‘No more the votaries of each time-shook pile, As ruin’s heirs, shall call these shades their own; For blazon’d arms explore the pageant aisle, Or search dark registers of faithless stone.’ He spoke--resolved. The menaced arches frown’d, The conscious walls in sudden conflict join’d, Crush’d the pale wretch in one promiscuous wound, And left this monument of wrath behind.” The appearance of this church shows that its ultimate destruction has been the work of accident, rather than of design; although a story of a less doubtful character informs us, that we owe the preservation of the building in its present condition to a retributary accident, resembling that of the legend just mentioned. We have already stated that, about the commencement of the last century, the materials of the abbey were sold to a person of the name of Taylor, who resided at Southampton. His friends, who looked with superstitious feelings on this venerable pile, urged him not to conclude the bargain, and advised him to abstain from being instrumental in the work of sacrilege; but he was deaf to their entreaties. He had scarcely taken possession of his purchase, when in his sleep he was visited by a fearful dream, in which it appeared to him that the key-stone of one of the arches,[230] which was to be demolished first, fell upon his head, and fractured his skull. Although troubled in mind, he at first paid no attention to this dream; but when it was repeated more than once, he ventured to disclose it to a friend. That friend was Mr. Watts, a schoolmaster in Southampton, the father of the celebrated Dr. Isaac Watts. He advised Taylor to desist from the undertaking; but the avarice of the latter overcame all scruples or fears, and he returned to the work of demolition. He had hardly begun, when, in exerting himself to tear down a board, he loosened the identical stone which had been represented to him in his dream, and which in its fall struck him a violent blow on the head. He was carried home, and his skull was found to be slightly fractured, but no apprehensions were entertained of serious consequences. The surgeon, however, in probing the wound, accidentally thrust his instrument into the brain, and caused instant death. The fate of Taylor is said to have acted as an effectual check to future depredations of a similar kind.