“His path is ’mid the Cambrian mountains wild; The many fountains that well wandering down Plinlimmon’s huge round side their murmurs smooth Float round him; Idris, that like warrior old His batter’d and fantastic helmet rears, Scattering the elements’ wrath, frowns o’er his way, A broad irregular duskiness. Aloof Snowdon, the triple-headed giant, soars, Clouds rolling half-way down his rugged sides. Slow as he trod amid their dizzy heights, Their silences and dimly mingling sounds, Rushing of torrents, war of prison’d winds; O’er all his wounded soul flow’d strength, and pride, And hardihood; again his front soar’d up To commerce with the skies, and frank and bold, His majesty of step his rugged path Imprinted . . . . . . Whence, ye mountains, whence The spirit that within your secret caves Holds kindred with man’s soul?” Henry Vaughan delighted to call himself the Silurist, always proud of the country from whence he came: his was a different region of Wales from that which produced Christmas Evans. Henry Vaughan was the swan of the Usk; but the sermons of Evans, like the sacred poems of Vaughan, were a kind of _Silex Scintillans_, or sparks from the flint, sparks shot forth from the great mountains, and the overhanging stars, with both of which he held long communion: he had no opportunity for any other often in the course of his travel; they were as the streets of God, lighted with suns stretching across his way, in the green amphitheatre of day, and the blue amphitheatre of night. And this was, no doubt, very greatly the secret of his preaching. It is not too strong a term to use, to say that, with all its brilliancy, its bardic, and poetic splendours, it was massive preaching. He usually laid the foundations of the edifice of a sermon, strong and secure in reason, and in Scripture, securing the understanding, and the convictions of his hearers, before he sketched those splendid allegories, or gave those descriptive touches; before even he appealed to those feelings, when he led the whole congregation captive by the chains of his eloquence.