“In every hollow dingle stood, Of wry-mouth fiends a wrathful brood.”
So we think of him pressing on his way; no doubt often drenched to the skin, although uninjured in body; sometimes through scenes novel and grand, where the mountain looks sad with some ruin on its brow, as beneath Cader Idris (the chair or throne of Idris), where the meditative wanderer might conceive he saw some old king, unfortunate and melancholy, but a king still, with the look of a king, and the ancestral crown on his forehead.
We may be sure he came where corpse-candles glittered, unquenched by nineteenth-century ideas, along the road; for those travelling times were much nearer to the days of Twm ór Nant, who, when he kept turnpike, was constantly troubled by hearses, and mourning coaches, and funeral processions on foot passing through his gate. Through lonely places and alder swamps, where nothing would be heard but the murmuring of waters, and the wind rushing down the gullies,—sometimes falling in with a pious and sympathetic traveller, a lonely creature, “Sorry to say, Good-bye, thank you for your conversation; I haven’t heard such a treat of talk for many a weary day.” Often, passing through scenes where the sweet voice of village bells mingled with the low rush of the river; and sometimes where the rocks rolled back the echoes like a pack of dogs sweeping down the hills. “Hark to the dogs!” exclaimed a companion to Mr. Borrow once. “This pass is called _Nant yr ieuanc gwn_, the pass of the young dogs; because, when one shouts, it answers with a noise resembling the crying of hounds.”
What honour was paid to the name and memory of the earnest-hearted and intrepid Felix Neff, the pastor of the Higher Alps; but does not the reader, familiar with the life of that holy man, perceive much resemblance in the work, the endurance, and the scenery of the toil, to that of Christmas Evans? May he not be called the pastor of our English Engadine?
All such lives have their grand compensations; doubtless this man had his, and _great_ compensations too; perhaps, among the minor ones, we may mention his ardent reception at the great Association gatherings. At these his name created great expectations; there he met crowds of brethren and friends, from the remote parts of the Principality, by whom he was at once honoured and loved. We may conceive such an occasion; the “one-eyed man of Anglesea” has now been for many years at the very height of his popularity; his name is now the greatest in his denomination; this will be one of his great occasions, and his coming has been expected for many weeks. No expectation hanging upon the appearance of Jenny Lind, or Christine Nielson, or Sims Reeves, on some great musical festivity, can reach, in our imagination, the expectations of these poor, simple villagers as they think of the delight they will experience in listening to their wonderful and well-loved prophet.
