RUINS OF AN ABBEY. 59 



same general style, were sufficiently varied in details not to 

 appear monotonous. These were all of stone. 



We left this, and were walking up a long, broad street, 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 channels; 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 list- 

 ening, 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 neighboring 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 guide having pointed out to us the form of the ancient 

 structure, and been requited for his trouble by seeing the pleasure 



