_; the
flintwork of the old rampart, now clinging to the precipitous sides of
"Butter Hills," with an old tower at the summit, mounted, sentinel-like,
to keep watch over the ruins of the Carrow Abbey, and the alder cars,
that gave it its name in the valley below; now, following a broken
course, here and there left in solitude for wild creepers and the rare
indigenous carnation to take root upon; now bursting through
incrustations of modern bricks and mortar, and showing a bastion tower,
with its orifices ornamented by spread-eagle emblems of the stone-mason's
craft in the precincts below; here, forming the back of slaughter-houses,
or the foundations of some miserable workshop, fashioned from the rubble
of its sides; thence wandering on through purlieus of wretchedness and
filth that might shake the nerves of any more vulnerable bodies than
"paving commissioners" or "boards of health;" its arched recesses, once
so carefully defined, its elevated walks, so studiously preserved for
recreation as well as for defence, all now rendered an indefinite
disfigured mass, with accretions of modern growth, that bear the stamp
upon every feature of their parentage, poverty and decay. He may visit
barns and cottages with remnants of windows and doorways, that make it
easy to believe they once had been the shrine of a St. Mary Magdalen; may
trace out for himself, among hovels and cellars, and reeking court-yards,
grey patches of festering ruin, last lingering evidences of the age of
conventual grandeur; here, in the priory yard of a parish, that might be
said to shelter the offscum of poverty's heavings up, he shall find a
little ecclesiastical remnant of monastic architecture, converted into a
modern meeting-house; the nursery walls that cradled the genius of a
Bale, the carmelite monk, and great chronicler of his age, now echoing
the doctrines of the "Reformed Religion," as taught by the Anabaptist
preacher. In another district, but still skirting on the river-side,
where those old monks ever loved to pitch their dwelling-places, down in
a dreary little nook, shut out from noisy thoroughfares, and bearing
about it all the hushed stillness that beseems the place, he may seek the
ghostly companionship of the old "friar of orders grey" in the lanes and
walks that once bounded the flourishing territory of the rich "mendicant"
followers of holy St. Francis, or "friars minors," as they were wont to
call themselves. Not far distant, the w