THE TOPOGRAPHER.

AN EXCURSION TO THE RUINS OF RIEVAULX AND BYLAND ABBEYS; AND TO THE
RESIDENCE OF LAURENCE STERNE, COXWOLD, YORKSHIRE.

(_For the Mirror_.)


"The air around was breathing balm,
The aspen scarcely seem'd to sway;
And, as a sleeping infant calm,
The river stream'd away--
Devious as error--deep as love,
And blue and bright as heaven above."

_Alaric A. Watts_.

Though I am as romantic a being as ever breathed on the face of this
beautiful earth; yet, I will promise the reader, that in detailing the
events of an interesting day, I will not tinge them with that colouring;
yet, such a glorious bard as Wordsworth could, alone, do justice to our
excursion. Leave him to wander alone in that woody dell, with the
thrilling picture spread around him--the sinking walls of elaborate
Gothic, clouded by the hanging woods--the rural dwellings of the
illiterate peasantry scattered below the templed mount--and the mourning
stream and its rustic bridge--thus entranced, his fairy spirit would
pour forth a flood of pensive and philosophic song.

It was on the dawning of a fine morning in August, that I left the