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BOLTON ABBEY. 23


the tone of my feelings. Can anything remind us more forcibly of the brevity of human existence, than the sight of a vast edifice, raised with a care and a skill which seemed to promise that it should remain coeval with time itself, now mouldering in the dust; weeds and grass usurping the site of the fair pavement! Where once the window, stained with armorial bearings, “ shed a dim religious light,” is seen the creeping ivy; and instead of “the loud pealing organ,” and swelling voices, hymning the praises of the Deity, are heard at times the screaming of the bittern, and the low complaining of the owl. And where are they, the proud founders of the building? where are the lordly abbots, with their long train of attendant monks? —all, all, are vanished! not one trace remains, to point out the spot which contains their ashes! The dust of the chivalrous baron and the mitred churchman is mingled in one indiscriminate mass, or scattered by the winds to the four corners of heaven. A few more revolving years, and they who now move sa lightly and so gaily over the green turf, will, like those who sleep below, be swallowed up in the vast ocean of eternity, and be forgotten, as though they had never been!

Thus musing, or at times sauntering listlessly among the ruins, I heeded not the passing time, nor perceived that my companions had wandered far from me. In the morning no cloud had ob-

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