Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/554

2, 1860.] how picturesque it must have been! The cattle were littered in those holy cloisters. Lastly, we could fancy the meditative poet pacing these aisles, and “muttering his wayward fancies as he went;” or can we not imagine him, on the eve of his departure from his ancestral home, while the sound of revelling breaks on the stillness of the night, here alone, with broken and remorseful spirit, weeping over blighted hopes and aspirations; and on the morrow the

Passing out into the pleasure-grounds, the eye is at once attracted by the ruin of the west end of the abbey church. It is best seen from the tomb which Byron built over his dog Boatswain. A broad expanse of light falls through the high dismantled window upon the verdant turf, all fresh and even from the recent rain and the gardener’s scythe; in bright contrast to the grey masonry and the dark masses of the trees. The tracery of the window was thrown down, some thirty years since, by an earthquake; and the gaping chinks of the dog’s tomb, as well as several horizontal fissures in the abbey walls, were produced by the effects of the same unusual phenomenon. The simple superstition of the neighbourhood has peopled the groves with apparitions; and certainly the trees are of the most grotesque growth, with their gnarled branches reflected in the fountains, which they half filled with their decaying leaves. Let us pass to that noble terrace, one of the longest in England. Beneath our footsteps break the twigs with which the recent storm has strewn it, and at the further extremity a limb from the overhanging elms is thrown across its broad path. The broken hollyoaks which have laid their flowered sceptres on its grey balustrade, the ruined sun-dial, long since fallen a victim to that insidious Time, against which it had warned so many generations, the weather-stained vases, from which the wind has torn the flowering creepers, the half-ruined steps, on which a peacock is trailing his bright plumage in the watery sunshine,—these and many other objects enhance the melancholy beauty of the scene, and have a touching sympathy with the memory of him who will ever be sadly remembered there.

From the terrace we descended to the old fish-pond, skirted on one side by a grove, in the recesses of which are two statues of Pan and a female Satyr, much defaced by time, and looked upon by the country people as the “old Lord’s devils.” The only object of real interest is a tree on which Byron, at his last visit to Newstead, engraved his name and that of his loved sister Augusta. On the other side, dark masses of yew, probably as ancient as the abbey itself, overhang the stagnant water, whose stillness is occasionally broken by the plunge of the heavy carp. It is probable that treasure and relics of the abbey lie at the bottom of that dark pond, since a brazen eagle, forming a lectern, was fished up from its depths some years ago, and its hollow pedestal was found to contain deeds and grants of the time of Edward III. and Henry VIII., together with immunities from Rome, granted to the monks of Newstead. These latter documents caused at the time of their discovery much curiosity and scandal, as proofs of papal leniency, and the laxity of monastic morals.

It is said, that Byron delighted to people these dark shades with supernatural visitants, and give currency to all the superstitious reports connected with the abbey, by pretending to believe them. Tales of terror were circulated by him, especially that of the Goblin Friar, the Evil Genius of the Byron family, whose appearance always portended misfortune to the lords of Newstead. But even a mind superstitiously and poetically inclined as that of Byron, could hardly have invented a tale more romantic and touching than that of the “Little White Lady”—such was the name given to a person who long haunted this spot. In her invariable dress of white, veiled, silent, and timid, she glided away at the approach of strangers into the recesses of the groves, or moving slowly along the glades in the evening twilight, returned to a lonely farm-house on the estate, where she had chosen her residence. To the country people she was an object of mysterious conjecture. Her appearance attracted the attention of Colonel and Mrs. Wildman, who became interested in her history, and showed her constant marks of kindness and liberality. Her enthusiastic admiration for the writings of Byron, and devotional interest in his fate, amounted to an infatuation, which, for nearly four years, kept her, as it were, spell-bound to the precincts of the abbey. After