612 Notice of' some Gardens and Country Seats 



exhibit such a mass of building extending on each side of the 

 gate, high, and flanked by towers. It must have been a lodging 

 place for travellers, as well as a gate-house. The impression 

 made by the gate-house is well supported by the first view of 

 the main body of the abbey, as seen immediately after passing 

 through the gates. There is a large mass of habitable build- 

 ing to the left, connected with a still larger mass, of which the 

 walls are preserved ; but the windows are without glass, and 

 the interior neglected : this leads the eye, along a line of low 

 ruined foundation-walls, to two lofty towers on the right, and 

 completes the impression made by the embattled walls, that 

 the building was occupied for military as well as for religious 

 purposes, for defence as well as for devotion. There are a 

 few lofty elms and other trees in a part of what has been the 

 grand courtyard of the abbey edifice, and some trees also in the 

 extensive park which the buildings overlook : but though there 

 are as many trees as we could wish about the precincts of the 

 abbey, yet there are rather too few in the park ; and, what cor- 

 responds ill with the ruins, there are none in the park of any 

 age ; none, at least, that we could see, that carried the imagi- 

 nation back to the time when the abbey was in all its glory. We 

 went over the whole of the ruins, and were kindly permitted to 

 see the hall, staircase, and drawingroom of the inhabited part, 

 though it was not the regular day for showing the place. The 

 hall is lofty, venerable, and in appropriate keeping; and the 

 drawingroom has a row of columns down the middle, supporting 

 Gothic arches forming a groined ceiling resembling that of a low 

 crypt under a church. We went over all those parts of the 

 ruins which are seen by strangers, and were gratified to find 

 the walls of the refectory displayed in such a manner as to show 

 what the apartment had been ; though the effect was necessarily 

 much injured by the floor having been recently covered with flat 

 tiles laid in cement, to prevent the rain from penetrating the 

 arches to the ancient kitchen below. Underneath a bowling- 

 green are a number of gloomy damp vaults, which we passed 

 through, one after another, and were told that they were prisons : 

 one of them has lately been repaired, and we hope the whole 

 will be preserved as a historical monument, till the time arrives 

 when offenders, instead of being sent to such places, to the tread- 

 mill, to solitary confinement, the penitentiary, the hulks, or being 

 transported, will be sent to training establishments, where they 

 will be reformed by kind treatment, administered by men and 

 women trained on purpose. We are quite aware that this will be 

 thought a visionary idea : but it will not be the only one of our 

 visionary ideas that have been at first sneered at, and yet after- 

 wards realised, even in our time; for example, teaching music to 

 the masses. We request that it may be borne in mind that the 



