Nothing can be more delightful than these excursions. If you know beforehand what you are likely to meet with, the very anticipation of what each day will bring before you will add zest to your appetite for architectural enjoyment; while if you do not know what objects of interest may lie in your course, the very speculation will give relish to the search. Here, perhaps, you come to the site of some famous monastery, less happy in its days of ruin and desertion than some which have become the favourite haunts of the artist. It has, perhaps, been for ages the stone-quarry of the district, and now only some one gable-end with its lofty lancets shows the noble scale of the ancient church. Here, it may be, nothing stands aboveground but the bases of the pillars; farther on the wall rises to the height of the window-jambs, and shows the arcading of the walls; and there the aisle wall retains the doorways leading through into the cloister--now a farm-yard--on the eastern side of which you find the three beautiful arches, the central one of which formed the approach to the chapter-house, and round this cloister you still trace the plan of the refectory and other monastic buildings. But, scanty and now humble as are the ruins, you find the details to be of the highest order of artistic refinement. The bases of the lost columns are profiled with the most studied delicacy, the few remaining doorways are perfect models of rich though unostentatious detail, the archways, perhaps, of the chapter-house entrances are of the most elegant and studied beauty. On tracing out and measuring the plan, you find its arrangement and proportions to be of the most perfect kind; and, though so little comparatively stands _in situ_, the ground is strewn here and there with masses from the superstructure, from which you may trace out the design of much which has fallen down, while the fences and agricultural buildings around are perfect storehouses of mouldings, capitals, and fragments of tracery or of groining, from which you can study the detail almost as profitably as from a perfect building.