But to detail all the absurdities and indecencies of these revered artists, whether limners, or carvers in wood, were endless.  Their anachronisms, however, have been of considerable service to the antiquary.  Sculpture has its monstrosities, architecture its incongruities, though not so palpable as those of painting, because the art is less generally understood by the common observer, or rather pictorial errors are in general easily detected by the eye alone, and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles of this fine art.  Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner.  I shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one which has lately come under my own cognizance.  A modern poet, whose compositions are fraught with beauty and genius, sings:—­

  “Then swooped the winds, that hurl the giant oak
  From Snowdon’s altitude.”

And another, in stanzas of extreme strength and eloquent description, describes a storm at night “among the mountains of Snowdon,” with these expressions:—­

——­“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 wooded like the romantic Pyrenees, nor luxuriantly fertile in fruits, flowers, and grain, like the terrible, but sylvan Etna.