There is also a female
statue, beautiful from the waist upward, but shaggy and cloven-footed
below, and holding a little cloven-footed child by the hand. This, the
old gardener assured us, was Pandora, wife of the above-mentioned Pan,
with her son. Not far from this spot, we came to the tree on which Byron
carved his own name and that of his sister Augusta. It is a tree of twin
stems,--a birch-tree, I think,--growing up side by side. One of the
stems still lives and flourishes, but that on which he carved the two
names is quite dead, as if there had been something fatal in the
inscription that has made it forever famous. The names are still very
legible, although the letters had been closed up by the growth of the
bark before the tree died. They must have been deeply cut at first.
There are old yew-trees of unknown antiquity in this garden, and many
other interesting things; and among them may be reckoned a fountain of
very pure water, called the "Holy Well," of which we drank. There are
several fountains, besides the large mirror in the centre of the garden;
and these are mostly inhabited by carp, the genuine descendants of those
which peopled the fish-ponds in the days of the monks. Coming in front
of the Abbey, the gardener showed us the oak that Byron planted, now a
vigorous young tree; and the monument which he erected to his
Newfoundland dog, and which is larger than most Christians get, being
composed of a marble, altar-shaped tomb, surrounded by a circular area of
steps, as much as twenty feet in diameter.
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