carried upon precipices impendent over the brawling torrent of the Hondy. Sometimes the road opens to scenes of the most romantic description, where, at an immense depth beneath, the torrent is seen raging in a bed of rocks, and mountains of the most imposing aspect rise from the valley,—
“The nodding horrors of whose shady brows
Threat the forlorn and wand’ring traveller.”
Immediately to the left of the road rises the Gaer, a huge rocky hill crowned with an ancient encampment. On the opposite side of the river, fearfully hanging on a steep cliff, and beneath a menacing hill bristled with innumerable craigs, is the romantic village of Cwmjoy. Landscapes of the boldest composition would be continual, but that the road, formed into a deep hollow, and overtopped by hedge-row elms, excludes the traveller from almost every view but that of his embowered track. The pedestrian, however, is at liberty, while ranging among heaths and fields above the road, to enjoy the wild grandeur of the country, which will hardly fail to repay him for his additional toil.
In the deep gloomy vale of Ewias, encircled by the barren summits of the Black mountains, but enjoying some degree of local cultivation, and enlivened by the crystalline Hondy, is situated the ruin of Lanthony Abbey.
Venerable and grand, but wholly devoid of ornament, it partakes of the character of the surrounding scenery. Not a single tendril of ivy decorates the massive walls of the structure, and but a sprinkling of shrubs and light branchy trees fringe the high parapets, or shade the broken fragments beneath.
“Where rev’rend shrines in Gothic grandeur stood,
The nettle or the noxious night-shade spreads;
And ashlings, wafted from the neighbouring wood,
Through the worn turrets wave their trembling heads.”
The area of the church is not very extensive; the length is 212 feet; the breadth 50; and it measures 100 across the transepts. The roof has long since fallen in, and a great part of the south wall is now a prostrate ruin; but the view afforded of the interior, in consequence, is extremely grand and picturesque. A double row of pointed arches, reposing on massive piers, separate the side ailes from the nave; above which, divided from the Gothic form by a strait band of fascia, is a series of small circular arches: an intermixture and arrangement of the two forms that characterize the earliest use of Gothic architecture. Two lofty arches, rising from the middle of the church, still sustain a massive portion of the tower, whose doubtfully poised and ponderous bulk seriously menaces the adventurous explorer of the ruin. The grandeur of the western front cannot be passed unnoticed; nor, looking over the fragments of the choir, the fine view of the inside ruin, seen through the great eastern arch of the tower; neither is a small chapel adjoining the south transept, with a well-formed engrained roof, to be neglected: the transept is remarkable for a large Norman archway that led into the south aile of the choir.
Many portions of building appear in detached heaps near the abbey church, particularly a bold arch in a neighbouring barn, which seems to have formed the principal entrance to the abbey. Among these the natives point out a low subterraneous passage, faced with hewn stone, which they suppose to have had a connexion with Old Castle, about three miles distant.
St. David, the uncle of king Arthur (say ancient legends), was so struck with this sequestered recess, then almost unconscious of a human footstep, that he built a chapel on the spot, and passed many years in it as a hermit. William, a retainer of the earl of Hereford’s in the reign of William Rufus, being led into the valley in pursuit of a deer, espied the hermitage. The deep solitude of the place, and the mysterious appearance of the building, conspired to fill him with religious-enthusiasm; and he instantly disclaimed all worldly enjoyments for a life of prayer and mortification.