things inanimate, lessons that might have taught them to retain the habits of their predecessors. Most of those devoted men, who had sought to worship their Creator in privacy and stillness, were laid down to rest. They had laboured with their hands while living, and thankfully saw the blessings which they sought, spring from out the earth they cultivated; those who filled their places were not actuated by the same necessity, and hence the passer-by no longer beheld a humble cloister, with its garden and low fence, but instead of this a stately building, the Abbey of the Fountain, as it was called in reference to the stream that flowed beside it, fresh and untroubled as when the monks of St. Mary's first sought the precincts of the dale. There were many in after years who desired that their mortal remains might be deposited beneath the abbey walls, and for this purpose they devised large sums of money:--some who had been in the deathful career of storm and siege, and those, the flowers of chivalry, who had won the prize at tilts and tournaments; when armed knight met knight, and high-born ladies gazed on and awarded the victor's meed. Rest they had not found on earth, amid the stunning tide of crime and human care, and they wished that bells might toll for them, and prayers be said for them, beside the rushing waters of the Skill. The mental eye, back glancing, through the vista of long ages, sees at intervals successive funerals slowly proceeding through the abbey gates. Warriors of the noble house of Percy borne there. Lord Rieland, one of the twenty guardians of the Magna Charta, he who sustained the shock of arms and cheered on his vassals in the Barons' wars. He too, Lord Henry de Percy, another member of that ancient race, who followed in after years the banner of King Edward into Scotland, was borne by his tall yeomen to that still and narrow bed which receives alike the prince and peasant. Others also followed, great in their day, and filled while living with busy schemes, but of whom, as years were added, scarcely a trace remained.--Where knees bent in prayer, and the white-robed priest chanted the high requiem, a broken stone figure, recumbent on a lichen-dotted stone, points out a warrior's resting-place; and perchance a mound thrown up, with broken slabs of richly-sculptured marble, indicate that some one who had figured greatly in past ages lay there; again, a broken crosier, or a pilgrim's staff, tell of years spent in wanderings, and in prayer. [Illustration] [Illustration: HOWE SELE'S OAK] Howel Sele's Oak. "I mark'd a broad and blasted oak, Scorched by the lightning's livid glare, Hollow its stem from branch to branch, And all its shrivell'd arms were bare. E'en to this day, the peasant still, With cautious fear, avoids the ground; In each wild branch a spectre sees, And trembles at each rising sound."