Cylchgronau Cymru

a martyr. The young man was largely self-taught and not so well equipped in the Classical tongues as some would have wished. Nice Davies' observation was that he did not propose to reject a promising young man because he had no Latin, just as he would not accept a fool because he had Latin. He evidently set more store by power of mind and soul than by 'qualifications'. It must be said, too, that now Edward Davies was show- ing more adaptability than his adverse critics had expected. His sympathy, tact and friendliness during the eighteen years he was to spend at Brecon were to make him one of the best loved of tutors we know that Ieuan Gwynedd had a great affection for him.144 Among other students of Nice Davies's time were the rousing preacher Samuel Thomas and John Henry Hughes (Ieuan o Leyn), the first to be admitted at Brecon, mission- ary for some seven years in British Guiana and, like the other Ieuan, one of the poet-preachers.145 The appointment of Charles Nice Davies to the chair at Brecon, what- ever else it may indicate, shows the unwillingness of our border college to become enslaved to any tradition; and the same must be said of that of his successor, Henry Griffiths, son of James Griffiths, an independent minister who had embraced the 'New System', and father of E. H. Griffiths, the second Principal of Cardiff University College. Henry Griffiths, after a period at Neuadd-lwyd, had been educated at the University College in London, where he had fallen under the spell of the dazzling lectures of Augustus de Morgan, the eminent mathematician who had sought to wed mathematics with logic. Griffiths seems to have been moved by an even loftier ambition, the reconciliation of the whole world of scientific thought with the affirmations of faith; and it was the students of Brecon from 1842 to 1833 that first marvelled at the flowing and exhilarating discourses which were afterwards given less interesting form in his published works, Faith, the Life-root of Science, Philosophy, Ethics and Religion and Conservation of Forces.146 Since he did his best thinking in pre-Darwinian days his reputation has not been commensurate with his ability; but the appointment of such a man to the Principalship of the College showed a commendable desire to grapple with the issues of con- temporary thought. In his time there were two most significant develop- ments the College was opened to a limited number of non-ministerial students and in 1832 it was recognized as one of the colleges of the Uni- 144 Perhaps the death of his promising son, George Lewis Davies, at the age of twenty, in 1841, drew him closer to his students. The correspondence between father and son was carefully preserved and is kept at the Memorial College it makes interesting and moving reading. 146 For these facts about Edward Roberts, Cwmafan, and Ieuan Gwynedd see Vyrnwy Morgan's 37 Edward Roberts, 1904, p. 37 et seqq., and Cofiant a Gweithiau Ieuan Gwynedd, p. 42. 146 See the appreciation of him by E. A. Jones, one of his students, in Album Aberhonddu, p. 112 also Bywgraffiadur, s.v. Henry Griffiths.