s birth
Some task to perform while he wends upon earth,
But He gives correspondent wisdom and force
To the weight of the task, and the length of the course.

[_Exit_.

POVERTY

I hope there are some, who 'twixt me and the youth
Have heard this discourse, whose sole aim is the truth,
Will see and acknowledge, as homeward they plod,
Each thing is arrang'd by the wisdom of God.

There can be no doubt that Tom was a poet, or he could never have treated
the hackneyed subjects of Riches and Poverty in a manner so original and
at the same time so masterly as he has done in the interlude above
analyzed: I cannot, however, help thinking that he was greater as a man
than a poet, and that his fame depends more on the cleverness, courage
and energy, which it is evident by his biography that he possessed, than
on his interludes. A time will come when his interludes will cease to be
read, but his making ink out of elderberries, his battle with the "cruel
fighter," his teaching his horses to turn the crane, and his getting the
ship to the water, will be talked of in Wales till the peak of Snowdon
shall fall down.

CHAPTER LXI

Set out for Wrexham--Craig y Forwyn--Uncertainty--The Collier--Cadogan
Hall--Methodistical Volume.

Having learnt from a newspaper that a Welsh book on Welsh Methodism had
been just published at Wrexham, I determined to walk to that place and
purchase it. I could easily have procured the work through a bookseller
at Llangollen, but I wished to explore the hill-road which led to
Wrexham, what the farmer under the Eglwysig rocks had said of its
wildness having excited my curiosity, which the procuring of the book
afforded me a plausible excuse for gratifying. If one wants to take any
particular walk it is always well to have some business, however
trifling, to transact at the end of it; so having determined to go to
Wrexham by the mountain road, I set out on the Saturday next after the
one on which I had met the farmer who had told me of it.

The day was gloomy, with some tendency to rain. I passed under the hill
of Dinas Bran. About a furlong from its western base I turned round and
surveyed it--and perhaps the best view of the noble mountain is to be
obtained from the place where I turned round. How grand though sad from
there it looked, that grey morning, with