And, perhaps, in this connection, we may say, without being misunderstood, that the especial necessities of his life gave to it something of a cloistered, and monastic character. He was not immured in the cell, or the monastery, but how little can we realize the profound solitude of those long journeys, so constantly renewed, through the silence of the lonely hills, across the desolation of the uninhabited moor! An intensely nervous, and meditative nature, no possibility of the book then, no retreat, we can believe no desire to retreat from the infinite stretched above him, and even the infinite seeming to spread all around him. In so devout a nature, how calculated all this to foster devotion, until it became at once the support, as well as the passion, of the soul!
And these perpetual wanderings among the mountains must have been a fine spiritual education, an education deepening emotion in the soul, and at the same time kindling the mind in thoughtful imagery. He reminds us of Dean Milman’s hero, also a pilgrim through Wales:—
“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.