Dolegelly is a large and dirty town: we took up our quarters at the Golden Lion, a good hospitable inn; and next morning, after breakfast, procured a guide to conduct us to the top of Caer Idris. We armed him with stores, and warlike preparations of all kinds (to wit): ham, fowl, bread, and cheese, and brandy, and began the afcent at nine in the morning, and continued to toil for three hours and a half before we reached the top. But, alas! expectation had again flattered us; for, though it was a moft lovely day in the valleys, yet here we could not fee fifty yards before us; the fummit of the mountain is not of greater extent than the bafe of a common fized room; and, on one fide, falls almost perpendicularly many hundred yards in depth. When I ftood upon the edge of this precipice, and looked into the frightful abyfs of clouds, it put me in L3 mind

mind of the chaos, or void space of darknefs, fo finely defcribed in Milton, when the fallen archangel stood at the gates of hell, pondering the scene before him, and viewing, with horror, the profound expanfe of filence and eternal night:

a dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimenfion, where length, breadth, and heighth, And time, and place are loft.

The height of this mountain is little inferior to that of Snowden.-The view from it, on a clear day, is grand and magnificent. Ireland, the Isle of Man, North, and South Wales, lie extended before the eye like a level map. The whole mountain is apparently compofed of a huge mass of stones, thrown together as a heap of rubbish without order or defign; for, wherever you turn up the fod or turf,

which is not in general more than two inches thick, you come to these stones, and they are nearly about the fame dimenfions, and have the appearance of being broken with a hammer. Near the fummit of the mountain there is no turf, and what is remarkable, these stones are fmaller there than in any other place. Had there been any larger massy rocks at the top, it would have afforded a probable conjecture, that shivered in the course of time, by lightenings and tempefts, they might have fallen by piece-meal upon the lower fides of the mountain. But, as I have already stated, there is no appearance of that kind at the fummit, and fuch a fuppofition must therefore be excluded. Nor could an earthquake have caused the phenomenon, because we have no teftimony whatever, either ancient or modern, of any part of Great Britain, having been fubject

fubject to fuch extraordinary convulfions of nature; and the idea of the flood being the caufe, is futile and ridiculous to the laft degree; for the vaft body of water, which, we are informed, was collected upon the furface of the earth, would, inftead of scooping out valleys, and heaping up mountains, have been more likely to have levelled mountains, and filled up valleys. Besides it is not quite clear, that the whole furface of the globe was affected by that fweeping deluge; and therefore Great Britain, from its remote fituation, might, as well as any other country, have been exempted from a fhare of its favours. But it is not my in-. tention to throw down the gauntlet of controverfy, with refpect to this, or any other fubject of fcripture hiftory fo extremely remote; it is happy perhaps for the authenticity of many parts of that hif

tory,

tory, that it is beyond the reach of human testimony now to difprove it.

It is well for me, my dear friend, that I do not live under the paternal government of the inquifition, either in Venice, or Spain, or Italy, or Portugal, or any other place, where the parental and tender affection of the holy fathers, might folely for the prefervation of my foul, mercifully condemn my body to the purification of fire. But to return to the mountain, or rather to take leave of it, for I have already kept you too long upon fo ungenial a foil, I will conclude this digreffion, with the idea of a celebrated philofopher, who conceived it probable, that, when God had compleated his great work, this beautiful world, out of fo many rough materials, not knowing what to do with the rubbish that remained, he threw it together in various