t appeal each morn and
night for raiment and for food.

But it was in the centre of this tract of ruins, occupying a space of
not less than two acres, that, with a strength that had defied time, and
with a beauty that had at last turned away the wrath of man, still rose
if not in perfect, yet admirable, form and state, one of the noblest
achievements of Christian art,--the Abbey church. The summer vault was
now its only roof, and all that remained of its gorgeous windows was
the vastness of their arched symmetry, and some wreathed relics of their
fantastic frame-work, but the rest was uninjured.

From the west window, looking over the transept chapel of the Virgin,
still adorned with pillars of marble and alabaster, the eye wandered
down the nave to the great orient light, a length of nearly three
hundred feet, through a gorgeous avenue of unshaken walls and columns
that clustered to the skies, On each side of the Lady's chapel rose a
tower. One which was of great antiquity, being of that style which is
commonly called Norman, short and very thick and square, did not mount
much above the height of the western front; but the other tower was of
a character very different, It was tall and light, and of a Gothic style
most pure and graceful; the stone of which it was built, of a bright and
even sparkling colour, and looking as if it were hewn but yesterday.
At first, its turretted crest seemed injured; but the truth is, it was
unfinished; the workmen were busied on this very tower the day that old
Baldwin Greymount came as the king's commissioner to inquire into the
conduct of this religious house. The abbots loved to memorise their
reigns by some public work, which should add to the beauty of their
buildings or the convenience of their subjects; and the last of the
ecclesiastical lords of Marney, a man of fine taste and a skilful
architect, was raising this new belfry for his brethren when the stern
decree arrived that the bells should no more sound. And the hymn was no
more to be chaunted in the Lady's chapel; and the candles were no more
to be lit on the high altar; and the gate of the poor was to be closed
for ever; and the wanderer was no more to find a home.

The body of the church was in many parts overgrown with brambles and in
all covered with a rank vegetation. It had been a very sultry day, and
the blaze of the meridian heat still inflamed the air; the kine for
shelter, rather than for sustenance, had wandered