“On the whole,” says Grose, summing up his observations on Tinterne, “though this monastery is undoubtedly light and elegant, it wants that gloomy solemnity so essential to religious ruins; it wants those yawning vaults and dreary recesses, which strike the beholder with religious awe--make him almost shudder at entering them, and call into his mind all the tales of the nursery. Here, at one cast of the eye, the whole is comprehended, nothing is left for the spectator to guess or explore; and this defect is increased by the ill-placed neatness of the poor people who show the building, and by whose absurd labour the ground is covered over by a turf, as even and trim as that of a bowling-green, which gives the building more the air of an artificial ruin in a garden, than that of an ancient decayed <g>abbey</g>.” “How unlike,” he adds, “the beautiful description of the poet!-- ‘Half-buried there lies many a broken bust, And obelisk and urn, o’erthrown by time, And many a cherub here descends in dust, From the rent roof and portico sublime; Where reverend shrines in Gothic grandeur stood, The nettle or the noxious nightshade spreads; And ashlings, wafted from the neighbouring wood, Through the worn turrets wave their trembling heads.’” These objections have been repeated by other writers of unquestionable taste; but we may venture to predict, that among the numerous strangers who annually resort to these deserted shrines, few will return home without expressions of unqualified admiration of “Tinterne, as it is.” The care employed by its noble owner in arresting the progress of decay, is creditable to his taste and reverence for antiquity. Had these ruins been consigned, as some would have had them, to the wasting hand of time, their vaulted wonders would long ere now have fallen piecemeal into the area beneath; but wherever a stone is observed to be losing its hold, the hand of art is immediately applied to restore it to its original place: and thus, what might have passed away in a few inclement seasons, has been propped up and secured for the delight of many generations to come. And lo, these mouldering fragments to sustain, Her graceful network nature’s hand hath hung; Bound every arch with a supporting chain, And round each wall her living verdure flung; And o’er the floor that sepulchres the dead-- The saints and heroes of departed years; The flower of memory lifts its modest head, And morning sheds her tributary tears.--_W.B._ * * * * * <g>Poetical Votaries.</g>--Having quoted so largely from chroniclers and other prose writers in the preceding pages, we must not quit the subject of Tinterne Abbey, without selecting a few stanzas from those minstrels who have sought and found inspiration on the spot. Wordsworth, from whose poem on the Wye we have already quoted, addresses the following