this abbey, see the MIRROR for Sept. 30, 1826.

[6] Eastmead's "Historia Rievallensis."

* * * * *

ON VIEWING THE RUINS OF BYLAND ABBEY THROUGH THE DETACHED GATEWAY ON THE
WEST.

Oh! beauteous picture! thou art ruin's theme,
And envious time the Gothic canvass sears.
Thy soft decay now almost wakes my tears,
And art thou mutable? or do I dream?
The transept moulders to its mound again;
The fluted window buries in its fall
The rainbow flooring of the fretted hall;
And long the altar on that earth has lain.
Now could I weep to see each mourning weed
So deeply dark around thy wasting brow;
If life and art are then so brief--I bow
With less of sorrow to what is decreed:
Ye faded cloisters--ye departing aisles!
Your day is past, and dim your glory smiles!

Four miles from Byland is Coxwold, once the residence of the celebrated
Laurence Sterne, author of _Tristram Shandy_, &c. It is a beautiful and
romantic retreat, excelling the "laughing vine-clad hills of France,"
which attracted the spirit of our English Rabelais to luxuriate amidst
them. Here we gained admittance to the little church, an interesting
edifice, noted for its sumptuous monuments to commemorate the
Fauconbridge and Belasyse families, and for its being the scene of
Sterne's curacy. A small barrel organ now graces its gallery, which
responded to the morning and evening service in Yorick's day. On prying
about the belfry we discovered an old helmet, with the gilding on it
still discernible, which we at first supposed to be intended as a
decoration to some tomb; but its weight and size precluded that
supposition. In the church of Coxwold, the moralist might amass tomes of
knowledge, and acquire the most forcible conviction of the fleeting
nature of earth and its possessors. On glancing around he would perceive
the heraldic honours of a most noble and ancient family now extinct--the
paltry remains of the splendid helmet, which had decked, perhaps, the
proud hero of feudal power, thrown into a degrading hole with the
sexton's spade, and the sacred rostrum where the eloquence of the second
Rabelais has astonished the village auditors, and perhaps led them to
doubt that such intellect was mutable, now filled by another! Our
curiosity was attracted, on leaving the church, to Shandy Hall, once the
residence of Sterne, situated at the termination of the village. Two
females,