vision of some monastic remains. As for Egremont, he had been
almost born amid the ruins of Marney Abbey; its solemn relics
were associated with his first and freshest fancies; every
footstep was as familiar to him as it could have been to one
of the old monks; yet never without emotion could he behold
these unrivalled remains of one of the greatest of the great
religious houses of the North.

Over a space of not less than ten acres might still be
observed the fragments of the great abbey: these were, towards
their limit, in general moss-grown and mouldering memorials
that told where once rose the offices and spread the terraced
gardens of the old proprietors; here might still be traced the
dwelling of the lord abbot; and there, still more distinctly,
because built on a greater scale and of materials still more
intended for perpetuity, the capacious hospital, a name that
did not then denote the dwelling of disease, but a place where
all the rights of hospitality were practised; where the
traveller from the proud baron to the lonely pilgrim asked the
shelter and the succour that never were denied, and at whose
gate, called the Portal of the Poor, the peasants on the Abbey
lands, if in want, might 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