_Bective Abbey._--The Abbey of Bective, in the immediate neighbourhood of Trim, was a Cistercian house, founded by Murchard O’Melaghlin, Prince of Meath, in A.D. 1146. The ruins exhibit, in a remarkable degree, a union of ecclesiastical with military and domestic architecture. Their chief feature is a strong battlemented tower, the lower apartment of which is vaulted, placed at the south corner of the quadrangular space occupied by the various buildings, and in the centre of which the cloisters remain in good preservation. The cloister arches are late in the First Pointed style, and are cinque-foiled. The featherings are mostly plain; but several are ornamented with flowers, or leaves, and upon one a hawk-like bird is sculptured. A fillet is worked upon each of the clustered shafts by which the openings are divided, and also upon their capitals. The bases, which are circular, rest upon square plinths, the angles of which are ornamented with a leaf, growing, as it were, out of the base moulding. Of the church there are scarcely any remains. As the northern wall of the cloister is pierced with several windows which now have the appearance of splaying externally, it is extremely probable that it also served as the south wall of the church, no other portion of which can at present be identified. Those buildings which were devoted to domestic purposes are, for the most part, situated upon the east side of the quadrangle. Their architectural details are of a character later than those of the tower and of the other portions; but additions and alterations have evidently been made. Several of the apartments have large fireplaces covered with flat arches, the stones of which are dove-tailed into one another. The flues are carried up through the thickness of the wall, and are continued through square tapering chimney-shafts, headed with a plain cornice. In its general arrangements Bective Abbey differs from every other monastic structure in Ireland. It is, in fact, a monastic castle, and, previous to the use of artillery, must have been regarded as a place of great strength. The smaller churches of the close of the twelfth, and of the early half of the thirteenth, century, are not different in general form from those of an earlier age. In a few examples, indeed, transepts occur, as in the church of Clady, adjoining Bective; but they are not invariably evidences of comparatively recent work, being sometimes found in connection with very early churches, to which they have evidently been added, and from which, in their architectural details, they differ in every respect.