AND now “gallant little Wales” shall supply a scene to our pageant. History may not sanction the subject of it, but it may not be omitted. You are spectators within the gray walls of Carnarvon Castle, that grim old fortress which overlooks the fair waters of Menai Strait. From its soaring towers your eye takes in the wild mountain region of Snowdonia, a land of hoary summits and green valleys, in the recesses of which the old Celtic inhabitants of Britain stubbornly maintained their independence for more than five long centuries. You are now to see the nation subdued and an English king assert his sway. But you will not see it lose those essential things which mark its nationality—its language, its literature, its genius. To-day they are still dear to the Welsh nation, and are more jealously guarded and fostered than ever. Go to an Eisteddfod and hear twice a thousand Welsh voices unite in the stirring strains of _Hen Wlad fy Nhadau_ (“Land of my fathers.”) You will then understand how ardently the flame of patriotism burns in the breast of the men and women who have been reared in this ancient land of beauty and song. As the scene opens, you perceive that the death-knell of the nation’s independence has tolled. You gaze upon an assembly of chieftains—handsome, active men with long hair and moustaches and shaven chins. Their arms, their coats of mail, their helms and shields are laid aside, and they are clad simply in tunic and cloak, bare-kneed, and shod with brogues of hide. All are depressed, all are sorrowful, for they are here to acknowledge the surrender of their land. As they wait the coming of the English king their minds fly back over the long story of resistance which they and their sires before them have made against their persistent and greedy foes. As they cast their thoughts back they recall the awful slaughter of Roman times, when the Druids of Mona were sacrificed on their own altars; they dimly remember how the deep snow of their hills baffled the haughty Conqueror, who, not to be beaten, planted his barons on their borders, and bade them win the land by never-ceasing strife. It was Griffith ap Rees—was it not?—who made the Norman bite the dust, and taught him to respect the might of the Cymric arm and the fury of the Cymric onset. Then they remember what their bards have told them of the brave days of Owen Gwynedd and the Lord Rees—how these twain drove back the Norman who called himself “Fine Scholar,” and baffled him too. For all his scholarship, he could not add the laurel of Wales to the wreath that encircled his brow.