gollen Vale" did not omit, among the embellishments of her description. Say ivy'd Valle Crucis time-decay'd Dim on the brink of Deva's wandering flood, Your riv'd arch glimmering through the tangled glade, And desolately great the rising sigh command." The abbey, denominated in records, de Valle Crucis, was a house of Cistertians, founded by Madoc ap Gryffydd Maelor, lord of Bromfield, in the year 1200*. The endowments must at one time have been considerable; for Guttyn Owain, a poet, who flourished in the fifteenth century, highly commends the hospitality of the abbots; and when describing their mode of living, observes, the table was usually covered, with four courses of meat, served up in silver dishes, and sparkling claret the general beverage. This was the first monastic institution in North Wales, broken up by the capricious policy of an autocratical monarch. The annual revenues, at the dissolution, according to Dugdale's statement were 1887; but Speed makes them amount to 214/. 13s. 5d. The lower part of the abbey, which had a vaulted roof, supported by massy columns, has been made a farm house and the apartments, once consecrated to seclusive devotion, converted into appurtenant offices. The front of this still retains the designated characteristic, in a large pointed window, reaching to the ground, and the mullions surmounted with elegant tracery. Three rows of groined arches, resting on circular pillars, have over them a room now used as a granary, that once formed the fraternal dormitory. The cruciform church, built in different styles of architecture, has the east and west ends, with a large portion of the transept, still • Wynne's Hist. of Wales, p: 221, still remaining; which combine to form a most interesting ruin. The former is evidently the most ancient part of the structure, having three long lancet-shaped windows, that tend to give it a ponderous appearance. The latter seems to have had a decorated doorway, over which was a large circularheaded window, consisting of three divisions; richly ornamented both in its mullions and tracery; and above this, is a marigold window of still more exquisite workmanship. The capitals of the pilasters within the building finish with elegant foliage. The transept contains a small cloister of two arches, and a mural sepulchral arch, that probably once encircled the tomb of the founder. The edifice is principally constructed of the schistose materials, dug in the vicinity; but the doorways, window frames, and ornamental parts, are all of free stone. The area of the church presents a number of tall ash trees, which overtopping some parts of the ruin, and hiding others from the sight, blend vegetation with mouldering walls, and contribute considerably to its picturesque effect. On a conical mountain, forming the back ground to the interesting picture, stand in awful majesty; the dilapidated fragments of Castell Dinas Bran. This, reckoned among the number of primitive Welsh castles derived its latter name from the Brân, a small mountain stream running near the foot of the elevated spot, on which it is situated; but by whom erected, or at what period, are points, equally buried in the dust of oblivion. Probably it was built by some one of the lords of Yale, whose seat it continued to be for several centuries. In the reign of Henry the third, it afforded an asylum, from the fury of his justly enraged subjects, to Gryffydd ap Madoc, who had basely sided with the English monarch, and betrayed his country. At his death, the king bestowed it on John, earl Warren, whence it descended in the succession of Bromfield and Yale. It was a place of considerable consequence, during the quarrel, which, arising between lord Grey de Ruthin and Owen Glyn dwr, |