ublication of a magazine for preachers, under the title of _The
Homilist_. The writer was a great man, not so much so, perhaps, as he
thought, and had his full share of Welsh enthusiasm and fire. But he
made a terrible blunder over his _Dial_ scheme. He had done better had
he kept to the pulpit. Parsons are not always practical, and the
management of successful daily newspapers is not exactly in their line.
The shoemaker should stick to his last; but in spite of Welsh poetic
geniuses, the great fact which always strikes men in London is the
commercial successes of the Welshmen who venture to try their fortune on
the metropolitan stage. This especially strikes me with regard to the
drapery trade. Many of the largest establishments in that way are owned
at this present time by Welshmen--such as Jones, of Holloway; Evans, of
Oxford Street, and many more. Few of them had capital or friends to help
them, yet few men have done better in the pleasant art of
money-making--an art rare, alas! to the class to which I have the honour
to belong.

CHAPTER X.
A GREAT NATIONAL MOVEMENT.

One national movement in which I took a prominent part was the formation
of freehold land societies, which commenced somewhere about 1850, and at
which _The Times_, after its manner in those days, sneered, asking
scornfully what was a freehold land society. The apostle of the new
movement, which was to teach the British working man how to save money
and buy a bit of land on which to build a house and secure a vote, was
Mr. James Taylor, born in Birmingham in 1814. Like all other Birmingham
boys, James was early set to work, and became an apprentice in one of the
fancy trades for which Birmingham was famed. His industrious habits soon
acquired for him the approbation of his master, who, on retiring from
business before Taylor was of age, gave him his indentures. About that
time Taylor, earning good wages and not having the fear of Malthus before
his eyes, got married and lived happily till, like too many of his class,
he took to drink. After years of utter misery and degradation, Taylor,
in a happy hour for himself and society, took the temperance pledge and
became a new man. Nor was he satisfied with his own reform alone. He
was anxious that others should be rescued from degradation as he had
been. For this purpose he identified himself with the Temperance cause,
and was honorary secretary to the Birmingham Temperance Society ti