Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey by Washington Irving - A complete eBook in pages (61 / 131)

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Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey by Washington Irving
Book, page 61 / 131

   "--in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,
     The Virgin Mother of the God-born child
   With her son in her blessed arms, looked round,
     Spared by some chance, when all beside was spoil'd:
   She made the earth below seem holy ground."--DON JUAN, Canto III.]

A flight of rooks, tenants of the adjacent grove, were hovering about
the ruin, and balancing themselves upon ever airy projection, and
looked down with curious eye and cawed as the postchaise rattled along
below.

The chamberlain of the Abbey, a most decorous personage, dressed in
black, received us at the portal. Here, too, we encountered a memento
of Lord Byron, a great black and white Newfoundland dog, that had
accompanied his remains from Greece. He was descended from the famous
Boatswain, and inherited his generous qualities. He was a cherished
inmate of the Abbey, and honored and caressed by every visitor.
Conducted by the chamberlain, and followed by the dog, who assisted in
doing the honors of the house, we passed through a long low vaulted
hall, supported by massive Gothic arches, and not a little resembling
the crypt of a cathedral, being the basement story of the Abbey.

From this we ascended a stone staircase, at the head of which a pair of
folding doors admitted us into a broad corridor that ran round the
interior of the Abbey. The windows of the corridor looked into a
quadrangular grass-grown court, forming the hollow centre of the pile.
In the midst of it rose a lofty and fantastic fountain, wrought of the
same gray stone as the main edifice, and which has been well described
by Lord Byron.

   "Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,
     Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint,
   Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,
     And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:
   The spring rush'd through grim mouths of granite made,
     And sparkled into basins, where it spent
   Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,
   Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles."

[Footnote: DON JUAN, Canto III]

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