London to John Cf Groat's. 319 



in these retired country villages. Here she will wear 

 longest and last the features in which she was engraven 

 on the minds of all the millions who call her mother 

 beyond the sea. 



The next day I visited the celebrated Fountain 

 Abbey in Studley Park, a grand relic of antiquity, 

 framed with silver and emerald work of lakelets, lawns, 

 shrubberies and trees as beautifully arranged as art, 

 taste and wealth could set them. The old abbey is a 

 majestic ruin which fills one with wonder as he looks 

 up at its broken arches and towers and sees the dimen- 

 sions marked by the pedestals or foot-prints of its 

 templed columns. It stands rather in a narrow glen 

 than in a valley, and was commenced, it is supposed, 

 about 1130. The yew-trees under which the monks 

 bivouacked while at work upon the magnificent edifice, 

 are still standing, bearing leaves as large and green as 

 those that covered the enthusiastic architects of that 

 early time. In the height of its prosperity and power, 

 the lands of the abbey embraced over 72,000 acres. 

 The Park enclosing this great monument of an earlier 

 age contains about 250 acres, and is really an earthly 

 elysium of beauty. It was comforting to learn that it 

 was laid out so late as 1720, and that all the noble 

 trees that filled it had grown to their present grandeur 

 within the intervening period. Here I saw for the 



