324 WHITE 



tially the vast fragment which these thoughtless little engi- 

 neers endeavored to sap did not give way so soon as might 

 have been expected ; but it fell the night following, and with 

 such violence that it shook the very ground, and, awakening 

 the inhabitants of the neighboring cottages, made them start 

 up in their beds as if they had felt an earthquake. The mo- 

 tive for this dangerous attempt does not so readily appear ; 

 perhaps the more danger the more honor thought the boys, 

 and the notion of doing some mischief gave a zest to the 

 enterprise. As Dryden says upon another occasion 



" It looked so like a sin it pleased the more." 



Had the Priory been only levelled to the surface of the 

 ground, the discerning eye of an antiquary might have ascer- 

 tained its ichnography, and some judicious hand might have 

 developed its dimensions. But besides other ravages, the very 

 foundations have been torn up for the repair of the highways ; 

 so that the site of this convent is now become a rough, rugged 

 pasture-field, full of hillocks and pits, choked with nettles and 

 dwarf elder, and trampled by the feet of the ox and the heifer. 



As the tenant at the Priory was lately digging among the 

 foundations for material to mend the highways, his laborers 

 discovered two large stones, with which the farmer was so 

 pleased that he ordered them to be taken out whole. One of 

 these proved to be a large Doric capital, worked in good taste ; 

 and the other a base of a pillar, both formed out of the soft 

 freestone of this district. These ornaments, from their dimen- 

 sions, seemed to have belonged to massive columns, and show 

 that the church of this convent was a large and costly edifice. 

 They were found in the space which has always been supposed 

 to have contained the south transept of the priory church. 

 Some fragments of large pilasters were also found at the 

 same time. The diameter of the capital was two feet three 

 inches and a half, and of the column, where it had stood on 

 the base, eighteen inches and three-quarters. 



Two years ago, some laborers, digging again among the 

 ruins, sounded a sort of rude thick vase or urn of soft stone, 

 containing about two gallons in measure, on the verge of the 

 brook, in the very spot which tradition has always pointed 



