made a last appeal for recognition. The appeal met with no response; and at the Association which met at Bala in 1811 Charles himself, while still protesting his preference for episcopal ordination, ordained eight preachers, of whom the great John Elias was {213} one. This implied a definite breach with the Church. The great body of Methodists formed themselves into a new Church, with its own constitution and its own Confession of Faith. It became known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church. But even then six Methodist clergymen refused to quit the Establishment. Throughout the nineteenth century Nonconformity flourished abundantly in Wales. The Revival had not only produced the Calvinistic Methodists, but had given a new and powerful impetus to the older sects; and between them they claimed the allegiance of the vast majority of Welsh people. The young Welshman, and even more so the foreigner, finds it a little difficult to understand the enormous place which the Chapel filled in the life of Wales during the greater part of the century. Those little plain square buildings, scattered so profusely all over Wales, so ugly in the eyes of the tourist, yet so sacred to those who dwell around them; what was the secret of their power and their charm? To-day there are many competing institutions--the school, the college, the club, and the library; but in those days the chapel was everything. In the pulpit the artistic soul of Wales found its full expression, as it {214} has never quite succeeded in doing anywhere else. Its poetry (if we except its hymns), good as much of it is, never even approaches the very best. Its painting and its sculpture are almost non-existent. Even in music Wales has not given to the world anything of real distinction, and of abiding value. But between 1780 and 1880 it produced successive generations of preachers, who brought pulpit oratory to a point that has never been surpassed, even if it has been equalled, by any other nation before or since. Even to-day, when oratory has declined, and when there are so many competing attractions, there is nothing that the Welshman loves so well as a Preaching Meeting. Five thousand people will still come together eagerly to the village green on one of these great occasions. At six o'clock in the morning two sermons, averaging each an hour in length, will be delivered. These will be followed, at ten o'clock, by two others of the same length. In the afternoon two more will be delivered. The day will close with yet another two, or sometimes three, such sermons; and the multitude will disperse over hill and moor to their scattered homes, discussing the great feats of oratory to which they have {215} listened, quoting and conferring with discrimination, and singing, for the twentieth time that day, some favourite hymn.