Such a village seems a fitting introduction to the abbey at whose gates it sits; and the abbey itself, gray and ancient like the village, is one of the most perfect monastic buildings in England. Nowhere else did we see what seemed to us a more appropriate home for romance than this great rambling pile of towered and gabled buildings, with a hundred odd nooks and corners, each of which might well have a story of its own. It is opened freely to visitors by its owner, Mr. Talbot, himself an antiquarian of note, who is glad to share his unbounded delight in the old place with anyone who may care to come. We were shown in detail the parts of the abbey that have a special historic and architectural interest. It is guarded carefully and the atmosphere of antiquity jealously preserved. Even the stone steps of the main entrance are grass-grown and moss-covered--"and he wont let us clean them up," said our guide. Inside there are many fine apartments and notable relics. The arched cloisters, the chapter house, the refectory and other haunts of the nuns, are in quite the original state. The immense stone fishtank from a solid block sixteen feet long and the great bronze cauldron show that good cheer was quite as acceptable to the nuns as to their brethren. But the exterior of the abbey and the beautiful grounds surrounding it impressed us most. All about were splendid trees and plots of shrubbery, and the Bristol Avon flows through the park. We heard what we thought the rush of its waters, but our guide told us that it was the quaking aspens which fringe the river banks, keeping up their age-long sigh that their species had supplied the wood for the cross. No day is so still that you do not hear them in summer time. We passed around the building to note from different viewpoints its quaint outlines and its great rambling facades with crowded, queerly assorted gables, battlemented towers and turrets, and mysterious corners, all combining to make it the very ideal of the abbey of romance. How easy, when contemplating it in the dim twilight or by the light of a full moon, for the imagination to re-people it with its old-time habitants; and surely, if the ghosts of the gray nuns ever return to their earthly haunts, Lacock Abbey must have such visitants. [Illustration: LACOCK ABBEY.] But enough of these vagaries--one might yield himself up to them for days in such surroundings. I will not mar them with sober history, in any event, though Lacock has quite enough of that. The guide-book which you may get at the abbey lodge for two-pence tells its story and I have tried to tell only what we saw and felt.