In 1770 appeared “Letters from Snowdon” by Joseph Cradock. This book is the first record I have found of travels in Wales for the special purpose of enjoying the scenery. Mr. Cradock says that he had long wished to visit “The Welsh Alps, the summit of Snowdon” and he seems to find the reality even more attractive than his imagination had pictured it. The beautiful little valleys “environed by mountains that scale the heavens,” and “the infinitely extensive and variegated prospect” from the top of Snowdon enchant him. The travelers are caught in tempestuous weather but Mr. Cradock rejoices in the war of the elements and quotes Thomson’s description of a thunderstorm in Carnarvon. He particularly recommends the valley of the Dryryd to painters delighting in romantic Nature because of its picturesque wooded hills, its naked mountains, rocky rivers, foaming cataracts, transparent lakes, and ruined castles. Gilpin’s journey up Snowdon was made in the same year but even his account hardly shows the unforced, uncritical enthusiasm for wild Nature evinced by Mr. Cradock. In 1773, Mr. Hutchinson and his brother, an accomplished draughtsman, made a tour through the Lakes. In 1774, after the death of his brother, Mr. Hutchinson went over the ground again in order to verify his brother’s incomplete sketches. The observations made in these two tours were published under the title “An Excursion to the Lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland.” Hutchinson’s dislike of the wild and desolate region of Stainmore has already been cited, but that quotation alone would give a most unfair impression of the book as a whole. His pleasure in Nature is great. He cares especially for artistic effects of light and shade, and he often spends pages on the changing beauty of a landscape seen at sunset, or sunrise, or after a storm. A single passage may stand as illustrative of many similar ones in the book. At the foot of this vast range of hills three smaller mounts, of an exact conic form, running parallel, beautified the scene, being covered with verdure to their crowns; the nearest, called Dufton Pike, was shadowed by a passing cloud, save only the summit of its cone, which was touched by a beam which painted it with gold; the second pike was all enlightened and gave its verdure to the prospect as if mantled with velvet; the third stood shadowed, whilst all the range of hills behind were struck with sunshine, showing their cliffs, caverns, and dells in grotesque variety and giving the three pikes a picturesque projection on the landscape.