church, and a part of the cloisters. There was also a portion of a magnificent chapel, larger than that of Trinity College, Oxford. Tall and ancient trees everywhere overshadowed the ruins, and there were still the remains of the groves and alcoves of the beautiful gardens which once surrounded the abbey. The kitchen-garden still existed; and in his "English Gardener" Cobbett describes how well it was situated, looking full to the south, with a high hill behind it. He tells how the earliest birds used to sing there, and what prodigious quantities of fruit it used to bear; how the peaches, nectarines, apricots, and fine plums never failed; and how, if the workmen had not lent a helping hand, not a fourth part would have been got rid of. And now he says it is nothing but a coarse,' rushy meadow, all the drains which formerly took away the oozings of the hill having been choked up or broken up; the very spot where he had seen bushels of hautboy strawberries, such as he had never seen since, now nothing but a swampy meadow, producing sedgy grass and rushes. "This most secluded and beautiful spot," he bursts out, "was given away by that ruthless tyrant, Henry VIII., to one of the basest and greediest of cormorant courtiers. Sir W. Fitzwilliams, and finally came into the hands of Sir Robert Rich, who 'tore everything to atoms.' I must be excused," he adds, "for breaking out into these complaints. It was the spot where I first began to learn to work, or rather, where I first began to eat fine fruit in a garden; and though I have now seen and observed upon as many quarters as any man in England, I have never beheld a garden equal to that of 'Waverley.'"
Here we have some inkling of the feelings the frequent sight of these venerable ruins stirred up in his youthful mind. That he loved this place many references in his books testify. To his son in after days he pointed out a tree close to the ruins of the abbey, from a limb of which he fell into the river, trying to take a crow's nest; and another, a hollow elm up which he affirmed that he had once seen a wild cat go that was as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog, and for standing to which slight exaggeration he got a beating.
Many a time as he worked or played in the gardens, or about the ruins, wondering thoughts would no doubt enter his mind as to who the builders of the abbey were, and what kind of men they
