How often has the idea of this stupendous mountain filled my heart with enthusiastic rapture! Every time I cast my eyes on that solemn, that majestic vision, it is not without the most powerful emotion; it excites that tender melancholy, which exalts rather than depresses the mind! How delightful to bid adieu to all the cares and occupations of the world, for the reflection of those scenes of sublimity and grandeur, which form such a contrast to the transientness of sublunary greatness! With what anxiety have we watched the setting sun, loitering just below the horizon, and illuminating the highest summit of Snowdon with a golden tinge; and we still watch the passing clouds of night, fearing lest the morning should prove unfavourable for our Alpine excursion! SNOWDON. We engaged the miner {170} as our conductor over the mountain, who entertained us much with displaying, in strong colours, the tricks and impositions of his brother guides. {171} At half-past twelve we started from our inn, determined to see the sun rise from its highest summit. The night was now very dark, and we could just discover that the top of Snowdon was entirely enveloped in a thick impenetrable mist: this unpropitious omen staggered our resolutions; and we for some time hesitated respecting our farther progress; but our guide assuring us that his comfortable cottage was not far distant, we again plucked up resolution; and, quitting the high way about two miles on the Caernarvon road, we turned to the right, through a boggy, unpleasant land, and in danger of losing our shoes every step we took. This soon brought us to the comfortable cot, the filth and dirtiness of which can better be imagined than described; a worm-eaten bed, two small stools, and table fixed to the wall, composed the whole of his furniture; two fighting-cocks were perched on a beam, which Thomas seemed to pride himself in the possession of: the smoke of the fire ascended through a small hole in the roof of this comfortable mansion, the door of which did not appear proof against the “churlish chiding of the winter blast.” Such, indeed, was the situation of this Cambrian mountaineer: and, though, in our own opinion, misery, poverty, and dirt personified, seemed to be the real inhabitants of this cottage, yet there was something prepossessing in his character; for, frequently, with the greatest vehemence imaginable, and in the true style of an anchorite, he declared, that, “though he boasted not riches, yet he boasted of independence; and though he possessed not wealth, yet he possessed the home of happiness, an honest breast.”