“Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view! The fountain’s fall, the river’s flow, The woody valleys, warm and low: The windy summit, wild and high, Roughly rushing on the sky! The pleasant seat, the ruin’d tow’r, The naked rock, the shady bow’r; The town and village, dome and farm, Each give to each a double charm, As pearls upon an Ethiop’s arm.”
The manners of the people, a few years since, were as singular and primeval as their country; in all the villages there were singular usages. The “biddings” to their weddings,—which have, perhaps, yielded to advanced good taste,—had a sweeter relief in other customs, at weddings and funerals, tending to civilize, and refine. Throughout Glamorganshire, especially, and not many years since, it was the universal custom, when young unmarried persons died, to strew the way to the grave with sweet flowers and evergreens. Mr. Malkin, in his interesting work on South Wales, published now seventy years since, says: “There is in the world an unfeeling kind of false philosophy, which will treat such customs as I mention with ridicule; but what can be more affecting than to see all the youth of both sexes in a village, and in every village through which the corpse passes, dressed in their best apparel, and strewing with sweet-scented flowers the ways along which one of their beloved neighbours was carried to his, or her last home?” No doubt such customs are very much changed, but they were prevalent during that period to which most of those preachers whose manners we have mentioned belonged.
Such pathetic usages, indicating a simple state of society, are commonly associated, as we have seen, with others of a rougher kind and character. The Welsh preachers were the pioneers of civilization,—although advanced society might still think much had to be done in the amelioration of the national manners. They probably touched a few practices which were really in themselves simple and affecting, but they swept away many superstitions, quite destroyed many rude and degrading practices, and introduced many usages, which, while they were in conformity with the national instincts of the people (such as preaching and singing, and assembling themselves together in large companies), tended to refine and elevate the mind and heart.