Jorevalle.-(Cistercian.)

There stood a lone and ruined fane,
'Midst wood and rock a deep recess
Of still and shadowy loneliness;

Long grass its pavement had o'ergrown,
The wild flower waved o'er the altar stone,
The night wind rocked the tottering pile,
As it swept along the roofless aisle ;

For the forest boughs and the stormy sky
Were all that Minster's canopy.

ST. MARY'S Abbey, two miles from MIDDLEHAM, takes its name of Jorevalle from the vale of the river Ure or Yore. It is of exquisite beauty and deep interest. Founded originally for twelve monks of Byland at Fors, in Wensleydale, by FitzBardolph, and Conan, son of Alan Earl of Richmond, in 1156, the community was removed hither by the latter noble. The ground plan of the church is cruciform, with aisles to a nave of ten bays, and choir of four bays; a transept of three bays, with east aisles and altars in the angles (one of which remains in the north wing), and a Lady Chapel, The ruins were cleared out by the Earl of Aylesbury in 1807. The extreme length of the abbey was 270 ft. At Rievalle, the church is the conspicuous object: here the majestic refectory and domestic buildings stand out in massive grandeur against the surrounding woods. The abbey wall and moat remain. On the south-west, and even with the west front, ran the ambulatory of twelve bays, with a dormitory above. The cloister-court was on the south side of the nave, and on the east side is the oblong Chapter-house, 48 ft. by 35 ft., of three aisles, once divided by six hexagonal pillars of grey marble: to the south again was the refectory of seven bays and two aisles; and to the east were the kitchen and abbat's lodge. The ritual choir was prolonged two bays westward into the nave. The exquisite Chapter-house retains its corbels with colours on them, and piers and capitals have mouldings yet sharp and clean. The kitchen exhibits three enormous fire-places, 9 ft. wide.

The gorgeous rood-screen was removed to Aysgarth church in Wensleydale.

Among the abbats, occur John Brompton, the chronicler ; W. Hestington, who, in 1475, became a prisoner in the Tower, and the last, Adam de Sedbergh, was hanged at Tyburn for his share in the rising of the north. There is a fine collection of sepulchral slabs: John Kingston, 1st abbat; William, 3rd abbat; Eustace, 5th abbat; John, 8th abbat; Peter de Snape, 17th abbat, with a mitre; a priest, with chalice and host, Brian Aysgarth; William Salley, priest; T. Dunewell, priest; an effigy in mail, Lord Fitzhugh, died 1424. In Middleham church is the slab of Robert Thornton, 22nd abbat, an effigy with a pastoral staff. Walter Scott represents Harold the Dauntless as a pillager of one of the brotherhood:

Then heeding full little of ban or of curse,

He has seized the Prior of Jorvaux's purse.

Prior Aymer figures as an important personage in

'Ivanhoe.'

Kirkham.~(Austin Canons.)

THE remains of Holy Trinity Priory, Kirkham, founded by Sir Walter Espec (in memory of his son, who fell near Frithby, c. 1130, where a stone cross marks the place of his death), consist of part of the cloisters, the east end of the choir, a beautiful gate, of the time of Edward I., and a Norman doorway. The arch of the gate is slightly pointed, and set under a crocketed pediment. In the upper story are two two-light windows trefoil, with a quatrefoil in the head: five crocketed pediments, with shields in the spandrels, intervene between the windows and a quatrefoil parapet. There are several images yet remaining in the niches on the front.

Kirkstall.-(Cistercian.)

There is given

Unto the things of earth which Time hath bent
A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant
His hand but broke his scythe, there is a power

And magic in the ruined battlement,

THE ruins of St. Mary's Abbey are embosomed in a lovely secluded retreat in Airedale. Only three miles distant, the transition from the crowd, bustle, and smoky gloom of LEEDS to this valley, is most surprising and welcome: over a graceful river appears, tranquil and pensive, the desolate monastery on the lawn washed by its waters, which once reflected the grey walls as they flowed past, till they fell bickering and sparkling over the weirs. Now a road has been barbarously intruded on the close the din of mills, with their dye staining the Aire, and the lurid glare of a huge forge, have fatally destroyed the quiet. There, however, is the choir, surmounted by its ruined tower; the roofless walls of buildings hung with ivy, and canopied with wych elm, form the foreground to a rising slope, which, covered by a screen of wood, stretches miles away to a line of blue hills beyond. Perhaps no ruin in England would more easily admit of restoration: the question has been mooted: to accomplish it would be worthy of the wealth of one of the "merchant princes" of the adjacent town.

