I assured our fair enchantress, that although I had heard of this surprise before, her playfulness had not been lost on me. I had expected to enjoy it only under the humdrum operation of an ordinary guide. She had heightened the effect by her talismanic touch and artistic air, and I was free to confess that the effect produced was such, that “the half had not been told me.” A little streamlet runs through the meadow, like a silver thread upon emerald; and nothing which a painter could wish is wanting to make the scene a picture of delight. I could not but think of the still waters, and the green pastures, and the glorious mansions of a better world. The Abbey was Cistercian, as the fat valley in which it stands might indicate, according to the rhyme:— “Bernard the vales, as Benedict the steeps, But towering cities did Loyola love.” It was founded, in fact, in the time of St. Bernard, under the first impulses communicated to Europe by his vast enthusiasm. But it is in vain that we look for any traces of his asceticism, in the luxurious splendour of every portion of this noble pile. Here you enter the lordly refectory; you pass to the ample kitchen, and ascend to the long range of dormitories. What prince on earth is better lodged? The chapter-house is on the same scale of dignity; and the cloisters are a long perspective of pillared arches, through which the eye can scarcely penetrate to the end. But the church, with its elaborate chapels, of which nearly half the pillars are standing in their gracefulness, beggars description. Its floor is green turf, and its walls are hung with living tapestry; but it seems still a vast cathedral, and the more beautiful, for its heavenly vault, and its windows, opening in all their rich variety of form, bright glimpses of wood and sky. Everything is in keeping, and the whole is such an epitome of the monastic system as suggests alike its glory and its shame. The excavations are still going on, and like those of Pompeii, they are revealing the most minute and tell-tale particulars of monastic life. One cannot altogether regret that such establishments are of the past, and yet the experiment of their reform should have been fairly tried, before destruction made it forever impossible to restore them to noble and pious uses. Near the Abbey is a yew-tree of great antiquity, beneath which, tradition says, the first colony of monks assembled, and planned their future home. In a secluded spot, a little further on, I came to Fountains Hall, a pleasant manorial residence. It was built in the time of the first Stuart, and, I am sorry to add, of materials, quarried in the old Abbey. Such being the case, I am glad it is not mine. Sacrilege is so fatal a sin, that I hardly dared to take away a bit of moss from the Abbey walls; and to remove a cubic inch of its masonry, was a liberty from which I shrank, as a sort of irreverence to God.