THE OLD ABBEYS OF ENGLAND.

000000000000 HE old Abbeys of England! how picturesque they stand in their ruins! proud

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and defolate memorials of a time when the new-born freedom of thought and

mind indulged in the wildeft freaks of its youthful exceffes; and, aided by fovereign power, marked its progress towards reflecting manhood by the wanton deftruction of some of the nobleft edifices of our country. Time, the ruthless deftroyer, ftill spares the old abbeys; and Nature kindly clothes them with the mantling ivy, to protect them in their green old age.

I do love these ancient ruins :

We never tread upon them, but we set
Our foot upon some rev'rend history;
And questionless, here in this open court,
Which now lies naked to the injuries

Of stormy weather, some lie interred,

Loved the church so well, and gave so largely to't,
They thought it should have canopied their bones
Till doomsday; but all things have their end;
Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men,
Must have like death that we have.

Many a one who has gazed upon an old abbey noble in its ruins, the rank grass growing in its deferted cloisters, the chambers and refectories, once the busy haunts of men, now filent and tenantless, will have felt something of that feeling which Shakespeare has put into the mouth of Cromwell

The infant yet unborn

Will curse the time the altars were pulled down.

I pray now, where is Hospitality?

Where now may poor distressed people go
For to relieve their need, or rest their bones
When weary travel doth oppress their limbs?
And where religious men should take them in,
They'll now be kept back by a mastiff dog.

A Norman abbey, while yet fome of its glories clung around it, is thus defcribed by Byron:—

It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the druid oak
Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke ;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally

The dappled foresters-as day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle; These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,

In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone :

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from the throne;
When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone;
The gallant cavaliers who fought in vain,
For those who knew not to resign or reign.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born child,

With her Son in her blessed arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd;

She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine,

Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.

Great changes have taken place in these edifices, even fince Milton, in "Il Penferofo," was wont

To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowered roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below;