PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 251 



heart of the Cleveland hills, at Glaisdale and Grosmont, we saw 

 the iron-smelting works in active operation, in striking contrast 

 to the pastoral scenes aronnd. The weather was exceedingly 

 fine, and the members mnch enjoyed the fresh sea-breezes and 

 their visit generally. The great land-slip from the sonth cliff, 

 with the undermined houses leaning quite out of the perpendi- 

 cular, almost like the tower of Pisa on a lowly scale, were 

 observed, as we crossed over to see the ruins of the famous Abbey, 

 crowning the mighty cliffs, with its stirring memories, like Holy 

 Island, of remote events that transport us through twelve cen- 

 turies to the dawn of English literature and history. In St. Hilda' s 

 religious house, at Streonoshalh, reared on the summit of the dark 

 cliffs 240 feet above the sea, the "Whitby cow-herd, Caedmon, 

 composed the first great English song, which Mr. R. S. Watson 

 has recently set before us in its full suggestiveness of rugged 

 beauty. In her earlier abbey, destroyed by the Danes long be- 

 fore the Norman Conquest, the points in dispute between the 

 Irish and the Eoman church were brought to an issue, in favour 

 of the Latin usages. Its story has been often told, and never 

 more eloquently than by the Dean of Westminster, when he spoke 

 last year of this "Westminster of the Northumbrian Kings,"* 

 wherein stood the tombs of Eadwine and Oswy, with queens and 

 nobles grouped around them. 



We noticed an artist busily engaged in transferring some of 

 the most striking features of the ruined abbey to his canvas. 

 The choir is entire, and the north transept nearly so, while part 

 of the west front yet exists, and, though shorn of its central glory 

 since the great tower fell in 1830, the remains are still magnifi- 

 cent in their present state. There is not much of interest in St. 

 Hilda's modern church, but there was enough in the excellent 

 Museum, rich in illustrations of the geology of the district, 

 among which, if I remember right, is a gigantic winged saurian, 

 rterodactyle, having its living congeners in the East Indian 

 Draco volans, and recalling the "flying serpent" seen the day 

 before sculptured on the Newton slab. Did the ancient sculp- 

 tors of these Draeonidte, our Newton friend especially, and the 



* Green's History of the English People, chap. I., p. JJ6. 



