FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS 215 



In all the mining districts, too, there is another class — the colliers 

 and furnacemen, smiths, etc., who are as different from the farmers in 

 everything as one set of men can be from another. When times are 

 good their wages are such as to afford them many luxuries which the 

 poor farmer considers far too extravagant. Instead of living on vege- 

 table diet with cheese and buttermilk, they luxuriate on flesh and fowl, 

 and often on game too, of their own procuring. But in their dress is 

 the greatest difference. The farmer is almost always dressed the same, 

 except that on Sundays and market-day it is newer. But the difference 

 between the collier or furnaceman at his work — when he is half naked, 

 begrimed from head to foot, labouring either in the bowels of the earth 

 or among roaring fires, and looking more like demon than man — and on 

 holidays dressed in a suit of clothes that would not disgrace an English 

 gentleman, is most remarkable. It is nothing uncommon to see these 

 men dressed in coat and trousers of fine black cloth, elegant waistcoat, 

 fine shirt, beaver hat, Wellington boots, and a fine silk handkerchief in 

 his pocket ; and instead of being ridiculous, as the clumsy farmer would 

 be in such a dress, wearing it with a quiet, unconcerned, and gentle- 

 manly air. The men at the large works, such as Merthyr Tydfil, are 

 more gaudy in their dress, and betray themselves much more quickly 

 than the colliers of many other districts. 



It is an undoubted fact, too, that the persons engaged in the col- 

 lieries and iron works are far more intellectual than the farmers, and 

 pay more attention to their own and their children's education. Many 

 of them indeed are well informed on most subjects, and in every respect 

 much more highly civilized than the farmer. 



The wages which these men get — in good times £2 or £3 per week — 

 prevents them, with moderate care, from being ever in any great dis- 

 tress. They likewise always live well, which the poor farmer does not, 

 and though many of them have a bit of land and all a potato ground, 

 the turnpike grievances, poor-rates, and tithes do not affect them as 

 compared with the farmers, to whom they are a grievous burden, mak- 

 ing the scanty living with which they are contented hard to be obtained. 



Their rents, too, continue the same as when their produce sold for 

 much more and the above-mentioned taxes were not near so heavy. 

 The consequence is that the poor farmer works from morning to night 

 after his own fashion, lives in a manner which the poorest English 

 labourer would grumble at, and as his reward, perhaps, has his goods 

 and stock sold by his landlord to pay the exorbitant rent, averaging 8.y. 

 or 10s. per acre for such land as I have described. 



Language, Character, etc. 



The Welsh farmer is a veritable Welshman. He can speak English 

 but very imperfectly, and has an abhorrence of all Saxon manners and 