The founder was Henry de Lacy, baron of Pontefract. Whilst suffering from a severe illness, which he regarded as the chastisement of heaven, he vowed that if he recovered, he would found an abbey. On the restoration of his health, he sent for the Abbat of Fountains, to advise him. In 1147, accordingly, a prior and several monks of that house, established themselves at Bernoloswick, much to the discomfiture of the worthy rector and the parishioners, who loudly exclaimed against the intrusion, and referred the case to the Pope for adjudication. The pontiff decided in favour of the cowls. However, accident favoured their adversaries. The

M.

Scots made an inroad and pillaged the convent; and Abbat Alexander, in one of his excursions, alighted on a delicious retreat, surrounded by woods, overhung with freestone rocks, and thus ready to the hand with timber and quarries. It was occupied by some poor Saxon hermits, of whom the chief, Seleth, declared that he had been warned by the Virgin in a dream, to leave his home in the south, and come to Airedale; and that shepherds had led him to the spot which he occupied. Abbat Alexander soon procured a grant from the lord of the manor, William of Poitou: some of the hermits he bought out, and some he made monks; but his own brotherhood he brought hither, and called the place Kirk-stall, that is, Church-station :

The air around is breathing balm,
The aspen scarcely seems to sway,
And as a sleeping infant calm
The river stream away;

Devious as error, deep as love,

And blue and bright as heaven above.

The area of the ruins is 340 ft. north to south, and 445 ft. from east to west. The walls enclose a quadrangle of 115 ft. by 143 ft. There is a stately gatehouse, 300 ft. to the northwest of the church; the latter was built nearly by Abbat Alexander. The west front has a steep gable, with a central pinnacle, set between two buttress-turrets with pinnacles, enriched and pedimented, of a later date; above a deeplyrecessed Norman door of five orders, with an arcade of intersecting arches in the pediment, are two large semicircularheaded windows, with billet and chevron mouldings, and fragments of Perpendicular tracery. On either side is an aisle window, Norman, flanked by flat pilaster-like buttresses. The cloister-court, now an orchard, is on the south side of the nave. In the aisle are round-headed single lights set between flat pilasters: there is a superb north-west door deeply recessed. The arrangement of the clerestory is similar; there is no triforium. The nave of eight bays is, like the rest of the building, Transitional Norman. Long and lofty, of massive construction, and great size, with its few narrow round

headed windows, of single lights in clerestory and triforium, its appearance must have been very solemn, and the light subdued almost to gloom. Each transept had a steep gable, with a single light, surmounted by a central pinnacle, and flanked by two square turret-like buttresses, pinnacled and pedimented in the first and second stages is a triplet of round-headed lights, but above the former rise flat pilasters between the windows. The central tower retains its south, and part of its east sides; for having received an injudiciouslyadded superstructure in the reign of Henry VII., the remainder fell down 27th January, 1779: it had two lights in the original lower stage, and single large windows above. The vaulting of the nave-aisles and choir remains. The choir is aisleless. The extreme length of the church is 224 ft. The transept, 118 ft. 3 in. long, had three chapels, instead of an aisle, in each wing. On the south of the south transept is the chapter-house, in tolerable preservation, an oblong of two bays. On the west side of the cloister-court, 115 ft. by 143 ft., was an ambulatory of ten bays, with a dormitory above. The lavatory, the great kitchen, and a portion of the refectory remain. Gray, in 1770, thus describes the ruins :"It was a delicious, quiet valley: there are a variety of chapels and remnants of the abbey, shattered by the encroachments of the ivy, and surrounded by many a sturdy tree, whose twisted roots break through the fret of the vaulting, and hang streaming from the vaults. The gloom of these ancient cells, the shade and verdure of the landscape, the glittering and murmur of the stream, the lofty towers and long perspectives of the church in the midst of a clear bright day, detained me for many hours."

Arms, az. Three swords; two and one, hilted and panelled, or.

Lacock.-(Augustine Nuns.)

FROM a spacious level meadow, in summer-time glistening with kingcups, surrounded by stately elms, and watered by the winding stream of the slow and solitary Avon, rise the