The whole of the small green slope is here dotted with beds of flowers; a step, into some rock-work, leads to a kind of hermit's oratory, with crucifix and stained glass, built to receive the shattered fragments, as their last asylum, of the pillars of Stanly Abbey. The dripping water passes through the rock-work into a large shell, the gift of a valued friend, the author of "The Pleasures of Memory;" and I add, with less hesitation, the inscription, because it was furnished by the author of "The Pains of Memory," a poem, in its kind, of the most exquisite harmony and fancy, though the author has long left the bowers of the muses, and the harp of music, for the severe professional duties of the bar. I have some pride in mentioning the name of Peregrine Bingham, being a near relation, as well as rising in character and fame at the bar. The verses will speak for themselves, and are not unworthy his muse whose poem suggested the comparisons. The inscription is placed over the large Indian shell:-- "Snatch'd from an Indian ocean's roar, I drink the whelming tide no more; But in this rock, remote and still, Now serve to pour the murmuring rill. Listen! Do thoughts awake, which long have slept-- Oh! like his song, who placed me here, The sweetest song to Memory dear, When life's tumultuous storms are past, May we, to such sweet music, close at last The eyelids that have wept!" Leaving the small oratory, a terrace of flowers leads to a Gothic stone-seat at the end, and, returning to the flower-garden, we wind up a narrow path from the more verdant scene, to a small dark path, with fantastic roots shooting from the bank, where a grave-stone appears, on which an hour-glass is carved. A root-house fronts us, with dark boughs branching over it. Sit down in that old carved chair. If I cannot welcome some illustrious visitors in such consummate verse as Pope, I may, I hope, not without blameless pride, tell you, reader, in this chair have sat some public characters, distinguished by far more noble qualities than "the nobly pensive St. John!" I might add, that this seat has received, among other visiters, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir George Beaumont, Sir Humphry Davy--poets as well as philosophers, Madame de Stael, Dugald Stewart, and Christopher North, Esq. Two lines on a small board on this root-house point the application:-- "Dost thou lament the dead, and mourn the loss Of many friends, oh! think upon the cross!" Over an old tomb-stone, through an arch, at a distance in light beyond, there is a vista to a stone cross, which, in the seventeenth century, would have been idolatrous!