sallied forth to view the abbey. The sun was pouring a flood of light upon the old gray walls, lighting up its dark recesses, as if to give us a better opportunity of viewing it. I gazed with astonishment and admiration at its many beauties, and especially at the superb Gothic windows over the entrance-door. The beautiful Gothic pillars, with here and there a representation of a praying priest, and mailed knights, with saints and Christian martyrs, and the hundreds of Scriptural representations, all indicate that this was a place of considerable importance in its palmy days. The once stone floor had disappeared, and we found ourselves standing on a floor of unbroken green grass, swelling back to the old walls, and looking so verdant and silken that it seemed the very floor of fancy. There are more romantic and wilder places than this in the world, but none more beautiful. The preservation of these old abbeys should claim the attention of those under whose charge they are, and we felt like joining with the poet, and saying—
"O ye who dwell
Around yon ruins, guard the precious charge
From hands profane! save the sacred pile—
O'er which the wing of centuries has flown
Darkly and silently, deep-shadowing all
Its pristine honorsfrom the ruthless grasp
Of future violation!"
In contemplating these ruins more closely, the mind insensibly reverts to the period of feudal and regal oppression, when structures like that of Tintern Abbey
