lustered one. Now, what
remains of some of them is even with the ground: others present a stump
just high enough to form a seat; and others are perhaps a man's height
from the ground; and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into
their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers giving its tender
little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red
stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light
gray hue, which at a little distance makes the walls look as if they
had long ago been whitewashed and now had partially returned to their
original color. The arches of the nave and transept were noble and
immense; there were four of them together, supporting a tower which has
long since disappeared,--arches loftier than I ever conceived to have
been made by man. Very possibly, in some cathedral that I have seen,
or am yet to see, there may be arches as stately as these, but I doubt
whether they can ever show to such advantage in a perfect edifice as
they do in this ruin,--most of them broken, only one, as far as I
recollect, still completing its sweep. In this state they suggest a
greater majesty and beauty than any finished human work can show; the
crumbling traces of the half-obliterated design producing somewhat of
the effect of the first idea of any thing admirable, when it dawns upon
the mind of an artist or a poet,--an idea which, do what he may, he is
sure to fall short of in his attempt to embody it....

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
shad