Welsh Journals

always present the great stable support of the desire to help the country that has borne industry through many rough jolts these last months. But it is pre- eminently a situation which can be improved. The task of transforming two powerful societies which have been shaped to fight one another into instruments of the most vigorous co-operation is one that needs as much genius as the direction of a campaign. "MENEVIA OF THE PILGRIMAGES" — And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny I liked the greeting 'twas a sound Of something without place or bound And seemed to give me spiritual right To travel through that region bright." (Wordsworth, Stepping Westward") IT is only along the great highways of the world that human life spins dizzily down the ringing grooves of change; remote from the clanging iron ways, sometimes nestling forgotten in the heart of the mountains or the hills, sometimes left stranded, as it were, in retired inlets along the coasts, there remain specks in the maelstrom which cherish embalmed the atmosphere of a long left past, and to approach them is to feel oneself being steeped, with each step, in their silent, ancient life. Such is St. David's and although it was in an automobile that I topped the ridge, along that ancient pilgrim road which great kings had not been ashamed to tramp, footsore, with staff and scrip, yet one felt all the glory and exaltation of stepping Westward." Surely, never to welcome the weary pilgrim of old, did the mighty mothering west open her arms wider, more magnificently dight in her sunset splendours. Those high rocky tors which, like couchant lions stand sentinel over the great western buttress of the Welsh coast, stood out in bold relief in the limpid light. And beyond them there was all the wild enchantment and mystery, all the mystic, beckoning charm of boundless skyey spaces. As far as the eye could see, the high, level uplands swept down to the sea, windswept and bare, enduring for ever in their remoteness and wild grandeur. And one realised again the truth of that description written long ago by an ancient historian of the twelfth century: Menevia," he wrote, is situated in a most remote corner of land upon the Irish Ocean, the soil stoney and barren, neither clothed with woods, distinguished by rivers nor adorned by meadows, ever exposed Yet it is one that must be faced if the full energy of labour and capital is to be directed to the support of the army in the field. And one may hope that from the new experience of sharing responsibilities in the face of great national emergency, there may emerge a more mutually sympathetic temper for the critical negotiations that will mark the early years of peace. to the winds and tempests For the holy men who settled there chose purposely such a retired habitation, that by avoiding the noise of the world and preferring an hermitical to a pastoral life, they might more freely provide for that part which shall not be taken away.* And the City of the Pilgrims it has remained through the centuries: the lust for travel and wandering is in the blood of its dwellers, in the air of its uplands look around you in its churchyards at the old grey stones and the new; mariner of this town," master mariner of this town they repeat with an unparalleled insistence, and many are the melancholy legends that tell of those who sleep their last sleep far from home in the solitudes of the lone oceans. There, below in the Vale of Roses lie the heart of this old-world village city," the magnificent memorials that those holy men of old left behind them —the great Cathedral of Peter de Leia with the grand old ruins of the Bishop's Palace beside it. It is in the evening, dnd particularly in the west, at sunset that one drinks deep of the glamour and the ineffable charm of these great edifices which the age of faith has left behind it; it is then that story and legend and tradition throng home to people the sacred gloom of their vaulting arches. To stand at the altar gates of St. David's as the sun's last rays filter through the stained glass windows and kindle into fiery glory the splendid blazoned roof overhead, is to let one's imagination slip far back along the grooves of the years. Almost one expects to turn round and see coming up the aisle some ancient pilgrim, the vernicles on his cap, the scallop shells of Compostella at his belt, and the dully jingling leaden ampullae of holy water telling their tale of wandering round the shrines of many lands. In the mellow-coloured half- lights, among the great Norman arches and the stark effigies, one can almost conjure up a vision of that solemn mass which Baldwin, Archbishop of