In the course of the debate on Education, the Honourable Douglas Pennant, a Conservative, and member for Carnarvonshire, had the courage to say, that he believed the Welsh language to be the curse of Wales, being the great obstacle to improvement. Of course it is, but while a pack of sentimentalists keep up a twitter about it, and offer prizes for Welsh Odes and such-like Gorilla utterances, how is the fatal jargon to be exterminated? Here's a health to Edward the First, though we are sorry to say that historians now disbelieve that he did spiflicate highborn Hoel, soft Llewellyn, Modred, who made Plinlimmon shudder with his dissonant ballads, and the rest of the Welsh Bards--whose only merit was their having afforded T.G. [Thomas Gray] the subject for an ode that will outlast Snowdon. The report of the Eisteddfod, held at Bala in the autumn, given in the _Oswestry Observer_, serves as the occasion for a truly ferocious attack on the disloyal "caterwauling" of the Chapel Bards. In particular _Punch_ is exasperated by the fulminations of the Bard Castell, his appeal to his countrymen to "conquer or die," and his final challenge to the English tyrant:-- We scorn your ways, we can despise your terrors, Then take your chains, pray keep them for your errors. [Sidenote: _Punch's Pet Aversions_] For a whole column _Punch_ pours the vials of his abuse on the "humbug" and "bosh" of "Bardery." Some critics declare that _Punch_ killed the crinoline, though he himself acknowledged his failure; he was certainly powerless to check the spread of Eisteddfodau and Pan-Celtitis, and he undoubtedly overshot the mark by the violence of his diatribes. Pseudo-intellectualism and preciosity were a safer target, and towards the end of this period aestheticism in its earlier stages comes in for a certain amount of satirical notice. [Illustration: REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH FEMALE EXQUISITE: "Quite a nice ball at Mrs. Millefleurs', wasn't it?" MALE DITTO: "_Very_ quite. Indeed, really _most_ quite!"]