The Rector of Manafon, Mr. Walter Davies, in his View of the Agriculture and Domestic Economy of North Wales, says, “Strangers have oftentimes listened with attention to Gentlemen of the County of Montgomery enquiring anxiously into the conduct and fate of the Windsor Castle, the Impregnable, the Brunswick and other men of war, in some particular naval engagements; and were led to imagine that they had some near and dear relations holding important commissions on board; but upon farther enquiry, found the ground of this curiosity to be no other than that such ships had been partly built of timber that had grown upon their estates; as if the inanimate material contained some magic virtue.” The good Rector might have perceived in what he censures, one indication of that attachment to our native soil, on which much of the security of states depends, much of the happiness of individuals, and not a little of their moral and intellectual character. But indeed the same cause which renders personification a common figure not only with poets and orators, but in all empassioned and even in ordinary speech, leads men frequently both to speak and act as if they ascribed life and consciousness to inanimate things. When the Cid Campeador recovered from the Infantes of Carrion, his two swords Colada and Tizona, “his whole frame,” says the Chronicler, “rejoiced, and he smiled from his heart. And he laid them upon his lap and said, ‘Ah my swords, Colada and Tizona, truly may I say of you that you are the best swords in Spain; and I won you, for I did not get you either by buying or by barter. I gave ye in keeping to the Infantes of Carrion that they might do honour to my daughters with ye. But ye were not for them! They kept ye hungry, and did not feed ye with flesh as ye were wont to be fed. Well is it for you that ye have escaped that thraldom and are come again to my hands.’” The same strong figure occurs in the Macaronea, _Gaude, Baldus ait, mi brande! cibaberis; ecce Carnis et sanguis tibi præsententur abunde._