©'alter M^iit^. 317 



time of starting. They must now step into the inn gar- 

 den at the bridge, and see how beautifully the brown waters 

 swirl away under the red bridge and its ivied banks, while 

 the waving ferns incessantly checker the sunshine. It is a 

 mile to the Abbey, through the churchyard, and along the 

 bank of the Calder, where again the most beautiful tricks 

 of light are seen, with its brown water and white foam, red 

 precipitous banks, and the greenest vegetation, with a wood 

 crowning all. The scene is thoroughly monastic. There 

 is no sound at noon-day except the gushing water, the wood- 

 man's axe and the shock of a falling tree, or the whir of a 

 magpie, or the pipe of the thrush : but at night the rooks, 

 on their return to roost, fill the air with their din. The ruins 

 are presently seen, springing sheer from the greenest turf. 

 Relics from the abbey are now placed beside the way : and 

 a modern house appears at hand. The ruins should be 

 approached from that front, so that the lofty pointed arches 

 may best disclose the long perspective behind of grassy 

 lawn and sombre woods. The Abbey is built of red sand- 

 stone of the neighbourhood, now sobered down by time (it 

 was founded in A.D., 1134), into the richest and softest tint 

 that the eye could desire. But little is known of it beyond 

 its date, and the name of its founder, Ranulph, son of the 

 first Ranulph de Meschines, a Norman noble. The church 

 was small, as the scanty remains show : and the monastery, 

 which now looks like a continuation of the same building 

 could not have contained a numerous company. From the 

 fragments of effigies preserved, it appears that some eminent 

 persons were buried here ; but who these knights and nobles 

 were their is no record to tell, — carefully as these memorials 

 were wrought to secure the immortality of this world. The 

 eye is first fixed by the remains of the tower, from whose 

 roofless summit dangles the tufted ivy, and whose base is 



