The topic is almost inexhaustible; and the selection of places to be visited in reasonable time, from these "centres of industry," would be invidious to make. A little way beyond Leeds, as every one knows, lies Harrogate, the high table-land where medicinal waters have for long generations given to the place the fame of a true "city of Hygeia," while we ourselves would still give the chief credit to the invigorating, stimulating air, and to the almost inexhaustible interest of the neighbourhood, occupying the mind of the visitor with a round of healthful delights. The visit to Studley Park and Fountains Abbey will probably rank among the chief of these. Again, as in the cases of Kirkstall and Bolton, reverting to the past, we admire the taste and wisdom shown by the cowled brotherhoods in mediæval times, in their choice of dwelling-places. Something, indeed, of the beauty which we now see may have been the result of their assiduous culture. It was part of their work to "make the wilderness to smile;" but they had a rare faculty for lighting upon scenes which, if not already beautiful, possessed an evident capability for becoming so. At Fountains both nature and art seem to vie with each other; and in the modern arrangement of the domain, the art may occasionally be the more apparent. The artistic yields to the artificial; the ruins have been maintained at the due stage of picturesqueness by careful oversight and repair; and the carefully prepared "surprise," which awaits the visitor at one stage of his progress through the grounds, is too theatrical to permit even one of the fairest of pictures to have its full effect. But, perhaps, all this is hypercritical, and, with every deduction, this old Cistercian abbey is one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most complete mediæval monastic buildings in England. The tower, unlike that of its sister abbey at Kirkstall, is little impaired by the ravages of time, the plan of the edifice is easy to be traced; and the light pillars and lofty arches of the Ladye Chapel give to the whole a finishing touch of stateliness and grace. Then how pleasant to wander through the noble avenues of Studley, to gaze upwards to the gigantic spruce firs, or to climb the mound where linger the decaying forms of the rugged yew trees--remnants, it is said, of the "seven sisters" that spread their shade over the founders of the abbey, more than six hundred years ago! [Illustration: 9200]