The different rooms of the abbey are still in good preservation, the entire structure being of masonry. The kitchen, with its immense fireplace, appears as it was centuries ago; and a little room about six feet square in one of the towers, and opening out of the kitchen, was occupied for eleven years as a sleeping-room by the hermit, John Drake, a hundred or more years ago. His patriarchal demeanor and solemn yet cheerful aspect obtained for him a people's veneration, and his piety and general seclusion excited general interest. To this day he is spoken of with scarcely less esteem than would be one of the early monks of the abbey itself. The floors of the rooms in the second story, the building being roofless, are well overgrown with the finest lawn grass. As one walks thoughtfully up the narrow, winding, stone stairs, into the dormitory, hospital, lavatory and other apartments,--in all but few in number,--the solid and venerable walls, the open sky above him, and the green grass (emblematic of human life in its best estate) beneath his feet,--under the influence of these, in spite of himself he becomes absorbed in meditation, and holds communion with those who lived and labored here centuries ago, and at length passed on to "the house appointed for all the living." Reluctantly we left the abbey, and walked through the antique passage-ways and cramped stone stairway down into the church, where, in the midst of singular beauty, were the unwelcome evidences of inevitable decay. Here are the roofless walls of the nave, choir, and transept; here are windows elegant in design, with their stone traceries yet perfect. In places, the friendly, sombre ivy is spread, like a kind mantle of charity, covering defects of broken wall, and disguising the empty place of some fallen stone. "How old all material is," we instinctively say; and yet how new the results of labor,--the vine, the shrub, the tree. How velvety and carpet-like is the grass on parts of this very floor, once pressed by the toil-worn, blistered feet of pious penance-doers, and even now a place of deposit for their mouldering bodies. Instead of desk or altar or font, of kingly stall or peasant's seat, are ancient mural stones. Here are monuments, the outward tokens of reverence and respect for the blue blood of royalty, or the saintship of those who hundreds of years ago--their work done, the checkered scenes of life over--went down to the "silent mansions of the dead." In the piscina, in the lavatory, in the place for sacred vessels, the swallow unscared builds its nest; and along the altar-steps the lizard crawls, or basks in the sunshine unalarmed. Here sleep in their low, common--and yet _uncommon_--resting-places, they of the old dispensation, side by side with men of the new. O'Sullivan, O'Donohue, Mc'Carthy--nobles and kings of Munster, before whom the multitude trembled and reverentially bowed--mingle their dust with nineteenth-century leaders.