!--"from one o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 19th of April, 1877, until three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, worked on amid all these accumulated dangers until the rescue of their comrades was complete. Twenty-two others were only second to those four men--eleven in taking an actual share in the work of cutting through the barrier of coal, and eleven others in constant presence and superintendence. It was an intense exercise of self-devotion, patience, and deliberate courage--a concentration, as it were, of qualities which could only be acquired by the habitual exercise of these qualities in every-day life, and perhaps their cultivation through many generations." Happily they were successful, and the nation feels it to be but a worthy recognition of such heroism, that a new order of merit, instituted to do honour to gallantry in saving life on land, has been inaugurated by the gift of "the Albert Medal" to those Welsh colliers. Never has decoration been better earned! "Not the least satisfaction, however, of those who receive it ought to be, that they have been the means of drawing public attention and public honour to the whole class of brave and unselfish deeds of which they have furnished one of the most conspicuous of instances. There are no signs that the struggle of civilisation with nature will cease to demand its victims. The progress of mankind still depends, and must long depend, upon the bravery and unselfishness with which unknown perils are encountered; and, perhaps, as science opens up further fields of experiment and investigation, still bolder adventures may be demanded. It was but right that the stamp of national honour should be formally placed upon all such deeds; and the Welsh miners deserve the thanks, not merely of their comrades, but of their country, for having established in public esteem a new and permanent order of merit." * * _The Times_, August 8, 1877. [Illustration: 0222] THE ISLE OF WIGHT.