n
Cathedral of St. Andrews, he crosses a wide arm of the sea, and when
he again approaches the shore, the objects most prominent against the
sky are the still more disastrously shattered remnants of the great
Abbey of Aberbrothwick. One lofty fragment presents in its centre a
circle, doubtless once filled with richly moulded mullions and
stained-glass, but through which the blue sky is now visible. This
vacant circle is the only symmetrical form in these lofty masses that
at a distance strikes the eye--all else is shapeless and fragmentary.
Around these huge unsightly vestiges of ancient magnificence the types
of modern comfort and commercial wealth cluster thickly, in the shape
of a small but busy manufacturing town, with its mills, tall chimneys
and rows of substantial houses.

The ruins, which are interesting only in their details, scarcely
present a more inviting general aspect as they are approached. Nearing
them from the High Street of the burgh, the first prominent object is
a grim, strong, square tower, the sole remaining complete edifice of
the great establishment, now used as a butcher's shop. It was not
perhaps without design that this formidable building was so placed as
to frown over the dwellings of the industrious burghers--it was the
prison of the regality of the abbey--the place of punishment or
detention through which a judicial power, scarcely inferior to that of
the royal courts, was enforced by this potent brotherhood; and thus it
served to remind the world without, that the coercive power of the
abbot and his chapter was scarcely inferior to their spiritual dignity
and their temporal magnificence. Passing onward, the whole scene is
found to be a chaos of ruin. Fragments of the church, with those of
the cloisters and other monastic edifices, rise in apparently
inseparable confusion from the grassy ground; but, with a little
observation, the cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and
then its disjointed masses reduce themselves into connected details.
The dark-red stone of which the building was constructed is friable,
and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary
winds of the northeast coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus
wofully obliterated, and the facings are so much decayed as to leave
the original surface distinguishable only here and there. At
comparatively late periods large masses of the ruins have fallen down;
and Pennant mentions such an event as having