University of Virginia Library

The summit of this mountain is well chosen by Cowley as the scene of the “Vision,” in which the spectral angel discourses with him concerning the government of Oliver Cromwell. ‘I found myself,’ says he, ‘on the top of that famous hill in the Island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not long since most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked upon them, they called forth the sad representation of all the sins and all the miseries that had overwhelmed them these twenty years.’ It is not to be denied that the changes now in progress, and the passions, and the way in which they work, strikingly resemble those which led to the disasters the philosophic writer so feelingly bewails. God grant that the resemblance may not become still more striking as months and years advance!