Gentlemen, who have so highly gratified us with your excellent performances, and you also, who, if time had permitted, would have increased that gratification; masters and professors of that science, which is at once so dignified and so delightful, I offer you on the part of all here present the tribute of our unanimous acknowledgments, and our unqualified approbation and applause. We beg you will be pleased to share our praises amongst you; we do not presume to apportion them according to your respective merits. And now friends, neighbours and countrymen, who have done me the honour to accept any invitation to this our domestic eistedfodd, you have heard the lay of our minstrel David Williams, and although, for brevity’s sake, he took it up from the deluge only, yet, if you do not already know, you ought now to be informed, that this unconquered soil whereon we dwell, was in times antecedent to that visitation as fully peopled, and arts and sciences were as happily cultivated here as within any spot upon the habitable globe. If therefore in the recitation of the lay, which I allude to, mention of that early time was omitted to be made, it was not because records are wanting of sufficient authenticity to illuminate the subject, forasmuch as not a few of those, who lived before the flood, have spoken for themselves, and their words and works have descended to us through the lapse of ages. Witness those treatises upon natural magic, which Ham the son of Noah, when in the ark with his father, possessed himself of, and having bequeathed them to his son Misraim, were afterwards made public to the great edification of the repeopled world. Nay, gentlemen, let me assure you, there are those, who trace the origin of the Chrysopeia, or art of making gold, even up to Adam himself, who in a tract of his own composing (after the fall we will suppose) expounds that curious process. I lay this before you, friends and countrymen, knowing that there are few amongst you, who do not trace your pedigrees up to the ante-diluvian ages, and I rest what I have said upon sound authorities that you, being true and ancient Britons, may have wherewithal to defend your derivations from your father Adam, if any there may be, obstinate and absurd enough to dispute them. I shall now trespass on your time no longer, than whilst I express my hope that you, my gallant countrymen, who have held the tenure of this soil from ages so remote, will persevere to defend it through ages yet to come from all invaders foreign and domestic. CHAPTER VII. _Harmony of Sounds does not always ensure Harmony of Souls._