Its
situation makes its charm. It stands near the river Wharfe,--a broad and
rapid stream, which hurries along between high banks, with a sound which
the monks must have found congenial to their slumberous moods. It is a
good river for trout, too; and I saw two or three anglers, with their
rods and baskets, passing through the ruins towards its shore. It was in
this river Wharfe that the boy of Egremont was drowned, at the Strid, a
mile or two higher up the stream.
In the first place, we rambled round the exterior of the ruins; but, as I
have said, they are rather bare and meagre in comparison with other
abbeys, and I am not sure that the especial care and neatness with which
they are preserved does not lessen their effect on the beholder.
Neglect, wildness, crumbling walls, the climbing and conquering ivy;
masses of stone lying where they fell; trees of old date, growing where
the pillars of the aisles used to stand,--these are the best points of
ruined abbeys. But, everything here is kept with such trimness that it
gives you the idea of a petrifaction. Decay is no longer triumphant; the
Duke of Devonshire has got the better of it. The grounds around the
church and the ruins are still used for burial, and there are several
flat tombstones and altar tombs, with crosiers engraved or carved upon
them, which at first I took to be the memorials of bishops or abbots, and
wondered that the sculpture should still be so distinct.
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