The land, he tells us, was dark indeed. Scarcely any of the lower ranks could read at all. The morals of the country were very corrupt; and in this respect there was no difference between high and low, layman and clergyman. Gluttony, drunkenness, and licentiousness prevailed through the whole country. Nor were the operations of the church at all adapted to repress these evils. From the pulpit the name of the Redeemer was scarcely heard; nor was much mention made of the natural sinfulness of man, or of the influence of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday mornings, the poor were more constant in their attendance at church than the gentry; but the Sunday evenings were spent by all in idle amusements. Every Sabbath there was practised a kind of sport, called in Welsh _Achwaren-gamp_, in which all the young men of the neighborhood had a trial of strength, and the people assembled from the surrounding country to witness their feats. On a Saturday night, particularly in the summer, the young men and women held what they called _Nosweithian cann_, or singing eves; that is, they met together and amused themselves by singing in turns to the harp, till the dawn of the Sabbath. These things, with the performance of rustic dramas, would occupy sometimes the whole of the sacred day itself; while a set of vagabonds, called the _Bobl gerdded_, or walking people, used to traverse the villages, begging with impunity, to the disgrace alike of the law and the country. With all this social sprightliness, the Welsh were then a superstitious, and even a gloomy people. They still retained many habits apparently derived from paganism, and not a few of the practices of popery. Their funerals, like those of the Irish, were scenes of riot and drunkenness, followed by prayers for the release of the deceased from the pains of purgatory. Such was the superstition of the people, that when Methodism was first introduced among them, many of the peasantry expressed their horror of the new opinions by the truly Popish gesture of crossing the forehead; and when Wesley first visited them, he pronounced them "as little versed in the principles of Christianity as a Creek or Cherokee Indian." To this declaration he added the striking remark, that, "notwithstanding their superstition and ignorance, the people 'were ripe for the gospel,' and most enthusiastically anxious to avail themselves of every opportunity of instruction."