For the oven and the mill, and even for the Templars, we may search Airedale in vain, but the solid masonry of the Cistercians still survivesa huge and not unwelcome anachronism by the darkened and polluted stream.

"Since the day when Henry de Lacy brought the Cistercians to this sweet retreat, how changed are the scenes which the river looks upon. Then from the high rocks of Malham and the pastures of Craven, to Loidis in Elmete, the deer, wild boar, and white bull, were wandering in unfrequented woods, or wading in untainted waters, or roaming over boundless heaths. Now, hundreds of thousands of men of many races have extirpated the wood, dyed the waters with tints derived from other lands, turned the heaths into fertile fields, and filled the valley with mills and looms, water-wheels, and enginechimneys." 1

Like the sound of brave words or fine music in dreary scenes and moments of depression is the sight of Kirkstall Abbey in the purlieus of dim, laborious Leeds. We are absorbed in business and harassed with care, our concern is with the practical needs of a workaday world, competition and progress-the present and the future-demand and exhaust our energies, we feel, and delight to feel, within and about us, the ceaseless vibration of the great industrial world. And yet

1 Phillips's Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coast of Yorkshire, p. 94.

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as angels in some brighter dreams

Speak to the soul while man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes
And into glory peep.”

And so we welcome the words or the music to the making of which have gone such high desire and prescient assurance of triumph; and even for us who, it may be, "lack time to mourn," there is a charm in the record of that strange mood of asceticism which enshrined its self-abasement in so much majesty.

It must, however, be confessed, at the outset, that the early history of Kirkstall does not so well accord with our notions of saintliness as that of the parent house of Fountains. The very origin of the former has in it an ignoble element. The founding of Rievaulx was due to the effect of bereavement upon a brave and manly heart, that of Byland to the spontaneous piety of the Mowbrays, that of Fountains to the reforming zeal of the monks of York; but Kirkstall was generated in the terror and despondency of De Lacy's sickroom. It is true his purpose held and gathered strength with time; it is not less true that his monastery outlived its early faults and grew to ripeness before it fell into decay.

When De Lacy was sufficiently recovered to set about performing his vow he consulted the Abbot of

Fountains, and, by his advice, decided to found a Cistercian monastery at Bernoldswic in Craven.

The land and money were to be the offering of the feudal lord; the Abbot was to find the men and direct the work.

On the 19th May 1147, Alexander, Prior of Fountains, with twelve monks and ten lay brethren, took possession of the buildings which had been provided for them, and the Monastery of Mount St. Mary came into existence. Little can the new colony have imagined that, five years later, the anniversary of the Festival of St. Potentiana would find them forsaking the vill of Bernoldswic and the very name of Mount St. Mary.

Whether the woody slope

in Airedale which so took the fancy of Abbot Alexander was, as the legend runs,1 already known by the prophetic name of Kirkstall, or whether we are to believe the statement of the chronicler that it was first so named by the Abbot himself, must, for all the light I can throw on the question, remain a mystery. For the leading facts of the migration there is sufficient evidence: the details may be taken or left as the reader is minded.

Alexander and his brethren lost no time in converting the vill of Bernoldswic into a hornets' nest. 1 The legend is from a MS. in the Bodleian, G. 9, fol. 129a.

From Serlo we only learn that they suffered much from cold and hunger, both because of the climate, and because, in the disturbed state of the kingdom, their goods were repeatedly plundered by robbers; and that at last, wearied out with these losses and privations, they obtained the consent of their founder to turn Mount St. Mary into a grange and remove to Kirkstall. But the venerable monk seems to have omitted from his narrative a somewhat important incident.

This

There was at Bernoldswic an ancient and perhaps dilapidated parish church-antiqua nimis et ab olim fundata-to which were attached five parochial vills, viz. Bernoldswic, the two Mertons, Bracewell, and Stoke. From Bernoldswic, and its appurtenant members of Elwinsthorp and Brodene, the inhabitants were removed to make room for the monks. departure from the Cistercian custom of appropriating solitary and uncultivated tracts, and becoming the pioneers of agriculture as well as centres of religion, · proved most disastrous. The parishioners assembled as of old to celebrate the feasts of the Church; and as they were of course accompanied by their priest and his secular clergy, we are not surprised to learn that "they were troublesome to the monastery and to the monks who abode in the same."