such disastrous results. I must own that the reason adduced
by the reverend gentleman was not to me convincing, for as far as my
experience goes the smoker infinitely prefers a cup of coffee with his
cigar or pipe to any amount of alcoholic liquor. Judge, then, of my
surprise when at Melbourne, after our evening meal, Mr. Bevan proposed to
me that we should adjourn to his study and have a smoke--an invitation
with which I gladly complied. After my recollection of the scene in the
London chapel I was glad to find the Doctor, as regards tobacco, sober
and in his right mind. Long may he be spared after the labours of his
busy life to soothe his wearied mind with the solace of the weed! The
Doctor has a noble presence, and seemed to me when I saw him last to be
getting in face more and more like England's greatest orator--as regards
latter days--Mr. John Bright. In his far-away home he seemed to me to
retain his love for Wales and the sense of the superiority of the
Welshman to any one on the face of the earth. The Doctor is an ardent
Gladstonite--and people of that way of thinking are not quite as numerous
in the Colonies as they are at home.

Another Welshman who made his mark in London was the Rev. Dr. Thomas, a
Congregational minister at Stockwell, a fine-looking young man when I
first knew him as a minister at Chesham. He developed the faculty of his
countrymen for lofty ideas and aims to an extent that ended in disastrous
failure. It was he who originated the idea of _The Dial_--which was to
be a daily to advocate righteousness, and to beat down and to supplant
_The Times_. The motto was to be "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but
sin is a reproach to any people." He got a great many people to take
shares, and commenced the publication of _The Dial_ in the first place as
a weekly. But the paper was a failure from the first. Another idea of
his was to raise a million to build workmen's institutes and recreation
halls all over the kingdom, but as the late Earl of Derby, when appealed
to on the subject, replied, it carried its own condemnation in the face
of it. A society, however, was started, but it never came to much. The
real fact is that institutions established for working men, not by them,
are rarely a success. Dr. Thomas also claimed to have started the idea
of the University for Wales, and was very angry with me when I, after
some inquiry, failed to support his claim. His great success was the
p