88 
endeavour to steer between Scylla and Cliarybdis, and to 
conciliate some wbo at present are averse to the study. Cir- 
cumstances have through the last twenty years led me to pay 
frequent visits to (( wild Wales; " and I must acknowledge an 
interest in the people as -well as in the scenery w r hich may 
scarcely seem belonging to one whose life has been passed in the 
vicinity of the Imperial city ; whose daily journalists teach 
us to look down upon the rest of England as “ provinces 
provincial towns /' — “ conquered/' I suppose, by the Roman 
legionaries stationed in London when Boadicea and her 
valiant “ British" rose against the central authority. I must 
also confess that I am attracted by the peculiarities of a rich, 
fluent and ancient tongue, and one which seems, to my sur- 
prise, to have some deeply philosophical principles involved 
in its original structure.* Why should we desire its extinction, 
or shut our eyes to the very obvious truth that we are not a 
homogeneous nation ? — not Romans, not Anglo-Saxons, not 
Britons, except in part ; least of all can we trace our descent 
from the lost tribes of Israel, being, without knowing it, of 
the Circumcision. In consequence of this latter descent it is 
said we are to inherit all nations.! If any do not exactly see 
this, it is so much the worse for them, for “ when God has 
desired to place a portion of the heathen heritage in our hands, 
He has made us seize it by violence (!), thus breaking the 
heathen kings and potentates into pieces like a potter's 
vessel." It is not my object to controvert these wise people, 
who find in the national inclination to drunkenness one of the 
strongest arguments for their being “ the Israel of God;" 
but it is quite to the point on which I am writing to show the 
amount of ignorance that prevails, even among “ Anglo- 
Saxons." It appears on the same authority that the Irish, 
or at least the southern portion of the nation, are “ cursed 
Canaanites," and therefore their lives and liberties, to say 
nothing of their lands, are at the disposal of the Protestants 
of the North, who are God's Israel, and if they find the land 
too narrow for them have only to march southward and possess 
their inheritance ! 
In an interesting account of a Board school for deaf mutes 
which I recently read, it is recorded that the astonishment of 
the pupils had no bounds when they found that the world 
extended far beyond London. The ignorance of these afflicted 
ones simply calls forth our sympathy ; but the ignorance of 
* See Gomer. By Archdeacon Williams, 1854. 
t Anglo-lsraelism Examined. By F. H. White ; 1879. 
