The gate-way remains perfect, excepting only that the images over the
side doors have been mutilated. The one in the centre (over the great
entrance) is still in excellent preservation, and appears to be finely
executed: it is the figure of the Virgin Mary in gray marble, the
size of life, seated, with the infant Jesus in her arms. On a scroll
beneath are these letters:--

ECCE MATER
TVA.
1760.

Several old chesnut trees and elms still remain, which once formed
a fine avenue in front of the building, from whence the prospect is
strikingly beautiful. The eye passes over rocks, rugged, broken, and
abrupt towards their summits, crowned and darkened with wood; and the
narrow road winding between the trees, until it loses itself in the
forest, forms a feature very gratifying to the traveller. The solitude
of the place, as I viewed it at the close of day, occasioned mingled
sensations of pleasure and pain. It was impossible to resist the
imposing power of a situation, where every natural object was deeply
tinged with the poetical character, and every remnant of architecture
associated with the romance of religious feeling. I recalled and dwelt
upon various passages of the poets inspired by similar scenes, and
thought of the holy and enthusiastic minds which had here devoted
themselves to the sublimest duties and severest sacrifices of the
altar; and felt, that had I lived in those days, I, perhaps, could
have become an inmate of walls which seem to have been erected
to exclude the evils of life, and to nurture only the enchanting
abstractions of unpolluted virtue and happiness: but the present
day has brought with it a general philosophy and knowledge of human