Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/36

 As we look round upon the life and the activities of our day in Wales, I think we cannot but feel that we are in the glad spring— time for Wales, there are buds and blossoms and flowers of promise in every sphere of the activity of the people of Wales, or of the Welsh people, whether they live in Wales or over the border, and I think in a season of awakening, it is right and well and perhaps a duty on our part to see what is the meaning of the awakening, how deep it is, and into what channels the new life which comes from the awakening is spreading itself.

I think one may say at the start—and one admits it with sorrow as well as with frankness —that not the most patriotic of us can claim for Wales the possession of a native school of art, as is possessed in other small countries which have obtained and enjoyed the priceless gift of self-government. I remember well in 1887 spending a few days in the great Exhibition at Paris. I have forgotten most of what I saw there; I have a vague recollection of the crowd and of watching many who came from the various provinces of France, and a