Kirkstall Abbey is about three miles away, on the edge of the city. Nothing can excel the beauty of this ancient place. It is situated near a country road, and slopes to the river a distance of perhaps a thousand feet. The walls are varied in outlines and heights. The tower and walls are quite complete, and the adjoining ruins are as fine as any in England. They comprise many rooms, roofless for centuries. The low-cropped grass, with its thick math, fills them, and there are ten or twelve elm-trees, full two feet in diameter, growing in the deserted apartments. In one part is the small enclosed garden, perfect as at the first. In the walls are places of burial of the pietists who once dwelt here; and on one side are rooms, opening into the garden, that once were monks' cells and their later place of sepulture. There are many stone coffins; and the apartments and the close, with the ivy-mantled walls, are of extreme beauty. The position is remarkably fine. Removed from other habitations; quietly situated at the side of the great road, and on this meadow-like lawn; the river running leisurely by, washing the borders; the old trees; its ingenuity of arrangement,--this gem is a connecting link between the old dispensation and the new. We could but wish we might do as Scott advises of Melrose Abbey, "visit it by the pale moonlight;" but we did not have that privilege. We could only see it at the close of this fine day, when the low sun sent its rays aslant the openings, and gave an indescribable tranquillity to the place. This is one of the few spots we would again make an effort to see. As the lamented Bayard Taylor was lured from his course of travel by Longfellow's "Belfry of Bruges," and could not rest till he had been there, so this Kirkstall Abbey influences us, and will till the end of earthly journeys. Built in 1157, in the Reformation it was abandoned and unroofed, its relics destroyed, its tombs rifled, and ruin begun; and now for more than three hundred years, as if subservient to the will of Cromwell, and mute with alarm and solitary in its shame, it has stood beautiful and enduring, though dying atom by atom in its own loneliness. On Saturday, June 1, a pleasant day, though so cool that overcoats were still comfortable, we took train for CARLISLE.