We only know history through men; events are only possible through men, of whose mind and activity they are the manifestation. This brief succession of sketches has been very greatly a series of portraits standing out prominently from the scenery to which the character gave effect; but of this singular, almost simultaneous movement, how much has been left unrecorded! It remains unquestionably true that no adequate and perfectly impartial review of the Revival has ever yet been written. [Illustration: Boston Elm. ] The story of the Revival in Wales, what it found there, and what it effected, is one of its most interesting chapters. How deep was the slumber when, about 1735-37, Howell Harris began to traverse the Principality, exhorting his neighbours concerning the interests of their souls! another illustration that it was not from one single spring that the streams of the Revival poured over the land. It was rather like some great mountain, such as Plinlimmon, from whose high centre, elevated among the clouds, leap forth five rivers, meandering among the rocks in their brook-like way, until at last they pour themselves along the lowlands in broad and even magnificent streams, either uniting as the Severn and the Wye, or finding their separate way to the ocean. Whitefield found his way to Wales, but Howell Harris was already pouring out his consecrated life there; to his assistance came the voice of Rowlands, “the thunderer,” as he was called. Scientific sermon-makers would say that Harris was no great preacher; but he has been described as the most successful and wonderful one who ever ascended pulpit or platform in the Principality. By the mingling of his tears and his terrors, in seven years he roused the whole country from one end to the other, north and south; communicating the impulse of his zeal to many like-minded men, by whose impassioned words and indefatigable labours the work was continued with signal and lasting results.[20] Footnote 20: See a series of papers on “Welsh Preaching and Preachers” in the _Sunday at Home_, for 1876.