Italy, has been rightly called "sober," but it is a soberness in which there are touches and gleams of high ornamental beauty. It is like the soberness of a Doric temple with its decorated frieze and intervals of rich exquisite sculpture. This delicious scenery of the Wye, with here and there in every part of the kingdom such little silver-footed streams as the Dove, the Wharfe, the Trent, the Fowey, the Tamar, the waving and gentle outline of the hills, the unparalleled sheen of the grass, the bright northern lakes and the bosky combes of Devonshire, and everywhere the low cottage and village church hid in foliage and flowers, with the gray ruin clothed in green, and now and then a great park of venerable oaks, some of them a thousand years old, with sweeping glades of cleanest and smoothest lawn, and thrown about all a delicate veil of continual mist that softens and heightens each noble feature, this makes Old England a strong and chaste home of freemen, a beautiful northern temple, which we would ever honor as the home and shrine of our ancestral virtue.

There are few villages upon the banks of the Wye, but there is everywhere a charming rural sweetness and quietness, with great variety of scenery, now broad stretches of shining river reflecting the tinted woods, and now narrow vales embosomed in high walls of richest green. The view from Wyndcliff rock is indeed something more than simply beautiful; and, as an exceptional feature, it merits almost the epithet of sublime.

It commands a view of nine counties. Nearly a thousand feet below is the rushing stream, with the rich vale and lovely Piercefield meadows, and at a distance to the south and west clear across the Gloucestershire peninsula the sea-like Severn is seen high on the horizon, as if it were suspended midway in the heavens; while to the north are rolling hill and thick forest, and the dim mountains of Glamorganshire. The scene has been called tropical, as if it were upon some great African river with its vast stretches of distance. This is partly just. There is certainly something peculiarly magnificent both in its land and water pros pect. It forms a splendid introduction, or natural frontispiece, to the pensive glories of Tintern Abbey.

This fine ruin stands in a valley, or nearly at the foot of a side hill, at a curve of the river. Its situation is beautiful, and it appears far more perfect at a distance than it really is, for it is in fact but the vast frame of a building, rather than a building itself. It is now a temple wholly open to the elements, and paved with the greensward. Four of its high sharp-pointed gables remain, over and around which the ivy has gathered in opulent profusion. Indeed, nowhere, with the exception of Kenilworth, have I seen such an enormous growth of ivy, such huge knots and tree-like trunks, resembling the clustered pillars that they climb up, sending out their serpentine arms that wind over the loftiest wall, and hold the whole

ruin in tight embrace. Especially about the interior north window, and the west end on the outside, are great masses of ivy, bulging and pendulous, covering entirely with folds of dark drapery the rugged sides of the old masonry. The ivy has left, or been trained to leave, the noble west window clear, so that its delicately traceried lines stand out in relief against the sky. The carving here and there is as sharp as if done yesterday. In the open nave, of two hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, most of the clustered columns are standing, and the two east and west windows, twice as large as the windows of Melrose Abbey, and nearly perfect in their stone-work, make one mourn that so much is left, and yet that all is hopeless

ruin.

But, as I have said before, these old English abbeys could not be more beautiful in their prime than in their decay. Nature has claimed them and tried all her art to possess them entirely. She has wound her mantle about them, and hung her banners over them, as if to say, "Though man has left you I make you mine, and adorn you with my best." The broken shadows of window, sharp peak, and jagged wall, the immense fragments of columns and masonry, the massive drapery of ivy, the long architectural perspectives of nave and cross aisles, the sombre recesses, the gleams of pathetic beauty in this stern decay, the tender blue sky above and the green natural turf beneath, the spirit of repose that breathes through this desolate

abode of an older faith, form a poem of subtle

power.

One of the gems of the building is the door of the cloisters on the left of the north aisle, its wonderfully preserved mouldings showing what Tintern Abbey once was. It was a monastery of the Cistercian or White Monks, founded by Walter de Clare, a relation of the Conqueror, in 1132, in expiation, it is said, of great crimes and a wicked life. Probably most, if not all, of the present structure was erected later, by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, in the last part of the thirteenth century.

Tintern Abbey is, by the road, five miles from Chepstow, and about the same distance from Monmouth.

In the town-house at Monmouth stands the statue of Henry V., and in the ruined castle near by he was born. This is one of the worst preserved ruins in the kingdom. When I saw it, it was used as a vegetable store-house, and part of it was a pigsty. There was a pile of dirty straw in the grand fire-place, and heaps of turnips in another recess. But it is still a formidable looking old Norman keep, with a water-gate on the river.

St. Thomas' Church, while small in size, yet with its recessed doorway, round windows, and curious diamond-tiled bell-tower, impressed me by its picturesque quaintness. Geoffry of Monmouth's study window is shown, overlooking the churchyard. It is he who gives us the story of King

Arthur- the English Herodotus, whose simple and confiding genius leads him beyond the boundaries of sober history.

The hills lie around encircling the plain which widens out quite commandingly here, forming the place where two streams meet. On the whole, Monmouth pleased and surprised me, and is fit to be the birthplace of the hero of the "flaming beacon" lighting on to great deeds; though the fact is a surprising one, that his fellow-townsmen seem to prize good turnips better than past

renown.

At the "Beaufort Arms Hotel," I met with two English gentlemen who aided me greatly in my touring investigations, and I must say, that as a tourist I have always obtained from English fellowtravelers the most courteous response, and every aid that could well be given, leading sometimes to considerable personal inconvenience on their part.

Having sated my reader of late with ruins, I will leave Raglan Castle without wearying them with much additional description. Its heavy macchiolated towers and antique gateway, on the beautiful morning that I saw it, with the fine and delicate air, answered exquisitely, to my thinking, to the entrance of Macbeth's Castle. The redbreasted birds hopped around almost tame. It was lonely and silent. The dried leaves of autumn dropped noiseless in the moat. With the exception of the janitor, the only life seemed to be the birds