ruins that have not excited a tithe of the admiration, or caused a tithe of the noise in the world, that are much finer; and though it is doubtless a disadvantage to go to any celebrated place with the expectation over-raised, I cannot say that this was my case with Furness Abbey. The country around is moreover of no great beauty; and the railway somewhat spoils the picturesqueness of the effect by being brought under the very walls of the abbey-which has itself had a very narrow escape of being run over, and dislocated in all its limbs and joints by it. The only access to the abbey is also unfavourable for disposing the tourist to a proper frame of mind for admiring it, being along a narrow, dirty, deep-rutted lane. Still, however, it is a most interesting spot, to one who knows anything whatever of its history; and by sunlight or moonlight, a picturesque ruin. I was not aware at the time I was there, noting in my own mind the strange effect of the junction of the modern railway and this ancient ruin-the "navvie" of the nineteenth century, sitting down to his openair dinner under the ivy that covered the ruins of centuries gone by;-that the presiding spirit of the Lake District had been there but a few weeks previously, and had recorded his impressions of the same scene in a sonnet. It was with much interest that I afterwards read in the collected edition of the works of the Bard of Rydal, the following, under the title, "At Furness Abbey," and date of the 21st of June, 1845, Well have yon railway labourers to THIS ground, Is heard to grave demeanour all are bound: That wide-spanned arch, wondering how it was raised All seem to feel the spirit of the place And by the general reverence God is praised; While thus these simple-hearted men are moved ?" In giving a few of the most prominent points in the history of this venerable ruin, it will not be necessary to go (with Mr. Francis Evans, the author of a very valuable work called " Furness and Furness Abbey,") quite so far back as the Creation; or to the "dark and backward abysses of Time (we are quoting Mr. Evans), when Fancy imagines she beholds Furness lying for several centuries a wild solitude, having its hills and plains overspread with wood, its valleys peopled with lakes and rivers (sic in orig.); its forests inhabited by beasts of prey; and its air crowded by birds of various plumes, but without any human eye to contemplate its picturesque scenes!" No, we shall leave the curious in its very early history to consult our erudite author, where he will find a vast variety of conjectures about the Istaniaid, and the Voelantiaid, and the other aborigines of the classic ground of Furness, and begin our sketch with the foundation of the abbey by Stephen, King of England, -then Earl of Mortaigne and Boulogne-in the year 1127. The word Furness is written Fruderness in the Domesday Book; and at a later period was formed into Futherness. Fruder, or Futher, is conjectured by Dr. Whitaker to have been a personal name-probably, he says, that of the first Saxon proprietor or planter of the district; and Ness, a promontory. No etymologist seems to have hinted its derivation from Further or Further Ness-the further promontory, which, to an inhabitant of Cartmel or Lancaster, would have been a very correct designation of it. Leaving that point, however, let us return to the abbey itself. A religious house was originally established at Amounderness in 1124, which was transferred in 1127 to Furness-described as in the vale of Beckansgill, or the valley of Deadly Night Shade. Stephen endowed the abbey richly. The abbot was lord paramount, and feudal baron of the whole district of Furness. All the people were his vassals, and all the mesne lords did him homage and fealty, "to be true to him against all men excepting the king. Every mesne lord obeyed the |