I had been knocking about London, as the phrase goes, for more months than I choose to mention, when, my purse presenting unmistakable symptoms of a coming state of collapse, I began seriously to look about me for the means of replenishing it. Luckily, I had not to wait long for an opportunity. One morning, as I sat in the box of a coffee-room in Holborn, running my eye over the advertisement columns of the "Times," I met with one which promised novelty, at least; I had had too much experience in such matters to anticipate from it any very great _pecuniary_ compensation. The said advertisement was to the effect, that a gentleman who combined literary tastes with business habits was required to edit a paper published in a town in South Wales; and it went on to state, that application, personally or by letter, might be made to the proprietor of the said journal at M----. That I possessed some taste for literature I was well enough assured; but as for my "business habits," perhaps the least said about them, the better. This condition of candidateship, however, I quietly shirked, while counting over my few remaining coins, scarcely more than sufficient, after paying my landlady, to defray my expenses to M----, some one hundred and sixty miles distant. Determining, then, to assume a commercial virtue, though I had it not, I quitted the metropolis, and in due time reached the land of leeks, with a light heart, and seven and sixpence sterling in my pocket. A queer little Welsh town was M----, with an androgynous population,--or so it seemed to me, who had never before beheld women wearing men's hats and coats, and men with head-coverings and other articles of apparel of a very ambiguous description. It chanced to be market-day when I arrived, so that I had a capital opportunity of observing the population for whose edification my "literary tastes" were, I hoped, to be called into requisition. But at the very outset a tremendous difficulty stared me in the face. Nine out of every ten of the people I met or passed spoke in a language that to me was as unintelligibly mysterious as the cuneiform characters on Mr. Layard's Nineveh sculptures. It was a hard, harsh, guttural dialect, which even those who were to the manner born seemed to jerk out painfully and spasmodically from their lingual organs. This was especially obvious during a bargain, where an excited market-man was endeavoring to pass off a tough old gander as a tender young goose, to some equally excited customer. It was dissonant enough to _my_ ear, but I fancy it would have driven a sensitive Italian to distraction. After listening to the horrible jargon for some time, I could easily believe the story which poor William Maginn used to tell with such unction, of the origin of the Welsh language. It was to this effect.--When the Tower of Babel was being built, the workmen all spoke one tongue. Just at the very instant when the "confusion" occurred, a mason, trowel in hand, called for a brick.