Yorkshire is especially the land of minsters and abbey churches. To attempt here a description of them would be vain; a Yorkshire tour is one of the richest treats the student can look forward to, and one to which he ought to be liberal in his allowance of time. At York itself the transept is among the finest examples of the earlier part of the style, and the ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey of its later portion. I know few works so enchanting as the latter. It agrees in date with the east part of Lincoln, and is not unlike it in detail. It is a mere wreck, but worthy of the closest study, and the shattered fragments which lie on every side offer melancholy facilities to the student. The chapter-house of the cathedral is a little later, and has been well called a “Domus Domorum,” though I would not willingly admit its superiority to those of Westminster or Salisbury. The neighbouring village church at Skelton--said to have been built by the same hands as the transept of the cathedral, and the ruined chapel of St. Leonard’s Hospital in the gardens round the abbey--show how unerringly the same style fitted itself to works of the most stupendous or of the humblest scale. This great county is filled with the noble productions of the thirteenth century. The minsters of Beverley and Ripon owe much of their beauty to it; and scarcely one of the abbey churches, whose lovely but mournful ruins add a charm so melancholy to the secluded valleys of Yorkshire, fails to show the work of the great period. I cannot attempt even a cursory description. Go, I pray you, and study for yourselves: go to Fountains Abbey, and study well its choir and eastern chapels, with their massive pillars, the tallest perhaps in England, and the remains of its wonderful abbatial hall, exposed to view by the recent excavations, and its many other wonders; but do not be satisfied with a passing visit: take up your quarters at Ripon, and follow up your studies from day to day. A week is but a short allowance for so rich a school of art. Then go to Rivaulx and Whitby, twin works, it would seem, of the same accomplished architect. I cannot award the palm to either--they are truly a “_par nobile fratrum_,” and it is fair to prefer whichever of them we have seen the last. Their great point of difference is that the choir of one has been vaulted, and that of the other has shown its timber roof; but in glorious architecture they are equal, and almost unequalled. As you go from York to Whitby you pass a small fragment of the Abbey of Kirkham: stop and look at it: small as it is, it is one of the best designed pieces of work I ever saw. If from Whitby you cross the moors to Guisborough, you will see what was probably the work of the very end of the century--the stupendous east end of that abbey, with its east window exceeding even that at Lincoln in height.