against death; and very pleasant to me was to bear his friends there speaking of him—Glan Dyfi, Cheshire A. Jones, Mr. & Mrs. Percy, Mr. & Mrs. Bowen, and many others. Mr. & Mrs. Bowen would never get tired of speaking of him; they loved him as they would have loved an angel. Mrs. Bowen said much about his inexhaustible power to converse—especially on literary, moral, and religious subjects. When excited, if left alone, he would speak on any import- ant subject for an hour or two, until he tired himself, without tiring any one who listened to him. Mrs. Bowen wept for him like a mother weeping for her child.
When Risiart Ddu was already nearing the dark valley of the shadow of death, he competed for the Chair of the Gordovigion at Liverpool, on an elegy for the late Rev. Henry Rees—one of the brightest seraphs of the Welsh pulpit—and won the Chair (though never sat in it) a little before going to sit>in the chair of the "good and faithful servant " in heaven.
I never saw Risiart Ddu after the Llandudno Eisteddfod in 1864. I believe that his last literary public service was adjudicating the elegies for the late Dr. Rowlands at the Utica Eisteddfod, Jan. 1, 1870. I thought there was a mistake or two in his adjudication (he was one of the keenest adjudicators in the world), and called his attention to it. He answered my letter, and probably that was one of the last letters he ever wrote. I value it above a precious pearls; and copy it here. Reader, see how he could face death!
