“The great tree, or vegetable rock, or emperor of the oaks (if you please), before which I bowed with a sort of reverence in the fields of Tintern, and which for so many ages has borne all the blasts and bolts of heaven, I should deem it a gratification of a superior kind, to approach again with ‘unsandaled feet’ to pay the same homage, and to kindle with the same devotion. But I should find amidst the magnificent ruins of the adjoining abbey, something of a sublime cast, to give poignancy to my feelings. I must be alone. My mind must be calm and pensive. It must be midnight. The moon, half veiled in clouds, must be just emerging from behind the neighbouring hills. All must be silent, except the winds gently rushing among the ivy of the ruins. I should then invoke the ghosts of the abbey; and fancy, with one stroke of her magic wand, would rouse them from their dusty beds, and lead them into the centre of the ruin. I should approach their shadowy existences with reverence, make inquiries respecting the manners and customs, and genius and fate of antiquity, desire to have a glimpse of the destiny of future ages, and enter in conversations which would be too sacred, and even dangerous to communicate.”
The only event unconnected with the monastery which is assigned to this locality is a battle. Whether it was fought on the hills above, or whether the demon of war actually intruded within the charmed circle of Tintern—or whether the whole is a fable, invented for the express purpose of desecrating the very idea of the place—we cannot tell. But however this may be, the fact, or the falsehood, is commemorated in the following epitaph, which is placed on the north side of the chancel of the church of Mathern.
Here lyeth entombed the body of
Frederic, King of Morganoch or
Glamorgan, commonly called
St. Thewdrick, and accounted a martyr,
because he was slain in a battle against
the Saxons, being then Pagans, and in
defence of the Christian religion. The
battle was fought at Tintern, when he
obtained a great victory. He died here
being in his way homeward, three
days after the battle, having taken
order with Maurice his son, who suc-
ceeded him in the kingdom, that in the
same place he should happen to decease, a
church should be built, and his body buri-
ed in ye same, which was accordingly performed
in the year 1601.
CHAPTER XII.
The Wye below Tintern—Banagor Crags—Lancaut—Piercefield Bay—Chepstow—Ancient and modern bridge—Chepstow Castle—Roger de Britolio—Romance of history—Chepstow in the civil wars—Marten the regicide.
The Wye being now a tide river, time requires to be studied by the traveller who would see it in its beauty or grandeur. The shores must be hidden by the full stream, and the overhanging woods fling their shadow as before over the glancing waters. Some bargain for the moon, to silver the tree tops, and send her angel-visitings through the vistas of foliage. But the truth is, before reaching this point we have become the spoiled children of nature; we have grown fastidious in our admiration, and would criticise perfection itself.
With the one drawback of the sludginess of the shores at ebb water, the Wye below Tintern is as worthy of our homage as ever. But it may be, that the romance of its rocks and woods impending over the current, and the deep stillness of the scene, broken only by the rippling sound of its flow, may harmonize too closely with the holy solitude we have left. Our sensations are uninterrupted; we carry with us the ruins and their associations; the mouldering abbey glides upon the stream before us; and the recesses of the rocks, and deep paths of the woods, are peopled with the spectres of the monastery. Thus we have no new impressions to mark our progress, and one of the finest parts of the river escapes almost without notice.
There is notwithstanding much variety in this part of our course. The reaches are short; the banks steep, sometimes overhanging in naked precipices, sometimes waving with romantic woods; while numerous narrow promontories intercept the view, and cut the scene into separate pictures. Banagor Crags, on the left, form a stupendous wall of cliff, extending for a considerable distance, without presenting anything in themselves to relieve the eye, except here and there some recesses or small shrubs, painting their interstices. But, as if aware of the disadvantage even of a sublime uniformity, nature has spread upon the opposite side a scene incomparable for richness and variety. A bright green sward, broken into narrow patches, swells upwards from the water’s edge, till it is lost in acclivities mantled with woods; and rising from the ridge of these, a mass of perpendicular rock towers aloft to the height, as it is computed, of eight hundred feet, overhung with shaggy thickets.
We now turn the peninsula of Lancaut, which comes sloping down from Tiddenham Chase, till it terminates in fertile meadows; and, on the right, rise from the water’s edge, with a kind of fantastic majesty, the Piercefield cliffs, capped with magnificent woods. Twelve projecting masses of these rocks have received the names of the twelve apostles, and a thirteenth is called St. Peter’s Thumb. While wondering where this will end, we sweep round another point, and find ourselves in Piercefield Bay. To the right a line of perpendicular cliffs is still seen, but crowned instead of trees with an embattled fortress; which, for a moment, might seem to have been cut out of the rock. The view is closed by a range of red cliffs, with the magnificent iron bridge of Chepstow spanning the river. This is the last of the great views on the Wye; and if seen under favorable circumstances of time and tide, it is one of the finest.
