76 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



ciently varied in details, not to appear monotonous. These 

 were all of stone. 



We left this, and were walking up a long, broad street, 

 looking for a place where we could get a bite of something 

 to eat, when the gentleman who had crossed at the ferry with 

 us joined us again, and said that as we were strangers we 

 might like to look at the ruins of an ABBEY which were in the 

 vicinity, and he had come after us that if we pleased he might 

 conduct us to it. 



Eight in the midst of the town, at the corner of a new 

 brick house, we came upon an old pile of stone work. Old, 

 indeed ! under the broken arch of a Gothic window, the 

 rain-water had been so long trickling as to wear deep chan 

 nels ; cracking, crumbling, bending over with age, it seemed 

 in many places as if the threatening mass had only been till 

 now withheld from falling prostrate by the faithful ivy that 

 clung to it, and clasped it tight with every fibre. 



You cannot imagine the contrast to the hot, hurrying, 

 noisy world without, that we found on entering the little 

 enclosure of the old churchyard and abbey walls. It was 

 all overshadowed with dense foliage, and only here and there 

 through the leaves, or a shattered arch round which the ivy 

 curled with enchanting grace, would there be a glimpse of 

 the blue sky above. By listening, we could still hear the 

 roar of wheels, rumbling of rail-cars, clanging of steamboat 

 bells, and the shouts of jovial sea-captains, drinking gin and 

 water in a neighbouring tea-garden, over which the American 

 flag was flying. But within the walls there was no sound but 

 the chirps of a wren, looking for her nest in a dark cranny ; 

 the hum of bees about an old hawthorn bush ; the piping of 

 a cricket under a gravestone, and our own footsteps echoed 

 from mysterious crypts. 



Our gui^e having pointed out to us the form of the ancient 



