The way leads through a majestic wood, first to a steep hill, and then, at an abrupt turn, to a green valley about three or four hundred feet wide, in the centre of which is a little river broken into various natural waterfalls. On one side of the valley is a considerable chain of hills, overgrown with venerable ashes, beeches, and oaks; on the other, an abrupt wall of rock overhung with trailing plants, and also crowned with old trees. The whole end of the valley is closed by the ruins and the lofty towers of the abbey. You will easily form some conception of the vastness of these ruins, when I tell you that the buildings belonging to the abbey, when entire, covered fifteen acres of ground, and that the ruins now cover four. The nave of the church, great part of the walls of which are still standing, is three hundred and fifty-one feet in length, the oriel window fifty feet high, and the tower, though partly fallen down, a hundred and sixty-six feet high. The architecture is of the best period--the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--as simple as it is grand. A gateway leads from the church to the cloister, three hundred feet long and forty-two wide; a second to the cloister garden, which is cultivated as a flower-garden by its present possessor, and surrounded by various picturesque ruins,--the library, court and chapter-house. The vaulted ceiling of the latter, like the Römer in Marienburg, is supported by a single pillar in the centre. The groined roof of the kitchen is constructed, with consummate skill, without any support. Near it is the magnificent confectory, a hundred and eight feet long and forty-five wide:--this was, of course, the crown and glory of the abbey, which was famed for its luxury and dissoluteness. In the church are many monuments--one of Lord Mowbray in full chain armour, carved in stone; further on, several abbots; and lastly, a stone coffin, which contained the mortal remains of Harry Percy. Above it is an angel, in good preservation, and beneath it the date 1283, very distinct. At the top of the tower is a Latin inscription in gigantic Gothic letters, which proclaims from on high these beautiful and appropriate words, "Glory and praise to God alone through all ages!" The whole ruin is hung with draperies of ivy and creeping plants, and majestic trees here and there wave their tops above it. The river winds by, and a few steps further on, turns the old abbey-mill, which is still in use; as if to teach the lesson, that when power and magnificence pass away, the useful retains its modest existence. At a short distance behind the abbey stands the old dwelling of the proprietor, which was built out of the fallen stones of the ruins in the sixteenth century. This, too, is highly picturesque, though of course in a far less noble style. Its walled gardens with their high-cut yew hedges, and regular, trim flower-beds; and the mixture of objects comparatively modern, yet now