picture. Like Scarborough, this stronghold was held for the King during
the Civil War. After the Battle of Marston Moor and the fall of York,
Fairfax came to Helmsley and invested the castle. He received a wound
in the shoulder during the siege; but the garrison having surrendered
on honourable terms, the Parliament ordered that the castle should be
dismantled, and the thoroughness with which the instructions were
carried out remind one of Knaresborough, for one side of the keep was
blown to pieces by a terrific explosion and nearly everything else was
destroyed.

All the beauty and charm of this lovely district is accentuated in
Ryedale, and when we have accomplished the three long uphill miles to
Rievaulx, and come out upon the broad grassy terrace above the abbey,
we seem to have entered a Land of Beulah. We see a peaceful valley
overlooked on all sides by lofty hills, whose steep sides are clothed
with luxuriant woods; we see the Rye flowing past broad green meadows;
and beneath the tree-covered precipice below our feet appear the
solemn, roofless remains of one of the first Cistercian monasteries
established in this country. There is nothing to disturb the peace that
broods here, for the village consists of a mere handful of old and
picturesque cottages, and we might stay on the terrace for hours, and,
beyond the distant shouts of a few children at play and the crowing of
some cocks, hear nothing but the hum of insects and the singing of
birds. We take a steep path through the wood which leads us down to the
abbey ruins.

The magnificent Early English choir and the Norman transepts stand
astonishingly complete in their splendid decay, and the lower portions
of the nave, which, until 1922, lay buried beneath masses of
grass-grown débris, are now exposed to view. The richly-draped