----"The bird of night
Screams from her straw-built nest, as from the womb
Of infant death, and wheels her drowsy flight
Amid _the pine-clad rocks_, with wonder and afright."

----"The night-breeze dies
Faint, on _the mountain-ash leaves that surround
Snowdon's dark peaks_."

Now, a painful pilgrimage of eleven hours, up Snowdon and back again,
enables me to declare that had oaks, pines, and service-trees adorned
that appalling and volcanic chaos, five or six years since, some storm
sufficient to have shattered the universe, must have swept them all
away, ere I looked upon that dreary assemblage of rocks which seems
like the _ruins of a world_. I ascended from the Capel Cerig side of
the mountain, and therefore venture not to say what may be the aspect
of the Llanberries; but the only verdure I beheld, was that of short,
brown heathy grass, a few stunted furze-bushes, and patches of that
vividly green moss, which is spongy and full of water. The only living
inhabitants of these wilds were a few ruffian-like miners, two or
three black slugs, and a scanty flock of straggling half-starved
mountain sheep, with their brown, ropy coats. The guide told me, that
even _eagles_, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags
of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for _owls_, neither bird nor
mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon
appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts,
and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea
of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere
regard for the fraternity, but Snowdon is not adorned with pines,
firs, larches, and service-trees, like parts of the Alps; it is _not_