[33] Alas! one might almost say that of this sacred, and once splendid, edifice, periêrunt etiam ruinæ. An elderly gentleman, however, of ecclesiastical cut, who oscillates between the Garrick Club and the Falcon in Gravesend, and is said by the host to be a "foreigneering Bishop," does not scruple to identify the ruins still to be seen by the side of the high Dover road, about a mile and a half below the town, with those of the haunted Sacellum. The general features of the landscape certainly correspond, and tradition, as certainly, countenances his conjecture.
Alas, for Ingoldsby Abbey!—Alas that one should have to say
Periêrunt etiam Ruinæ!
Its very Ruins now are tiny.
There is a something in the very sight of an old Abbey—family associations apart—as Ossian says (or Macpherson for him), "pleasing yet mournful to the soul!" nor could I ever yet gaze on the roofless walls and ivy-clad towers of one of these venerable monuments of the piety of bygone days, without something very like an unbidden tear rising to dim the prospect. Something of this, I think, I have already hinted in recording our pic-nic with the Seaforths at Bolsover. Since then I have paid a visit to the beautiful remains of what once was Netley, and never experienced the sensation to which I have alluded in a stronger degree;—if its character was somewhat changed before we parted—it is not my fault. Still, be the drawbacks what they may, I shall ever mark with a white stone the day on which I for the first time beheld the time-worn cloisters of
[NETLEY ABBEY.]
A LEGEND OF HAMPSHIRE.
I saw thee, Netley, as the sun Across the western wave Was sinking slow, And a golden glow To thy roofless towers he gave; And the ivy sheen, With its mantle of green, That wrapt thy walls around, Shone lovelily bright In that glorious light, And I felt 'twas holy ground.
Then I thought of the ancient time— The days of thy Monks of old,— When to Matin, and Vesper, and Compline chime, The loud Hosanna roll'd, And, thy courts and "long-drawn aisles" among, Swell'd the full tide of sacred song;
And then a Vision pass'd Across my mental eye;[34] And silver shrines, and shaven crowns, And delicate Ladies, in bombazeen gowns, And long white veils, went by, Stiff, and staid, and solemn, and sad,— —But one, methought, wink'd at the Gardener-Lad!