Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/136

 says that "the men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life, accumulated in frosty furrows, in poverty, necessity, and darkness." Mr. Lleufer Thomas, speaking of Lleyn and Eifionydd, remarks that owing to the remoteness of the situation, the inhabitants are utterly free from English influence in social matters, and Welsh is the only medium of communication; but concurrently with this apparent isolation there is a high standard of intelligence, particularly in Eifionydd, which has a high reputation in Wales for its appreciation of literature, and its fostering of literary societies. Farmers appear to have availed themselves to a remarkable degree of all the newest agricultural methods which are capable of adoption in their district. They take a more active part in farm work than their Anglesea brethren, and there is not in the district that social gap separating the