from the scene, and to have lingered out his remaining days in the Gatehouse. The room in which, according to this tradition, his last moments must have been spent now forms part of a private house, and the arches of the actual gateway have been closed, that its vaulted roof and massive walls may be available for the purposes of an entrance-hall and dining-room.

On the whole, however, we may be thankful that the church and monastic buildings of Kirkstall have been left to the gentle iconoclasm of time and the natural beauty of decay. Wych-elms and ashes, self-sown, and sheltered by the mouldering walls, now soften and vary the general effect. Inside the church itself, and the Abbot's house, they rise unbidden and unreproved; but above their tops and between their branches-east, west, and south—are seen the chimneys and smoke-wreaths of Leeds, and the air about them is darkened and tainted with strange fumes.1 To the north rises the hill, and across its face winds the old approach to the Abbey, now intersected at right angles by a hard and straight new road. The names of Vesper Gate and Vespers Lane are still remembered; but in the

1 A clearance of trees has lately been made, under the direction of Mr. S. John Hope, for the better preservation of the buildings.

trains which shriek and roar on both sides of the river no traveller needs to ask his way, or draw from old inhabitants the fading traditions of the place. We long, in vain, to be left alone with the ruin, if only for a silent half-hour, and we picture to ourselves how at night, when commerce sleeps and the pulse of industry beats feebly, the past must assert itself once more, and Kirkstall be as real as Leeds. Externally the Abbey is a singularly pure and perfect specimen of genuine Cistercian, and also of early transitional architecture. The round arch pre

vails throughout except where, as in the east window, later work has been substituted; the small aisleless. presbytery projects but little beyond the divided chapels of the transepts; and the very ruins of the too ambitious tower, which fell a hundred years ago, proclaim that the foundations of the massive central pillars were never intended for so proud a burden. Neither western porch nor eastern chapel disguise the simple proportions of the original Latin cross, and the lanterns and turrets are the only additions which practically diminish the severity of the outline. On entering we find, of course, pointed arches in the nave and transepts; but there is little beside the east windows of the presbytery and chapels that may not well have been the work of Abbot Alexander.

In the second bay of the nave-both north and south are late and somewhat elaborate windows, inserted, doubtless, for the purpose of throwing additional light upon the altars placed against the "pulpitum," the position of which they thus serve to mark; and here at Kirkstall, as in so many other churches, the roof has obviously been lowered, partly for economy of lead, and partly for the not unusual reason that when the ends of the rafters became rotten there was still enough sound wood for a lower pitch.

The beautiful and remarkable western façade and the north-west doorway are the remaining features of special and obvious interest in the church, but there are some points of exceptional importance in the domestic buildings, particularly the chapter-house and infirmary, on which it will hereafter be necessary to make some remarks.