east window forms two trifoliated lights, with a foliated circle in the head.

A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepened glories once could enter
Streaming from off the sunlike seraph's wings,

Now yawns all desolate.

It is a remarkable incident that almost invariably the east window of the church has been spared, although the other portions are in ruins. Maundrell mentions a similar circumstance in the case of churches in the East. There was no triforium. The clerestory, deeply recessed, consists of triplets included by a common arch in each bay. The nave is of eight, the choir of four bays. In the south nave aisle, the windows are triplets, a broad foliated light between two lancets; on the north side they form foliated triplets. In the choir aisles there were couplets. The blank wall of the south transept has a steep gable with a three-light window over two trifoliated arches, and a foliated circle above them, while below are two pointed arches. The eastern chapel, like that of the sacristy, retains its Early English groining. The Chapter-house, 36 ft. by 36 ft., is divided by four pillars into a nave and aisles. The refectory (which was beneath the dormitory), 45 ft. by 24 ft., is divided into two alleys by four pillars, Early English, with windows of two lancet lights and foliated circles in the head. The kitchen, 48 ft. by 18 ft., retains its groining, but the ribs are gone. It contains a remarkable fire-place of the 13th century. Some of the buildings are of brick, the earliest example of its use after the time of the Romans. In one of the rooms will be observed a chimney formed in the thickness of the wall, but not reaching above the top.

The abbey stands in a dell at the foot of a gentle declivity sloping down to the east shore of the estuary, on which stands one of King Henry VIIIth's castles, and almost hidden by the rich foliage of oaks. Hill and dale, field and lawn, succeed each other on the land side, with little valleys thick with underwood, and murmuring with brooks, which abound. Here Queen Elizabeth was entertained, in 1560, by the Earl

of Hertford. A body of French royalists quartered on the adjacent common, before the expedition to Quiberon, pulled down a great portion of the ivy on the ruins, and Lady Holland followed their example till the Dilettanti Club remonstrated, urging the authority of Pausanias, who records the destruction of a Boeotian temple, owing to a similar act of Vandalism.

Horace Walpole was warmed into raptures here. It was "not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise. Oh, the purpled abbots, what a spot they had chosen to slumber in! The scene is so beautifully tranquil, yet so lively, that they seem only to have retired into the world." Gray, in 1770, playfully and poetically thus describes his visit: "See there at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shadow of those old trees, that bend into a half circle about it. The abbot is walking slowly, good man! and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors, interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it nods a thicket of oaks that mask the building, and have excluded a view too garish and luxuriant for a holy eye; only on either hand they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. Did you not observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself to drive the tempter from him, who had thrown that distraction in his way ?" The ferryman told the poet that he would not for all the world pass a night at the abbey, there were such things seen near it, though there was a power of money hid there. A story is current that a peasant did discover a large number of old coins, but was compelled to refund them to the lord of the manor; a decision which has been a sore blow and heavy discouragement to all subsequent itching fingers.

Now sunk, deserted, and with weeds o'ergrown,

Yon prostrate walls their awful fate bewail,

Low on the ground their topmost spires are thrown,
Once friendly marks to guide the wandering sail.

The ivy now with rude luxuriance bends

Its tangled foliage through the cloistered space,
O'er the green windows' mouldering height ascends,
And fondly clasps it with a last embrace.

Newstead.-(Austin Canons.)

St. MARY'S Abbey was founded by Henry II. in 1170 as an act of penance. The west front is Geometrical Decorated, and consists of a large window set between buttresses of exquisite design, with niches for statues: on either side are large, blank-traceried windows. In the reign of Charles II., John, Lord Byron, converted the south aisle into a library and reception-room, on the occasion of a royal visit. The dormitory has been made into a drawing-room; the servants-hall was the guest-hall; the great hall was the refectory; the prior's place is the private dining-room. The chapter-house is 24 ft. square, Transitional Norman, and has a groined roof supported by two pillars. In the reign of Charles I. the abbey suffered considerable injury from the rebels. A goblin monk, and a spectral "little Sir John with the great beard," who haunt the buildings, are fully portrayed in Washington Irving's and Howitt's sketch of Newstead. Lord Byron thus describes his boyish home:

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

* stood half apart

In a grand arch which once screened many an aisle.
These last had disappeared-a loss to art:

The first yet frowned superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourned the power of Time's or Tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.

