would go and fing to the wolves? Do the whelps of wolves delight in loud mufic? They even made sport, and when any perfon was fent hither, would afk, What fault has he committed? Why is he fent to prifon?' Thus was the mistress and mother-house called a dungeon and a place of banishment for criminals."

The old Lanthony never furmounted thefe ufurpations of the new. Its library was defpoiled of its books; its storehouse of its deeds and charters; of its filk veftments and relics, embroidered with gold and filver; and the treasury of its precious goods. Whatever was valuable or ornamental in the church of St. John was conveyed to Gloucefter, without the smallest oppofition, and at laft the Gloucefter monks carried thither its very bells, notwithstanding their great weight. Edward IV. made the Gloucester Lanthony the principal, but compelled the monks to maintain a prior and four canons at the original abbey. At the dissolution in 1539 the old Lanthony was valued at £71 3s. 2d., and the Gloucester monastery at £648 19s. 11d. At that period Richard Hempfted was the prior of Lanthony, and on his surrender he obtained a pension of £100 a-year. Anthony à Wood fays that he carried away many ancient manufcripts from the abbey, and gave them to his brother-in-law. The abbey was fold to one Richard Arnold, and was purchased of Arnold's defcendant, Captain Arnold of Lanvihavel, by Harley the minifter of Queen Anne, and fo became the property of the Earls of Oxford.

In 1806 Lanthony was purchased by Walter Savage Landor, the celebrated poet and prose writer. For the estates of Lanthony and Comjoy he paid in purchase-money and improvements £70,000. His improvements were extenfive. He for many years employed between twenty and thirty labourers in building and planting. He made a road at his own expense

eight miles long, and planted and fenced half a million of trees, and had a million more trees ready to plant. But Lanthony was not deftined to become more agreeable to him than it had been to the monks. According to his own statement to us, he received fuch infamous treatment from both his fteward and his principal farmers, during his fojourn on the continent, that he determined to abandon the place as a refidence. He had built a house at a cost of £8,000, but he pulled it down ftick and stone, that his fon might not be exposed to similar vexations by living there. Two farmers especially, brothers, whose united rents amounted to £1,500 per annum, refufed all payment till compelled by law, and then fled to America. From these tenants the steward received £1000; but Landor fays he never faw a farthing of the money, and he was afterwards obliged to difmifs the steward too. He ftates that he had twelve thousand acres of land at Lanthony, much of it, of course, mountain; and that he had twenty watchers of game on the hills night and day, but that he never faw a grouse upon his table, though the game coft him more annually than he lived at after leaving Lanthony.

Such is the hiftory of one of the finest monaftic ruins in one of the most monastic seclusions of the United Kingdom. Those who now vifit it will find part of the priory buildings converted into a small romantic inn: and, whilft they contemplate the profound repose of its fituation, will little suspect the paffions and discontent which have agitated and embittered its history from the days of William and Ernesti to those of the impulfive author of " Ghebir" and "Imaginary Conversations."

Near the ruins of the abbey there is a subterranean paffage, faced with hewn ftone, about four feet fix inches high. The people fay that, according to tradition, it paffes under the

mountains to Oldcastle, which, if it were true, would connect it with another place of great interest-the house of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the leader of the Lollards in the reign of Henry V., who concealed himself at this Oldcastle for fome time, but was taken and burned in St. Giles's Fields in 1417; being, fays Horace Walpole, " the first author, as well as the first martyr, amongst our nobility."

LANTHONY.

There may be mightier ruins ;-Conway's flood

Mirrors a mass more noble far than thine,

And Aberystwith's gaunt remains have stood

The ceafelefs fhock where wind and wave combine;

Lone is Dolbadarn, and the lovely shrine

Of Valle-Crucis is a spell of power,

That ftills each meaner thought and keeps enchained;

Proud of that long array of arch and tower,

Raglan may claim a rude pre-eminence;

Tintern is peerlefs at the moonlit hour,

Neath, Chepstow, Goodriche, each hath its pretence ;-
But mid thy folitary mountains, gained

By no plain beaten path, my spirit turns
To thee, Lanthony! and, as yet untrained,
Freely to worship in thy precinct yearns,-
Now, left to nature's Pilgrims unprofaned!

Chepstow Castle.

EARS ago, as I iffued from the Bristol fteamer, and was afcending the steep Highftreet of Chepstow, on a fine autumn morning, I became aware of a tall, ftout, floridlooking man in middle life, alfo labouring up behind me. There was a crowd of other pas fengers who had defcended from the fame fteam-boat, and were afcending the fame ftreet,-fome before me, fome behind me,but I became, fomehow, particularly conscious of the following of the large, ftout man. There was his heavy, measured tread, always at a certain distance in my rear, which I neither left farther aftern by quickening my pace, nor put a-head by flackening it, and this it was that, no doubt, foon made me especially fenfitive to this ponderous fequitur. If I have a fidgetty averfion to one thing more than another, it is to have fomething pad, padding at my heels, like the Fakenham ghoft. I often stop short to let a cart, or a carriage of any kind, that is going on grinding and jarring befide me, or a perfon who comes tramp, tramp, with an inceffant, unvarying ftep, close behind me, go its, his, or her way. But this coloffal humanity was not thus to be got rid of. To accelerate or leffen my speed only produced the fame effect on my follower: there might have been a rod or bar of fome kind fufpended betwixt us, and regulating our distance. As no graduation of progreffion availed to remove the incubus, I fuddenly stopped and directed

my attention into a fhop window; the huge man as fuddenly did the fame. I gave a fide-glance at him, but he appeared to be profoundly contemplating a pair of bellows of no particular novelty of fashion. I fprang forward as abruptly as I had ftopped, hoping that my great fhadow was fufficiently attracted by the bellows to adhere, and thereby, like the shadow of Peter Schlemyhl, fall away from me. Nothing of the kind. As if my removal was the inevitable cause of his, he turned gravely and renewed-his chafe?-no; his pursuit ?-no, it could not be faid to be either, but his mechanical following. But he is fat, I thought; and thereupon I put, to use a Derbyshire phrase, my beft leg foremost, and went up the steepest part of the ftreet at a rate of at least five miles an hour. It was useless. The stupendous man, if he were not the actual grey man of Peter Schlemyhl, had on, it feemed, his feven-league boots. With enormous ftrides and the equally great accompanying stretches of a stout stick, he cleared the pavement wonderfully, and was ftill just two yards behind me.

"This is intolerable!" I faid to myself, and, wheeling fuddenly round, I stood and gazed down over the town, and over the Wye circling round its base, and over the Gloucestershire fields and woods beyond. The man wheeled round too, blew a large hot breath from his puffed cheeks-I had tired him a little then!-took off a capacious broad-brimmed hat, and, wiping a capacious forehead with a brilliant red and yellow filk handkerchief, revealed a gigantic head-what a head he had! -covered with a profufion of brown and curly hair.

"A very fine view," he observed, ftill gazing round on the extensive scene of town and fhips, and Wye and distant Severn. "Very!" I faid, fomewhat fhort. "Very, indeed," he replied with a much more amiable complacency. I went on, and fo did the imperturbable, inevitable ftranger. Then