But, in any account of Welsh preaching, the place ought never to be forgotten—the scenery. We have said, the country is losing, now, many of its old characteristics of solitude and isolation; the railways are running along at the foot of the tall mountains, and spots, which we knew thirty years since as hamlets and villages, have now grown into large towns. It has often been the case, that populations born and reared amidst remote mountain solitudes, have possessed strong religious susceptibilities. The Welshman’s chapel was very frequently reared in the midst of an unpeopled district, likely to provoke wonder in the mind of the passing stranger, as to whence it could derive its congregation. The building was erected there because it was favourable to a confluence of neighbourhoods. Take a region near to the spot where Christmas Evans was born,—a wild, mountainous tract of country, lying between the counties Brecon and Cardigan; for long miles, in every direction, there are no human habitations,—only, perhaps, here and there, in a deep dingle, some lone house, the residence of a sheep farmer, with three or four cultivated fields in its immediate neighbourhood; and at some distance, on the slopes of the mountain, an occasional shepherd’s hut. It is a scene of the wildest magnificence. The traveller, as he passes along, discerns nothing but a sea of mountains,—rugged and precipitous bluffs, and precipices innumerable; here the grand and sportive streams, the Irvon, the Towy, and the Dothia, spring from their rocky channels, and tumble along, rushing and gurgling with deafening roar; here, as you pass along, you encounter more than one or two “wolves’ leaps;”—dark caverns are there, from whence these brotherly rivers rush into each other’s embrace. These regions, when we were in the habit of crossing them, many years since,—and we often crossed them,—we very naturally regarded as the Highlands, the sequestered mountain retreats, of Wales; this was Twm Shon Catty’s, the Welsh Rob Roy’s, country; for let Scotland boast as she will— “Wales has had a thief as good, She has her own Rob Roy.” And wonderfully romantic is the story of this same Welsh gentleman, and predatory chieftain. Here you find, to this day, his cave, from whence the bold and humorous outlaw was wont to spring forth, to spread terror and rapine over the whole region. It is thirty years since we passed through these desolations; they are probably much the same now as they were then; let the traveller shout as he will as he passes along, it is not from any human being, it is only from the wild rock, or screaming bird, he will have a reply.