c.

WELLS, a small episcopal city in Somersetshire, 20 m. SW. of Bath;
it derives its name from hot springs near it, and is possessed of a
beautiful cruciform cathedral in the Early English style, adorned with
some 600 statues of saints, 151 of which are life-size, and some of them
colossal.

WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH, English poet, born in London; author of a
dramatic poem entitled "Joseph and his Brethren," published in 1824, a
poem which failed to attract attention at the time, and the singular
merits of which were first recognised by Swinburne in 1875, the author
having meantime given up literature for the law, to which he had been
bred (1800-1879).

WELSH, DAVID, a Scottish divine, a gentlemanly scholarly man,
professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh; was Moderator
of the General Assembly on the occasion of the Disruption of the Scottish
Church (1843), and headed the secession on the day of the exodus
(1793-1845).

WELSH, or WELCH, JOHN, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man;
became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a
preacher and for his sturdy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of
James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an
ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John
Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband
a bishopric, held out her apron before sovereign majesty, and threatened
she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and
be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in "Sartor" on Aprons, as one of
Carlyle's apron-worthies (1570-1625).

WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISTS, the largest Nonconformist body in
Wales, of native growth, and that originated in the middle of the 18th
century in connection with a great religious awakening; has an
ecclesiastical constitution on Presbyterian lines, and is in alliance
with the Presbyterian Church of England; it consists of 1330 churches,
and has a membership of over 150,000, that is, on their communion roll,
and two theological seminaries, one at Trevecca and one at Bala.

WELSHPOOL (6), town in Montgomeryshire, North Wales, on the left
bank of the Severn, 19 m. W. of Shrewsbury, the manufacture of flannels
and woollen goods being the chief industry.

WENDS, a horde of savage Slavs who, about the 6th century, invaded
and took possession of vacant lands on the southern shores of the Baltic,
and extended th