“After climbing over masses of crags and rocks, we ascended the peak of Snowdon, the height of which is 3571 feet above the level of the Irish Sea. Arrived at its summit, a scene presented itself, magnificent beyond the powers of language! Indeed, language is indigent and impotent, when it would presume to sketch scenes, on which the Great Eternal has placed his matchless finger with delight. Faint are thy broad and deep delineations, immortal Salvator Rosa! Powerless and feeble are your inspirations, Genius of Thomson, Virgil, and Lucretius! “From this point are seen more than five-and-twenty lakes. Seated on one of the crags, it was long before the eye, unaccustomed to measure such elevations, could accommodate itself to scenes so admirable:—the whole appearing as if there had been a war of the elements; and as if we were the only inhabitants of the globe permitted to contemplate the ruins of the world. Rocks and mountains, which, when observed from below, bear all the evidences of sublimity, when viewed from the summit of Snowdon, are blended with others as dark, as rugged, and as elevated as themselves; the whole resembling the swellings of an agitated ocean. “The extent of this prospect appears almost unlimited. The four kingdoms are seen at once: Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland! forming the finest panorama the empire can boast. The circle begins with the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland; those of Ingleborough and Penygent, in the county of York, and the hills of Lancashire forefollow: then are observed the counties of Chester, Flint, Denbigh, and a portion of Montgomeryshire. Nearly the whole of Merioneth succeeds; and drawing a line with the eye along the diameter of the circle, we take in the regions, stretching from the triple crown of Cader Idris to the sterile crags of Carnedds-David, and Llewelyn. Snowdon, rising in the centre, appears as if he could touch the south with his right hand, and the north with his left. ‘Surely,’ thought Colonna, ‘Cæsar sat upon these crags, when he formed the daring conception of governing the world!’