We had an old description of the place with us, aided by which we traced
out the principal part of the edifice, such as the church, as already
mentioned, and, contiguous to this, the Chapter-house, which is better
preserved than the church; also the kitchen, and the room where the monks
met to talk; and the range of wall, where their cells probably were. I
never before had given myself the trouble to form any distinct idea of
what an abbey or monastery was,--a place where holy rites were daily and
continually to be performed, with places to eat and sleep contiguous and
convenient, in order that the monks might always be at hand to perform
those rites. They lived only to worship, and therefore lived under the
same roof with their place of worship, which, of course, was the
principal object in the edifice, and hallowed the whole of it. We
found, too, at one end of the ruins, what is supposed to have been a
school-house for the children of the tenantry or villeins of the abbey.
All round this room is a bench of stone against the wall, and the
pedestal also of the master's seat. There are, likewise, the ruins of
the mill; and the mill-stream, which is just as new as ever it was, still
goes murmuring and babbling, and passes under two or three old bridges,
consisting of a low gray arch overgrown with grass and shrubbery. That
stream was the most fleeting and vanishing thing about the ponderous and
high-piled abbey; and yet it has outlasted everything else, and might
still outlast another such edifice, and be none the worse for wear.
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