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and softest tint that the eye could desire. But little is
known of it beyond its date and the name of its founder,
Ranulph, son of the first Ranulph de Meschines, a Norman
noble. The church was small, as the scanty remains show; and
the monastery, which now looks like a continuation of the
same building, could not have contained a numerous company.
From the fragments of effigies preserved, it appears that
some eminent persons were buried here; but who these knights
and nobles were, there is no record that can tell,-
carefully as these memorials were wrought to secure the
immortality of this world. The eye is first fixed by the
remains of the tower, from whose roofless summit dangles the
tufted ivy, and whose base is embossed by the small lilac
blossoms of the antirrhirom (sic); but at last the great
charm is found in the aisle of clustered pillars. Almost the
whole aisle is standing, still connected by the cornice and
wall which supported the roof. The honeysuckle and ivy climb
till they fall over on the other side. There is a sombre
corner where the great ash grows over towards the tower,
making a sort of tent in the recess. There are niches and
damp cells in the conventual range. It is a small ruin, but
thoroughly beautiful: and when the stranger looks and
listens, as he stands in the green level between woods, he
will feel how well the old monks knew how to choose their
dwelling-places, and what it must have been to the earnest
and pious among these Cistercians to pace their river bank,
and to attune their thoughts to the unceasing music of the
Calder flowing by. In the broad noon it is a fine thing to
see the
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