Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/51

 the house which is missing in our more modem farmhouses? Take, for instance, the characteristic of every old Welsh house, the great mantel over the fireplace, not a miserable little grate just stuck at one corner, but a real mantel which is a feature of the whole room, where there is plenty of room for a fire, and where the family can comfortably sit around it at night, and not feel that one is taking the whole of the fire and that the others have to take a back or an apologetic seat. It is a joy to me that, in what I may call the better planned houses of our own day, the houses that are planned by our greatest architects and that are enjoyed by men of wealth and taste, this great feature of the old Welsh houses, the great mantel, is becoming, whether in the hall or in the dining-room, one of the striking and most pleasurable features. I am always glad to find also in old farmhouses, not alone that there is a noble fireplace with a fine mantel, but that there is also in most of the old Welsh houses a collection of really fine fire-irons, and, believe me, there can be the display of