186 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



whelmed with its magnitude, and struck by its sublimity and elegance, whUe we 

 are entertained with the beauties of its natural and stupendous masonry, with all 

 the variety and playfulness of its details, and with the exquisite harmony, both 

 of its general and its local colouring. Space will not permit us to indulge in a 

 more particular account of this colossus of the Carrick sea ; but in Dr. James 

 Johnson's " Recess," and M'CuUoch's Letters, the reader will find the subject 

 described with equal beauty and fidelity. It was off this coast that " Thurot's 

 defeat" took place, while the powers of Ocean are described by the poet, as sitting 

 upon the rock of Ailsa,* spectators of the fight — 



" Till sinking slow, the mimic thunders fall, 

 And Elliot's genius triumphs o'er the Gaul." 



Crossregal Abbey, the view of which will be new to most of our readers, is one 

 of those sacred relics of the olden time which recal monachisra and the mass — that 

 gorgeous worship, which in every corner of the island has left its stately monu- 

 ments and its pious traditions ; and in all, enduring proofs of the temporal, no less 

 than the spiritual, sway of its hierarchy. This abbey is a fine specimen of that 

 architecture which, within the last twenty years, has been partially revived and 

 imitated in some of our ecclesiastical edifices ; but it will require many years 

 before the modern can approach the ancient in boldness of design and delicacy of 

 execution. This religious structure — comprising a church, cloisters, the abbot's 

 residence, and the chapter-house — though greatly dilapidated, is still sufficiently 

 entire to give the stranger an accurate notion of its original extent, style, and 

 decoration. It was founded in the middle of the twelfth century by Duncan, son 

 of Gilbert, Earl of Carrick, and, under its pious and learned abbots, who had the 

 enjoyment of a princely revenue, rose into considerable distinction as a religious 

 fraternity.f 



The town of Maybole is pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, surrounded 

 by a screen of hills, which shelter it on the north and east, in form of an 

 amphitheatre. It was erected by royal charter into a burgh of barony early in 

 the sixteenth century, in favour of the house of Cassilis. The collegiate church 

 of St. Mary's, now in ruins, was founded in 1441 by Kennedy of Dunure, 



• From this rock the Marquess of Ailsa takes his title; that of Baron Ailsa was a second title of the Earls 

 of Cassilis. Few titles stand on so strong a foundation. 



I Some years after the Reformation, George Buchanan had a pension out of the revenues of this abbey. 

 It is a well authenticated fact, that the Earl of Cassilis of that day, impelled by a diabolical rapacity, seized 

 the coramendator, who enjoyed the principal part of the revenues of Crossregal; and, in order to make 

 him sign a deed in his favour, roasted him, says Chambers, before a slow fire, till pain obliged him to 

 comply. Buchanan, hearing of this horrible exertion of feudal power, placed his person under the pro- 

 tection ol the state, lest he should have been caught, and scorched on the same account. It was with one 

 of the abbots (the last) of this establishment that Knox held the famous public controversy in Maybole. 



