91 
dien {senseless in German to my mind), we surely find tlie very 
words. Etch dyn , “ Your man, - ” pronounced when tlie new- 
born British- Welsh prince was held forth to the admiring 
crowd from the window of Caernarvon Castle. W e may even 
go higher in the social scale for illustration, for what is the 
very name of the queen we have referred to ? Boadicea is the 
British Victoria , goddess of victory ! * 
For good or for evil, the interests of the. Welsh and English 
(and let me say Irish) are inseparably entwined together ; and 
it surely ought to be the mission of the ministers of peace and 
goodwill amongst men to remove what remains of the feelings 
excited in the hearts of peoples once oppressed, but now en- 
joying equal privileges with their conquerors. I view with no 
favour the attempts to eradicate the Welsh, the Irish, or the 
Gaelic languages, and to supersede them by the instruction of 
our Board schools in English. One language without a com- 
petitor is apt to degenerate, as we find in London. In con- 
clusion I may be permitted to express regret for the loss of 
the assistance of Welsh friends (amongst others our confrere , 
Canon Lysons) whose memory I cherish, and who would have 
helped my imperfect Welsh. 
Antiquities of Britain. 
I am confronted at the very outset of my inquiry by this 
difficulty : Can it be proved that the megalithic monuments, 
the cairns and dolmens, which still arrest the mind with an 
undefined impression of immeasurable antiquity, have any rela- 
tion to the present population? or may they not rather be the 
survivals of an extinct faith belonging to an aboriginal people 
long since passed away ? Can they be proved to have any 
relation to the Druids and their religion ? So much light has 
been thrown on this subject by the researches of a living 
author,! that it is only requisite that I should advert to some 
points on which I venture to dissent from his views. 
Mr. Fergusson says, “the impression on his mind is every 
day growing stronger that the dolmen builders in France 
are the lineal descendants of the cave men, whose remains have 
recently been detected in such quantities on the banks of the 
Dordogne and other rivers in the south of France. These 
people seem neither to have been Celts nor Gauls, but the 
people of Acquitaine, and allied to the Cimbrians, and there- 
46 
t 
See Williams’s Welsh Dictionary , sub voce , “ Buddigion. 
Fergusson’s Ancient Stone Monuments, p. 32. 
H 2 
