TINTERN,
where we observed the ruins of a mansion belonging to Mr. Farmer of Monmouth. This house appears of an old date, and might probably claim the attention of the curious antiquary, was he not so wrapt up in contemplating the venerable abbey, which presents its Gothic pile in solemn majesty. This august building, great in ruins, and awfully grand in appearance, impels the stranger, as it were imperceptibly, to land and inspect its noble arches, tottering pillars, and highly-finished windows: the specimens of ancient architecture, which formerly were delicately wrought by the hand of art, are now finely decked by that of nature. On our first entrance our attention was too much engrossed to exchange the mutual communication of thought; but the care which has been officiously taken to remove every fragment lying scattered through the immense area of the fabric, and the smoothness of the shorn grass, which no scythe should have dared to clip, in a great measure perverts the character of the scene: these circumstances but ill accord with the mutilated walls of an ancient ruin, which has braved the pitiless storms of so many centuries. In this respect we by no means agreed with Mr. Gilpin, who thus describes it: “We excuse—perhaps we approve—the neatness that is introduced within. It may add to the beauty of the scene—to its novelty it undoubtedly does.” But when this disgust was a little abated, we indulged those reflections which scenes of ancient grandeur naturally recall.
This beautiful ruin is cruciform, measuring two hundred and thirty feet in length, and thirty-three in breadth; the transept is one hundred and sixty feet long. [298] This Cisterian Abbey was founded by Walter de Clare in the year 1131, and dedicated to St. Mary in the reign of King Henry VIII. It experienced the same fate with many other monasteries, and was granted at its dissolution to the Earl of Worcester in the year 1537.
“As the Abbey of Tintern,” says the author of the Beauties, Harmonies, and Sublimities of Nature, “is the most beautiful and picturesque of all our Gothic monuments, so is the situation one of the most sequestered and delightful. One more abounding in that peculiar kind of scenery, which excites the mingled sensations of content, religion, and enthusiasm, it is impossible to behold. There every arch infuses a solemn energy, as it were, into inanimate nature: a sublime antiquity breathes mildly into the heart; and the soul, pure and passionless, appears susceptible of that state of tranquillity, which is the perfection of every earthly wish. Never has Colonna wandered among the woods, surrounding this venerable ruin, standing on the banks of a river, almost as sacred to the imagination as the spot, where the Cephisus and the Ilyssus mingle their waters, but he has wished himself a landscape-painter. He has never sat upon its broken columns and beheld its mutilated fragments; and its waving arches and pillars, decorated with festoons of ivy; but he has formed the wish to forsake the world, and resign himself entirely to the tranquil studies of philosophy. Is there a man, my Lelius, too rich, too great, too powerful, for these emotions? Is there one too ignorant, too vain and too presumptuous to indulge them? Envy him not! From him the pillars of Palmyra would not draw one sigh; the massacre of Glencoe, the matins of Moscow, or the Sicilian vespers, would elicit no tear.”
As we receded from the banks, Tintern Abbey, with the Gothic fret-work of the eastern window, seemingly bound together by the treillage of ivy, appeared in the most pleasing point of view; sloping hills and rich woods forming a fine back-ground. As we drew nearer