THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 15 
sphere of self-interest and self-pleasing, into a pure 
and wholesome region of solemn joy and wonder. 
He goes up some Snowdon valley; to him it is a 
solemn spot (though unnoticed by his companions), 
where the stag’s-horn clubmoss ceases to straggle 
across the turf, and the tufted alpine clubmoss takes 
its place: for he is now in a new world; a region 
whose climate is eternally influenced by some fresh 
law (after which he vainly guesses with a sigh at 
his own ignorance), which renders life impossible 
to one species, possible to another. And it isa still 
more solemn thought to him, that it was not always 
so; that eons and ages back, that rock which he 
passed a thousand feet below was fringed, not as 
now with fern and blue bugle, and white bramble- 
flowers, but perhaps with the alp-rose and the 
“gemsen-kraut” of Mont Blanc, at least with 
Alpine Saxifrages which have now retreated a 
thousand feet up the mountain side, and with the 
blue Snow-Gentian, and the Canadian Sedum, 
which have all but vanished out of the British 
Isles. And what is it which tells him that strange 
