Our tour now took an eastward direction. Crossing Swansea river by an exceeding good ferry, and passing a region of furnaces, we traversed a considerable hill to the neighbouring valley of NEATH; a spot that might be deemed pleasing, were it not overhung with the smoke of numerous manufactories, and its soil blackened with coal-works and rail-ways. {145} Neath abbey is a short distance west of the town, and its remains are extensive. Besides the abbey church, the walls of the offices and other apartments are yet standing; but, undecorated with verdure, and partaking of the sable hue that impinges on every object around, it fails to create an idea of beauty or grandeur. As we were exploring the dark recesses of the ruin, a number of haggard forms on a sudden darted from various apertures, and eagerly pressed toward us. Their wan countenances, half hidden by black matted hair, bore the strongest expression of misery; which was further heightened by a scanty ragged apparel, that scarcely covered their meagre limbs: upon their whole appearance one might have asked with Banquo,— “What are these, So wither’d, and so wild in their attire, That look not like th’ inhabitants o’the earth, And yet are on’t?—You should be women; And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.”— The poor creatures were the wives of miners, and women that worked in the manufactories, who burrowed and brought up their families in the cells of the ruin. Unceasing drudgery, however, was unable to obtain them the necessaries of life; much less a taste of those comforts, to which the exertion of useful labour might seem to have a just claim. An old woman, bent nearly double with years, “Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,” gave us her account of the ruin. She shewed us the nuns’ dining-room, the roof of which is still entire, supported by Saxon, or rather early Norman pillars and arches. From the refectory we passed to what was once the dormitory, and were shewn a nauseous dungeon, in which, as the legend of the ruin relates, offending nuns were wont to be confined. This abbey was built by Richard de Granville and Constance his wife, in the reign of Henry the First, for Cistertian monks, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity: at the dissolution of monasteries its revenues were valued at 150_l._ _per annum_. The abbey-house, about a century and a half since, formed an admired seat of the Hobby’s family.