WE pause here for a short time, in our review of the career, and character, and pulpit power of Christmas Evans, to notice some of those eminent men, who exercised, in his day, an influence over the Welsh mind. We will then notice some of those preachers, of even the wilder Wales, who preceded these men. So little is known of many of them in England, and yet their character, and labours, are so essentially and excellently instructive, that we feel this work, to those who are interested, to be not one of supererogation. The men, their country, the people among whom they moved, their work in it, the singular faith in, and love for preaching, for the words these men had to utter,—they must seem, to us, remarkable, and memorable. In this time of ours, when preaching, and all faith in preaching, is so rapidly dying out, that it may be regarded, now, as one of the chief qualifications of a candidate for the pulpit, that he cannot preach a sermon, but can “go to those who sell, and buy for himself”—this study of what was effected by a living voice, with a real live soul behind it, must seem, as a matter of mere history, noteworthy. And first among those who charmed the Welsh ear, in the time of Christmas Evans, we mention Williams of Wern. It is not without reason, that many eminent Welshmen can only be known, and really designated after the place of their birth, or the chief scene of their labours. The family of the Williamses, for instance, in Wales, is a very large one—even the eminent Williamses; and William Williams would not make the matter any clearer; for, always with tenderest love ought to be pronounced the name of that other William Williams, or, as he is called, Williams of Pantycelyn—the obscure, but not forgotten, Watts of Wales. His hymns have been sung over the face of the whole earth, and long before missionary societies had been dreamed of, he wrote, in his remote Welsh village, “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness;” and he has cheered, and comforted many a Zion’s pilgrim by his sweet song, “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah!” He was born in 1717, and died in 1791. This sweet and sacred singer ought to receive more than this passing allusion. Little is known of him in England; and it is curious that Mr. Christopher’s volume on “Hymn Writers and their Hymns” neither mentions his hymns, nor his name.