his was done on grounds of poverty in accordance with a practice all but universal.
Absenteeism is the necessary corollary of plurality, but this custom which was unavoidable where an incumbent held two or more livings gave rise to irregularities where the excuse for them was wanting, and we find William Williams, when curate of Llanwrtyd and Abergwesyn, still residing with his parents at Pantycelyn, near Llandovery. But the excuse was little sought. It was the manner of the time. Indeed, the vicar of Llangamarch and St. David's, Llanfaes, had a profound sense of the responsibilities of his sacred office. We are told that he was an earnest and eloquent preacher, and we know from his writings that he was an ardent advocate of purity in morals and orthodoxy in religious views. He even feels that the temporal welfare of the community is directly based upon its religious earnestness and the sincerity of its professions, and that the decay of faith is the unerring harbinger of national calamity. He does not seem, however, to have any sympathy for the revival movement, at any rate in its tendency to break away from the Church. This seemed to him to be due to excessive zeal not according to knowledge, and was a sign of weakness, which if persevered in was bound to end disastrously for the people.
His cultivation of the Welsh language, and wonderful mastery of a strong and nervous Welsh style are worthy of all praise. He had seen that he could reach "the hill-dwellers of Wales" only through the vernacular, and he did not scorn to use it as the vehicle of his thoughts in all his writings with one solitary exception, and that at a time when many of those who held
