"then did the fons of Lanthony tear up the bounds of their mother church, and refuse to serve God as their duty required: for they said there was much difference between the city of Gloucester and the wild rocks of Hatyrel; between the river Severn and the brook of Hodani; between the wealthy English and the beggarly Welsh-there fertile meadows, here barren heaths. Wherefore, elated with the luxuries of their new fituation, and weary of this, they ftigmatised it as a place unfit for a reasonable creature, much lefs for religious perfons. I have heard it affirmed, and I partly believe it, that some of them declared in their light difcourfe,-I hope it did not proceed from the rancour of their hearts,—that they wished every ftone of this ancient foundation a stout hare. Others have facrilegiously said,—and with their permiffion I will proclaim it, they wished the church and all its offices funk to the bottom of the fea. They have ufurped and lavished all the revenues of the church; there they have built lofty and stately offices; here they have fuffered our venerable buildings to fall to ruin. And to avoid the fcandal of deferting an ancient monastery, long accustomed to religious worship, and endowed with large poffeffions, they fend hither their old and ufelefs members, who can be neither profitable to themselves nor others, who might say with the apoftle, We are made the fcum and outcast of the brethren. They permitted the monastery to be reduced to fuch poverty, that the friars were without furplices, and compelled to perform the duties of the church, against the custom and rules of the order. Sometimes they had no breeches, and could not attend divine service; fometimes one day's bread must serve for two, whilst the monks of Gloucefter enjoyed fuperfluities. Our remonftrances either excited their anger or ridicule, but produced no alteration: if these complaints were repeated, they replied—‹ Who I would go and fing to the wolves? Do the whelps of wolves delight in loud mufic?' They even made sport, and when any person was sent hither, would ask, 'What fault has he committed? Why is he fent to prifon?' Thus was the mistress and mother-houfe called a dungeon and a place of banifhment for criminals." The old Lanthony never furmounted these ufurpations of the new. Its library was defpoiled of its books; its ftorehouse of its deeds and charters; of its filk vestments 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 Gloucester 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 diffolution in 1539 the old Lanthony was valued at £71 35. 2d., and the Gloucester monastery at £648 19s. 11d. At that period Richard Hempfted was the prior of Lanthony, and on his furrender 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 minister of Queen Anne, and so became the property of the Earls of Oxford. In 1806 Lanthony was purchased by Walter Savage Landor, the celebrated poet and profe writer. For the eftates 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 destined 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 stick and stone, that his fon might not be exposed to similar vexations by living there. Two farmers efpecially, brothers, whose united rents amounted to £1,500 per annum, refused all payment till compelled by law, and then fled to America. From these tenants the steward received £1000; but Landor says he never saw a farthing of the money, and he was afterwards obliged to difmifs the fteward too. He states 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 saw a grouse upon his table, though the game coft him more annually than he lived at after leaving Lanthony. Such is the history of one of the finest monaftic ruins in one of the most monaftic feclufions 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 repofe 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 impulsive author of " Ghebir" and "Imaginary Conversations.' Near the ruins of the abbey there is a fubterranean passage, faced with hewn stone, 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 ceaseless shock where wind and wave combine; Lone is Dolbadarn, and the lovely shrine Of Valle-Crucis is a spell of power, That stills each meaner thought and keeps enchained; Proud of that long array of arch and tower, Raglan may claim a rude pre-eminence; Tintern is peerless at the moonlit hour, Neath, Chepstow, Goodriche, each hath its pretence ;— By no plain beaten path, my spirit turns EARS ago, as I iffued from the Bristol steamer, and was afcending the steep Highstreet of Chepftow, on a fine autumn morning, I became aware of a tall, stout, floridlooking man in middle life, alfo labouring up behind me. There was a crowd of other passengers who had defcended from the same steam-boat, and were ascending the same street,-some before me, some behind me,— but I became, fomehow, particularly confcious 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 slackening 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 ghost. 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 person who comes tramp, tramp, with an inceffant, unvarying step, 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 same 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 |