The Welsh-speaking inhabitants of this country, it must be admitted, live in a manner which has its attractions for primitiveness and homeliness; their wants are few, their passions are much under control, they are self-denying, industrious, and provident; and throughout the Principality, much to its credit, criminal cases but seldom darken the calendar. Such being the social condition of the Welsh, but more especially in the agricultural districts of what has been termed Welsh Wales, though not indeed without exceptions as regards keeping the “body in temperance, soberness, and chastity,” would it not be desirable to take note of the influences which conduce to such a state of things, with the view of bringing the same to bear upon communities, in which so many are deplorably corrupt, criminal, and profane? When, however, we come to consider that one of the leading causes of the peculiarities exhibited by the Welsh, is the isolation resulting from their language, few distinctive points remain in their social economy which admit of being copied with advantage by other communities. Influences which are rapidly changing the character of the English, and the better educated classes in these parts, exercise but a faint effect upon the primitive Welsh; because they are, by their language, shut out from the rest of the world. They are like the river water, which is out of the main current. Their manners, customs, and ideas, all tend to permanency. The sons follow with little change in the steps of their fathers, and the daughters in those of their mothers. As a consequence of this, even in business pursuits, they are, like the French Canadians, deficient in enterprise, and acquire property mostly by saving and self-denial. Like the Chinese, they give one the idea of a people whose development has been arrested at a certain stage, whose inspiration is drawn from the past, and not, as by the Israelites of old, from the future. They love to dwell on the antiquity of their language, and its purity from foreign elements. What they were is to them a source of fond exultation. What they are destined to become, they fear to contemplate.