on
institutions of Alfred. It will make him feel that he stands in the
unbroken lineage of the centuries, to hear the wakeman's horn, and
to know that it has been blown, spring, summer, autumn and winter,
in all weathers, in weal and in woe, for a thousand years. As Old
England is driven farther and farther back from London, Manchester,
Liverpool, and other great improving towns, she will find refuge and
residence in these retired country villages. Here she will wear
longest and last the features in which she was engraven on the minds
of all the millions who call her mother beyond the sea.

The next day I visited the celebrated Fountain Abbey in Studley
Park,--a grand relic of antiquity, framed with silver and emerald
work of lakelets, lawns, shrubberies and trees as beautifully
arranged as art, taste and wealth could set them. The old abbey is
a majestic ruin which fills one with wonder as he looks up at its
broken arches and towers and sees the dimensions marked by the
pedestals or foot-prints of its templed columns. It stands rather
in a narrow glen than in a valley, and was commenced, it is
supposed, about 1130. The yew-trees under which the monks
bivouacked while at work upon the magnificent edifice, are still
standing, bearing leaves as large and green as those that covered
the enthusiastic architects of that early time. In the height of
its prosperity and power, the lands of the abbey embraced over
72,000 acres. The Park enclosing this great monument of an earlier
age contains 250 acres, and is really an earthly elysium of beauty.
It was comforting to learn that it was laid out so late as 1720, and
that all the noble trees that filled it had grown to their present
grandeur within the intervening period. Here I saw for the first
time in England our hard-maple. It was a spindling thing, looking
as if it had suffered much from fever and ague or rheumatism; but it
was pleasant to see it admitted into a larger fellowship of trees
than our New England soil ever bore. On a green, lawn-faced slope,
at the turning of the principal walk, there was a little tree a few
feet high enclosed in by a circular wire fence. It was planted by
the Princess of Wales on a visit of the royal pair to Studley soon
after their marriage. The fair Dane left her card in this way to
the old Abbey, which began to rise upon its foundations soon after
the stalwart Danish sovereign of England fell at the Battle of
Hastings. Will any