96 PAPERS, ETC. 
the plan of the chapel, are all most perplexing features in 
this beautiful fabrie. But for the help of my friend Mr. 
Giles, whose practised eye at once detected many things 
which I might never have discovered, my account of these 
ruins would have been far less satisfactory to myself than 
it is at present. I have, however, done my best in the 
time I could give to this investigation to record what re- 
mains of the splendid Abbey of Old Cleeve, the nursing 
mother, as I believe, of civilisation in this distriet. It was 
a wild and remote country ; the Norman invaders had 
taken up a strong position in it; the native population were 
oppressed’and desperately hostile ; a body of foreign ecele- 
siastics, related by birth and country to the ruling party, 
and by the ties of Christian charity with the conquered and 
oppressed, settled themselves upon tlıis spot ; here they 
lived, and here, in charity let us believe, they did good in 
their generation. Time passed on—the conquering Nor- 
man and the conquered Saxon were gradually amalga- 
mated into one body ; those institutions which were 
peculiarly adapted to one state of society by degrees lost 
tbeir value as another state arose. Corruption, here, as in 
all other human establishments, no doubt sprung up from 
the growing unfitness of the institutions to the wants of the 
time, but let us not suppose that all the tales of corruption 
we read of are true. Let this be as it may, the fatal hour 
of monastie institutions, the 16th century, approached ; 
then, as elsewhere, the monks reading the signs of the 
times, and conscientiously thinking, as I believe, that they 
should by that means place the property of the church in 
a more secure position, laid out large sums in adorning and 
enlarging their fabric. How vain this attempt was, the state 
of the ruins proves. These have been preserved simply 
because they are useful for agrieultural purposes. After 
