ly may account for the obscurity in which its
origin is involved.

It fell into disuse after the Dissolution; and its final ruin took
place during the civil wars of Charles I.

Autumn was lingering over the yellow woods. The leaves, fluttering on
their shrivelled stems, seemed ready to fall with every breath. Dark
and heavy was the dull atmosphere--a melancholy stillness that seemed
to pervade and surround every object--a deceitful calm, forerunner of
the wild and wintry storms about to desolate and to destroy even
these flickering emblems of decay. At times a low murmur would break
forth, dying away through the deep woods, like some spirit of past
ages wakening from her slumber, or the breath of hoary Time sighing
through the ruin he had created.

[Illustration: WINDLESHAW ABBEY.
_Drawn by G. Pickering._
_Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]

There is something indescribably solemn and affecting in the first
touches and emblems of the year that has "fallen into the sear and
yellow leaf." Like the eventide of life, it is a season when the gay
and glittering promises of another spring are past; when the fervour
and the maturity of summer are ended; when cold and monotonous days
creep on; and we look with another eye, and other perceptions, on all
that surrounds us. Yet there is a feeling of gladness and of hope
mingling with our regrets in the one case, which cannot exist in the
other. Autumn, though succeeded by the darkness and dreariness of
winter, is but the womb of another spring. That bright season will be
renewed; our own, never!

Perhaps it might be feelings akin to these which arrested the
footsteps of an individual, who, though little past the spring-tide
and youthful ardour of his existence, was yet not disinclined to
anticipate another period characterised by the autumnal tokens of
decay visible on every object around him.

He stood by the deserted chapel of Windleshaw. Time had then but just
begun to show the first traces of his power. The building was yet
uninjured, save the interior, which was completely despoiled, the
walls grey with lichen, and hoary with the damps of age. The ivy was
twining round the belfry, but its thin arms then embraced only a small
portion of the exterior. A single yew-tree threw its dark and gloomy
shade over the adjacent tombs; the long rank herbage bending over
them, and dripping heavily with the moist atmosphere. An ancient cross
stood in the graveyard, of a date probably ant