vility costs nothing," it is not an article of more general circulation amongst mankind at large.

Furness Abbey is seven miles from Ulverston, and the way to it is through Dalton.

The uncommonly elegant manner in which Mrs. Radcliffe has described the localities of Furness Abbey as a ruin, and so richly and "full to the eye" has she pictured forth its religious ceremonies when the Abbey was in the state of perfection of times past, that the writer, like Mr. Housman, "cannot omit giving the whole of her interesting account," which will be added to that first taken from Mr. West.

"Proceed," says Mr. West, "by Dalton to to the magnificent ruins of Furness-Abbey, and there

"See the wild waste of all devouring years,
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,
With nodding arches, broken temples spread,
The
very tombs now vanish like the dead."

"This Abbey was founded by Stephen Earl of Mortaign and Boulogne, afterwards King of England, A. D. 1127, and was endowed with the lordship of Furness, and many royal privileges. It was peopled from the monastery of Savigny in Normandy, and dedicated to St. Mary. In ancient writings it is stiled St. Marye's of Furness. The monks were of the order of Savigny, and their dress was grey cloth; but

on receiving St. Bernard's form, they changed from grey to white, and became Cistercians; and such they remained till the dissolution of the monasteries.

"The situation of this abbey, so favourable to a contemplative life, justifies the choice of the first settlers. Such a sequestered site, in the bottom of a deep dell, through which a hasty brook rolls its murmuring stream, and along which the roaring west wind would often blow, joined with the deep-toned matin song, must have been very favourable to the solemn melancholy of a monastic life.

"To prevent surprise, and call in assistance, a beacon was placed on the crown of an eminence, that rises immediately from the abbey, and is seen over all Low-Furness. The door leading to the beacon is still remaining in the inclosurewall, on the eastern side. The magnitude of the abbey may be known from the dimensions of the ruins; and enough is standing to show the stile of the architecture. The round and pointed arches occur in the doors and windows. The fine clustered Gothic, and the heavy plain Saxon pillars stand contrasted. The walls show excellent masonry, are in many places counterarched, and the ruins discover a strong cement. The east window has been noble, and some of the painted glass that once adorned it is preserved in a window in Windermere church, On the outside of the window, under an archedfestoon, is the head of the founder, and opposite to it, that of Maud, his queen; both crowned,

and well executed. In the south wall, and east end of the church, are four seats, adorned with Gothic ornaments. In these the officiating priest, with his attendants, sat at intervals, during the solemn service of high mass. In the middle space, where the first barons of Kendal are interred, lies a procumbent figure of a man in armour, cross-legged. The chapter-house has been a noble room of sixty feet by forty-five. The vaulted roof, formed of twelve ribbed arches, was supported by six pillars in two rows, at thirteen feet distance from each other. Now, supposing each of the pillars to be two feet in diameter, the room would be divided into three alleys, or passages, each thirteen feet wide. On entrance, the middle one only could be seen, lighted by a pair of tall pointed windows at the upper end of the room; the company in the side passage would be concealed by the pillars, and the vaulted roof, that groined from those pillars, would have a truly Gothic disproportionate appearance of sixty feet by thirteen. The two side alleys were lighted each by a pair of similar lights, besides another pair at the upper end, at present entire, and which illustrate what is here said. Thus, whilst the upper end of the room had a profusion of light, the lower end would be in the shade. The noble roof of this singular edifice did but lately fall in, and the entrance or porch is still standing; a fine circular arch, beautified with a deep cornice, and a portico on each side. The only entire roof now remaining, is of a building without the inclosure-wall. It was the school-house of the abbot's tenants, and is a single ribbed arch that groins from the wall.

"There is a general disproportion_remarkable in Gothic churches, which must have originated in some effect intended by all the architects; perhaps to strike the mind with reverential awe at the sight of magnificence, arising from the vastness of two dimensions, and a third seemingly disregarded; or, perhaps such a determinate height and length was found more favourable than any other to the church song, by giving a deeper swell to the choir of chanting monks. A remarkable deformity in this edifice, and for which there is no apparent reason or necessity, is, that the north door, which is the principal entrance, is on one side of the window above it. The tower has been supported by four magnificent arches, of which only one remains entire. They rested upon four tall pillars, whereof three are finely clustered, but the fourth is of a plain unmeaning construction."

Now for some of the fruits of the all-accomplished mind of Mrs. Radcliffe.

"About a mile and a half on this side of the Abbey, the road passes through Dalton, a very ancient little town, once the capital of Low Furness, and rendered so important by its neighbourhood to the Abbey, that Ulverston, the present capital, could not then support the weekly market for which it had obtained a charter. Dalton, however, sunk with the suppression of its neighbouring patrons, and is now chiefly distinguished by the pleasantness of its situation; to which a church, built on a bold ascent, and the remains of a castle advantageously

placed for the command of the adjoining valley, still attach some degree of dignity. What now exists of the latter is one tower, in a chamber of which the Abbot of Furness held his secular court; and the chamber was afterwards used as a gaol for debtors, till within these few years, when the dead ruin released the living one. The present church-yard, and the site of this castle, are supposed to have been included within the limits of a castellum built by Agricola, of the fosse of which there are still some faint vestiges.

"Beneath the brow on which the church and tower stand, a brook flows through a narrow valley, that winds about a mile and a half to the Abbey. In the way thither we passed the entrance of one of the very rich iron mines with which the neighbourhood abounds; and the deep red tint of the soil, that overspreads almost the whole country between Ulverston and the monastery, sufficiently indicates the nature of the treasures beneath.

"In a close glen, branching from this valley, shrouded by winding banks clumped with old groves of oak and chesnut, we found the magnificent remains of Furness Abbey. The deep retirement of its situation, the venerable grandeur of its Gothic arches, and the luxuriant yet ancient trees, that shadow this forsaken spot, are circumstances of picturesque, and, if the expression may be allowed, of sentimental beauty, which fill the mind with solemn yet delightful emotion. This glen is called the Vale of Night