Passing through the park gate, we entered upon a lawn esplanade looking down upon the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey. This broad terrace extended for apparently a half of a mile, and was as finely carpeted piece of ground as you will find in England. No hair of horse or dog groomed and brushed with the nicest care, and soft and shining with the healthiest vitality, could surpass in delicacy and life of surface the grass coverlet of this long terrace, from which you looked down upon that grand monument of twelfth-century architecture half veiled among the trees of the glen. This was one of the oldest abbeys in the north of England, and the mother of several of them. Some of its walls are still as entire and perfect as those of Tintern, on the Wye. It was founded by the monks of the St. Bernard order, in 1131, according to the historical record. Really those black-cowled masons and carvers must have given the enthusiasm and genius of the early painters of the Virgin to these magnificent structures. I will not go into the subject at large here, leaving it to form an entire chapter, when I have seen most of the old abbeys of the country. In looking up at their walls, arches and columns, one marvels to see the most delicate and elaborate vine and flower-work of the carver's chisel apparently as perfect as when it engraved the last line; and this, too, in face of the frosts and beating storms of six hundred years. The largest ivy I ever saw buttressed one of the windowed walls with ten thousand cross-folded fingers and foliage of vivid green piled thick and high upon the teeth-marks of time. The trunk was a full foot through at the butt. A few years ago a large mound was uncovered near the ruin, and found to be composed of cinders, showing incontestably that the monks had worked iron ore very extensively, thus teaching the common people that art as well as agriculture. These cinders have been used very largely in repairing the roads for a considerable distance around. On returning to Thirsk over the Hambleton range of hills, we crossed thousands of acres of moor-land covered with heather in full bloom, looking like a purple sea. It was a splendid sight. My friend, who was an artist, stopped for a while to sketch one or two views of the scene. As we proceeded, we saw several green and golden fields impinging upon this florid waste, serving to illustrate what might be done with the vast tracts of land in England and Scotland now bristling with this thick and prickly vegetation. The heatherland over which we were passing was utilised in a rather singular manner. It yielded pasturage to two sets of industrials--sheep and bees. As the heather blossom is thought to impart a peculiarly pleasant flavor to honey, I was told many bee-stock-raisers of Lincolnshire brought their hives to this section to pasture them for a season on this purple prairie.