Reading.-(Mitred Benedictine.)

That sumptuous pile, with all its peers,
Too harshly hath been doomed to taste
The bitterness of wrong and waste;

Its courts all ravaged.

THE abbat of SS. Mary and John Evangelist, Reading, sat next to his brethren of Glastonbury and St. Alban's. Henry I. was buried here, wrapped in ox-hides, December, 1135; his

queen Adeliza was also buried here, and Reginald, Earl of Cornwall. Here were held councils in 1214, in 1279, and in 1184, in the presence of King Henry II. Parliaments were held in the abbey 1191, and 1213, 1384, 1389, and 1439, 1451-2, and 1467. John Holyman, Bishop of Bristol, and Hugh and Robert of Reading were monks of the house. The abbey mill remains entire.

THE DIMENSIONS OF THE CHURCH IN FEET.

It was beautifully situated on an eminence looking over the Kennet on the south, and from the King's Meadow to the north commanding the Thames. The forbury, or outer court, lay between it and the town; to the east was seen the junction of the Kennet with the Thames. The church, completed 1164, consisted of a nave, apparently parted from the aisles in parts by solid piers; a transept, with eastern apsidal chapels; a choir with aisles, and Lady Chapel; the apsidal chapter-house being to the south of the south transept, and on the eastward of the cloister. Portions of all these remain in ruins of flint-work, for the stone facings have been all removed. The chapter-house, 42 ft. by 84 ft., had three round-headed arches opening into the cloister, with an arcade of three lights above. In the apse were five large windows. On the south side of the cloister was the refectory, Norman, 72 ft. by 42 ft., divided by a row of arches. Remains of the lavatory are in the wall now remaining. The great gateway was built 1220-30.

Henry Faringdon, the last abbot, refused to surrender his abbey, and was tried in the King's Bench, on a charge of high treason, and, with two of his monks, executed at Tyburn. A porch and window of the Franciscan friary remain built into a house wall.

Arms: Az. 3 escallops, or.

M.

P

Rievalle.-(Cistercian.)

A mild and tender light

Here softens down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fills up,
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not; till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the great of old

The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

SIR WALTER D'ESPEC (also founder of Warden Abbey, Bucks, and a captain in the Battle of the Standard), in sorrow for the death of his only son by a fall from his horse, founded this abbey, called, from its situation in a vale on the river Rie, Rievalle. In 1131 he himself assumed the cowl, and, after two years, was laid to his rest within it, March 9, 1153.

St. Mary's is situated in a green verdant valley, containing a few scattered cottages, surrounded by gentle heights, and covered with wood and ling; and within sight of the fine terrace of Duncombe Park, at a point where three vales join, each with their tributary stream, crossed by picturesque bridges at the meeting of the waters. The nave and three sides of the tower are gone. The tower arch, 75 ft. high, in which wave the wild rose and viper's bugloss, ends in brackets, and seems supported in the air by unseen hands. The church stands north and south, for the ancient nave and choir were employed as transepts for the new building, which is Early English; the choir and portions of the aisles are of the same date. The east windows of the transept are lancets. The cloisters were on the south side, and entered by the gateway now remaining. The refectory, 125 ft. by 37 ft., lit by lancets, has remains of a reader's pulpit. In the village, on the north side, are the almonry and infirmary. The earliest glass used in the north of England was placed in this abbey 1140. At Leak, near Northallerton, is a bell dated 1167, which was brought from Rievalle. The minster is composed of a nave of nine bays