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The river sharply bends, and in the glen on the western side stand the ruins of the far-famed Tintern Abbey in the green meadows at the brink of the Wye. The spot is well chosen, for nowhere along this celebrated river has Nature indicated a better place for quiet, heavenly meditation not un-mixed with earthly comforts.
The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.
He said, "Oh dear, that is terrible!" but consented, asking what we chose. He jumped at "Tintern Abbey" in preference to any part of the "Excursion." He told us he had written "Tintern Abbey" in 1798, taking four days to compose it; the last twenty lines or so being composed as he walked down the hill from Clifton to Bristol.
To give it its proper place among the writings of the school, we must remember that it belongs to the same group as Tintern Abbey and The Ancient Mariner. Why, then, was it not issued to the world with these? Why was it locked up in the poet's desk for twenty-one years, and shown during that time, as we gather from its author's language to Southey, to few, even of his close friends?
How with Edinburgh do we connect the sad story of Mary, the ill-fated queen! At Killarney, or standing amid the Gothic tracery of Tintern, how do we think on Alfred Tennyson and "the days that are no more"! These are only a few of the places in the British Isles that by universal consent are hallowed by tender associations.
These reflections were probably suggested by some sermon the boy had heard, but the composition is an extraordinary piece of work at such an age. His effusions are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey.
They seemed to her like the babes in the wood those two! In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern, Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian."
I cannot describe the mute but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic ruin, like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and shut up from the world, as though it had existed merely for itself; or a warrior pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness on its rocky height, a mere hollow yet threatening phantom of departed power.
"Miss Sarah is a young lady of character," said John, gravely. "Ay, she will settle him," said Lady Tintern. Her small, grim face relaxed into a witchlike smile. "The lad is a good lad. No one has ever said a word against him, and he is as steady as old Time. I believe Miss Sarah's choice, if he is her choice, will be justified," said John.
Then she turned to John, with mingled slyness and humour, "On va changer tout cela?" "As you have divined," he answered, laughing in spite of himself. "Though how you have divined it passes my poor powers of comprehension." Lady Tintern was pleased. She liked tributes to her intelligence as other women enjoy recognition of their good looks. "It is very easy, to an observer," she said.
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