The London Welshman

Cambria Cycling Club THE FIRST EVENING MEETING m of the above Club M'aG\ I rh £ mBbTW will be held on the KENSAL RISE —TRACK,— Wednesday. June 28th, 1905, at 7 p.m. EVENTS. FIVE MILES OLUB CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE PRICE & HOPKINS CHALLENGE CUP. ONE MILE HANDICAP. ONE MILE NOVICE HANDICAP- Officials and Competitors only are allowed inside the Enclosure. Tickets 6d. each to be had of E. THOMAS, Hon.- Sec., 24, Upper Montague Street, W.C. I

Review. Cardigan Priory in the Olden Days. By Mrs. John M. Pritchard (Olwen Powys). Lon= don: William Heinemann. IN a preface the authoress of this handsome volume states that it is the result of investigation whilst preparing a paper on the subject to be read before the Cambrian Archaeological Society when that body visited Cardigan in August of last year, In searching for information thereon I came," she says, "on so much that was inter- esting, and that would have taken far too long to read during the time limit allowed for the paper, that I was asked to publish it." We are very glad that she has done so. Mrs. Pritchard evidently loves the old Priory, and fortune has greatly favoured her with facilities to know its history. Not only does she live there, but she is also the wife of the proprietor. And it is to her credit that she has used her talents and opportunities to gather materials for a very in- teresting chapter to the chronicles of Welsh religion and Welsh ancient life. The story of a Priory at Cardigan probably goes back as far as the fifth century, when a religious house was founded there by Mathaiarn, son of Brychan Brycheiniog. But the first date we have of its existence is 1164, when Rhys ap Gruffydd conquered Cardigan, and by a grant confirmed the gift of the then existing Priory Cell to the Black Monks of St. Benedict, of the Abbey of Chertsey. Mrs. Pritchard comes to the conclusion, on what seems to be very good evidence, that that cell must have been built by the first Normans who visited and ravaged West Wales. It belonged to the Abbey of Chertsey apparently from the beginning. From 1200 its history is pretty clear, and anyone who desires to weave the story out for himself will find in this book all the necessary details. It is a volume that cannot other than prove very valu- able to the historian or the romancist of the future. All the authorities are cited, we are not asked to take anything on trust. Olwen Powys has done her self-imposed task very thoroughly, and the old Priory will not share the oblivion in which so many of the monks who inhabited it are buried. The illustrations and drawings are beautifully executed, and the turn out of the volume is quite worthy of the famous publishing house from which it is issued.

WELSH NATIONAL MUSEUM. • Carnarvon's Protest. The Town Clerk of Carnarvon has addressed the following letter to the Clerk of the Privy Council I have perused a copy of the memorandum referred to in the report of the Committee of the Privy Council, and find that in the summary of support, &c., offered by Carnarvon for the establishment of the museum within its limits it is stated that Carnarvon offered Carnarvon Castle, to which end the Corporation have voted ^5,000 and the Carnarvon County Council ^2,500. I beg respectfully to draw your atten- tion to paragraph nine on page four of the Carnarvon memorial, in which it is stated that 'your memorialists undertake to be responsible for the total amount required to fit the Castle for the purpose of the museum, the Corporation of Carnarvon itself having voted half the required sum from the rates, the residue being provided by voluntary subscriptions. Thus.the whole of the site, building, and fittings are hereby pro- vided by the locality. Furthermore, the Car- narvonshire County Council have voted the sum of ^2,500 and the Executive Committee of the National Eisteddfod of 1906 will also devote their surplus, which can be applied towards the maintenance of the museum.' According to the report of the Committee, it would,appear as 11 Carnarvon was only offering ^7,500, whereas, as a matter of fact, the total fund provided by the borough was £ 12,500, viz., Z5, 000 by the Town Council, £2,5°0 by the County Council, and £ 5,000 provided by voluntary subscriptions.

more than met the eye. The present life was steeped in the life to come time was saturated with eternity, and the world was spirit woven. There was no age in which doubt was more deep and stern, but the doubt itself was the reflex of a larger faith. Had we verily any right to such conviction ? What gave the right to these two poets ? They said they were not intellectual grounds. Thou canst not prove the nameless, 0 my son," said Tennyson in his lovely musical way, and Browning declared it did not rest on knowledge. Both Tennyson and Browning would attribute their final assurance of immortality to something else than knowledge, and would not call it proof. In a sense, their certainty was immediate, intuitive, anticipating knowledge and outrunning proof. Faith distinguished from reason could not satisfy. The religious man who relied on such a defence (faith without reason) gave his case away, and the poets themselves took far stronger grounds. So far from ousting reason in this quest for immortality, they employed it in their need. Their faith was the faith of reason agnosticism was the insecure refuge of intel- lectual despair. In all our knowledge we found the same so-called intuition, the same outrun- ning of proof, which was really the forecast of reason and the first step of proof. There were examples in every science, and, above all, in the conception of the world as ruled by law, that somehow secured permanence amidst change. It was in this faith, or on this hypothesis, that science sought to know and man led his daily life. This hypothesis was not proved, but it was being proved. It remained, and would remain to the end, a hypothesis but it was surer than any particular fact, for it supplied the meaning of every fact. That was why he called it know- ledge and in the same sense he called that knowledge which the two poets called faith. Religious men might take much stronger ground than they did in defending religious belief. What was called faith was equivalent to the hypotheses used in science which were being progressively proved by every fresh establish- ment of the laws of science. Agnosticism, positivism, and scepticism had no right to con- centrate their attacks on man's religious beliefs alone. Their argument against such beliefs had precisely the same validity against all other knowledge, even that which appeared most immediate and direct. It therefore proved too much. It destroyed their very engines of attack, for it destroyed the knowledge with which they assailed knowledge. Their probing of the order of nature did not go deep enough their doubt lacked courage. Some hypotheses were so inwrought into the very texture of rational experience that to deny them was to destroy experience, and one such hypothesis he believed to be that in which the poets found an anchor that held the hypothesis of God, in whom dwelt all perfection, power, knowledge, and love. Harbouring no error that it could detect, foster- ing no hope that merely flattered, recognising on every hand meanings that it could not fathom, still this hypothesis was found to work By numerous quotations from both poets the lecturer showed completion of their belief in immortality, and their conviction that there remained for the soul a conscious and indefi- nitely prolonged life beyond death," which was the only definition of immortality that appeared to him satisfactory, or as he had heard the Master of Balliol say, "Immortality, or some- thing better, if better can be." Professor Jones sought to prove that the poets' faith was really the faith of reason but, to understand that, it was necessary to clearly distinguish between reason and logic. These two really stood to each other as, say, the earth to geology, or plant life to botany—or, he might add, as religion stands to theology. In reason we really employ not merely the elementary piocesses illustrated in books of logic, but the whole of our past self comes into play. Deeply-felt convictions are so because of the congruity they exhibit with all the rest of our experience, and "proof" rises to its highest when the bearings of the conclusion ramify into our experience as a whole.