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were cleared of their loads of rubbish in 1819, thus leaving the full height and other proportions of these beautiful remains of English art clear. In 1821 a part of a teffellated pavement was laid bare, near the high altar, and in it were wrought the letters Ave Maria gr. This is now preserved in the circular temple at the south end of Duncombe-terrace. Some fragments of stained glass were also found; and it is worthy of remark that stained glass is first mentioned in the North of England, in 1140, as appearing in the windows of Rievaux.

Most of the other buildings of the abbey, as the cloisters, the abbot's house, the refectory, etc., are in a great state of ruin, and many of them hung with heavy maffes of ivy, while the floors are buried beneath heaps of the fallen roofs and walls. But what is this which we have here? On the weft fide of the refectory there is a mountainous heap of iron flag and cinders, showing that an iron-foundry existed here in some long-past age. It is overgrown with grafs, and appears to have been unnoticed, amongst the other mounds and inequalities made up of the fallen materials of the buildings, till late years. When we were there this vaft heap was being carted away to mend the roads, and seemed as though it would furnish an excellent fupply for that purpose for a very long period. Did the monks, amongst their other occupations, avail themselves of the ore in the neighbourhood, and, bearing the general appellation of "lazy monks," thus employ a portion of their time to their own and the public benefit? There is very little doubt that this was the cafe. The monks in many places were holders of extenfive lands, and industrious improvers of it. They were, in fact, the leaders and stimulators of agriculture, as they were the almost inspired architects and the most exquisite sculptors and carvers of their time. It was not alone in their fcriptorium that they copied

miffals and breviaries in the most exquifite caligraphy, and embellished them with equally exquifite paintings; it was not alone in writing hiftories of faints and kings that they employed their time; nor in carving beautiful cups and crucifixes for their altars; nor in working gorgeous copes and chasubles; but they extended their attention to all the more rude and matterof-fact arts and pursuits of ordinary life. They had farms and mills, and cider-preffes, and fisheries with weirs and traps. Some of them, as Roger Bacon, Bishop Groftêfte of Lincoln, Dunstan, and others, dived deep into the mysteries of chemistry, and other more occult arts, and nothing is better ascertained than that out of the quiet of a monaftery came forth the thunder of gunpowder. They had, too, these "lazy monks,” it now appears clearly, their mines and smelting-houses and bloomeries. Not only does this huge heap of flags and droffes bear teftimony to the fact, but at Ayton Priory, and in the Forge Valley, near Scarborough, remain the veftiges of those mining and iron-smelting concerns in which they were cut short by the summary commiffioners of Henry VIII. We are informed by our friend J. G. Baker, of Thirsk, in Yorkshire, that a rock of from feven to twelve feet thick, running through a range of hills near Scarborough, which one of these monaftic brotherhoods worked before the diffolution of their house, is now again being worked, and promises to yield twenty thousand tons of iron ore to the acre, producing thirty per cent. of metal, probably the beginning only of one of the largest iron-producing tracts in the country. Truly these "lazy monks” had their redeeming qualities! They were not all, it would appear, "tarred with the fame brush." The monaftic system, though not the most natural or wife of inftitutions, was in fact cenfurable not fo much for its inftitution as for its corruption. It was the light of dark and barbarous

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times. It afforded peaceful spots under the fhadow of its fanctity, amid the perpetual turbulence and ravage of war. preserved in its libraries the learning of the old world-the Bible amongst the rest; and it originated or perfected the chief arts of the new: architecture, sculpture, carving, caligraphy, painting on canvas, wood, vellum, and glafs. Aftrology, the rude parent of astronomy; alchemy, the equally rude but cunning-looking parent of chemistry; botany, and the introduction of new plants and fruits, medicine, and metaphyfics—all received a loving welcome in the cells of monks, and won substantial advances at their hands. Agriculture was profecuted with great zeal, especially by the Ciftercians; and it now appears that we must add the researches of mining and the labour of forges to their lift of induftries. Let us remember the energetic as well as the lazy monks; the scientific as well as the ignorant; the virtuous and enterprising as well as the fordid and fenfual; the Bernards, the Bacons, the Groftêftes, and many a fhrewd and diligent labourer who has left no name, as well as the fwinifh herd which roused the ire and gave fuch pungency to the fatire of Chaucer, who lived in the midst of it. Even as we approach the fallen fhrines of this much and justly abused race of men, remembering their many beautiful arts and achievements, and the world of once great and wise hearts which beat there, we may, in the words of Lord Byron, say—

"Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's duft!

&

Furness Abbey.

An apparition hung amid the hush

Of the lone vale; whether exhaled from earth
Or dropt from heaven, as yet my beating heart,
That quaked unto the fudden folitude,

Knew not, nor cared to know-a mist-a cloud-
Material shadow-or a spiritual dream!

Slowly and waveringly it seemed to change

Into a hoary edifice, o'erhung

By hoary trees with mouldering boughs as mute

E’en as the mouldering ftones—a ghostlike show!
Uncertain in their tremor where to rest,

Like birds disturbed at night, my startled thoughts
Floated around the dim magnificence

Of air-woven roofs, and arches light as air
Spanning the faded funfet, till the Pile,
Still undergoing, as my spirit gazed
Intenflier and intenflier through the gloom,
Strange transformation from the beautiful
To the fublime, breathing alternately
Life-kindling hope and death-foretelling fear,
Majestically settled down at last

Into its own religious character,

A house of prayer and penitence-dedicate

Hundreds of years ago to God, and Her

Who bore the Son of Man! An abbey fair

As ever lifted reverentially

The folemn quiet of its stately roof

Beneath the moon and stars.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

N that remarkable promontory in the north-west of Lancashire, which runs out. into the fea oppofite to Walney Isle, and between the river Duddon and the waters of Morecambe Bay, stand the ruins of the

once princely abbey of Furness. This

name it derives from the promontory which anciently bore the name of Fuder-neffe, or the further nofe or promontory, a Scandinavian name, testifying, like so many of our promontories which bear the name of ness, to the one-time fojourn of the Northmen. This promontory or peninsula, now condensed into Furness, is hemmed in by the hills of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and the inland portion of it partaking of the hilly and rocky character of those counties, is known as High Furness, or Furness Fells. In Low Furness, or the portion of lower and more fertile land approaching the sea, and in a deep glen by the way as you proceed from Ulverstone to the Isle of Walney, the monks of Furness fixed their fheltered abode. They exercised that tact for which monks were fo famous in the selection of their fite. Whilft extending their lordship over the higher and wilder districts of the peninsula, where they could enjoy all the privileges of free warren and of the chace, collecting the tribute of its mountain-ftreams in the shape of trout, they had seated themselves amid the paftoral fatness of the land. Befides this, their territory abounded in stone and timber for building, and in wealth of minerals, iron and lead, of which we have had occafion to note that they fully comprehended the value. The valley in which they erected their abbey was named by the Saxons Bekansgill, or the valley of Nightshade, from the growth of that beautiful but deadly plant, the Atropa Belladonna, ftill to be found flou

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