Against the wall of the
choir, near the vacant space where the altar was, are some stone seats
with canopies richly carved in stone, all quite perfectly preserved,
where the priests used to sit at intervals, during the celebration of
mass. Conceive all these shattered walls, with here and there an arched
door, or the great arched vacancy of a window; these broken stones and
monuments scattered about; these rows of pillars up and down the nave;
these arches, through which a giant might have stepped, and not needed to
bow his head, unless in reverence to the sanctity of the place,--conceive
it all, with such verdure and embroidery of flowers as the gentle, kindly
moisture of the English climate procreates on all old things, making them
more beautiful than new,--conceive it with the grass for sole pavement of
the long and spacious aisle, and the sky above for the only roof. The
sky, to be sure, is more majestic than the tallest of those arches; and
yet these latter, perhaps, make the stronger impression of sublimity,
because they translate the sweep of the sky to our finite comprehension.
It was a most beautiful, warm, sunny day, and the ruins had all the
pictorial advantage of bright light and deep shadows. I must not forget
that birds flew in and out among the recesses, and chirped and warbled,
and made themselves at home there. Doubtless, the birds of the present
generation are the posterity of those who first settled in the ruins,
after the Reformation; and perhaps the old monks of a still earlier day
may have watched them building about the abbey, before it was a ruin at
all.
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