to four Princes of Orange, three Kings of Holland, two Williams the Third, and one Lord Roden.* We were even shown a bloom called the Phœbus, about as like to our Phobus" as I to Hercules." But the true Phoebus, "the real Simon Pure," was as far to seek as

ever.

Learnedly did I descant with the learned in dahlias over the merits of my lost beauty. It was a cupped flower, Mr. Sutton," quoth I, to my agreeable and sympathising listener; (gardeners are a most cultivated and gentlemanly race ;) "a cupped dahlia, of the genuine metropolitan shape; large as the Criterion, regular as the Springfield Rival, perfect as Dodd's Mary, with a long bloom stalk like those good old flowers, the Countess of Liverpool and the Widnall's Perfection. And such a free blower, and so true! I am quite sure that there is not so good a dahlia this year. I prefer it to Corinne,' over and over." And Mr. Sutton assented and condoled, and I was as near to being comforted as anybody could be, who had lost such a flower as the Phobus.

After so many vain researches, most persons would have abandoned the pursuit in despair. But despair is not in my nature. I have a comfortable share of the quality which the possessor is wont to call perseverance-whilst the uncivil world is apt to designate it by the name of obstinacy-and do not easily give in. Then the chase, however fruitless, led, like other chases, into beautiful scenery, and formed an excuse for my visiting or revisiting many of the prettiest places in the county.

Two of the most remarkable spots in the neighbourhood are, as it happens, famous for their collections of dahlias-Strathfield-saye, the seat of the Duke of Wellington, and the ruins of Reading Abbey.

Nothing can well be prettier than the drive to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a great part of Heckfield Heath, a tract of

*The nomenclature of dahlias is a curious sign of the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Racing Calendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Diomedes of all colours, a very black Othello, and a very fair Desdemona. One beautiful blossom, which seems Like a white ground thickly rouged with carmine, is called "the Honourable Mrs. Harris ;" and it is droll to observe how punctiliously the working gardeners retain the dignified prefix in speaking of the flower. I heard the other day of a serious dahlia-grower who had called his seedlings after his favourite preachers, so that we shall have the Reverend Edward So-and-so, and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternizing with the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Medoras of the old cata ogue. So much the better. Floriculture is amongst the most innocent and humanizing of all pleasures, and everything which tends to diffuse such pursuits amongst those who have too few amusements, is a point gained for happiness and for virtue.

It may be interesting to the lovers of literature to hear that iny accomplished friend Mrs. Trollope was

wild woodland, a forest, or rather a chase, full of fine sylvan beauty-thickets of fern and holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by oaks and beeches, and interspersed with lawny glades and deep pools, letting light into the picture. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the duke's lodge. And the entrance to the demesne, through a deep dell dark with magnificent firs, from which we emerge into a finely wooded park of the richest verdure, is also striking and impressive. But the distinctive feature of the place (for the mansion, merely a comfortable and convenient nobleman's house, hardly responds to the fame of its owner) is the grand avenue of noble elms, three quarters of a mile long, which leads to the front door. It is difficult to imagine anything which more completely realises the poetical fancy, that the pillars and arches of a Gothic cathedral were borrowed from the interlacing of the branches of trees planted at stated intervals, than this avenue, in which Nature has so completely succeeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig, appears to mar the grand regularity of the design as a piece of perspective. No cathedral aisle was ever more perfect; and the effect, under every variety of aspect, the magical light and shadow of the cold white moonshine, the cold green light of a cloudy day, and the glancing sunbeams which pierce through the leafy umbrage in the bright summer noon, are such as no words can convey. Separately considered, each tree (and the north of Hampshire is celebrated for the size and shape of its elms) is a model of stately growth, and they are now just at perfection, probably about a hundred and thirty years old. There is scarcely perhaps in the kingdom such another avenue.

On one side of this noble approach is the garden, where, under the care of the skilful and excellent gardener, Mr. Cooper, so many magnificent dahlias are raised, but where, alas! the Phoebus was not; and between that and the mansion is the sunny, shady paddock, with its rich pasture and its roomy stable, where, for so many years, Copenhagen, the charger who carried the Duke at Waterloo, formed so great an object of attraction to the visiters of Strathfield-saye. Then came the house itself, and then I returned home.

"raised," as her friends the Americans would say, upon this spot. Her father, the Rev. William Milton, himself a very clever man, and an able mechanician and engineer, held the living of Heckfield for many

years.

Copenhagen-(I had the honour of naming one of Mr. Cooper's dahlias after him-a sort of bay dahlia, if I may be permitted the expression)-Copenhagen was a most interesting horse. He died last year at the age of twenty-seven. He was therefore in his prime on the day of Waterloo, when the duke (then) and still a man of iron) rode him for seventeen hours and a half, without dismounting. When his Grace got off, he patted him, and the horse kicked, to the great delight of his brave rider, as it proved that he

Well! this was one beautiful and fruitless drive. The ruins of Reading Abbey formed another as fruitless, and still more beautiful. Whether in the "palmy state" of the faith of Rome, the pillared aisles of the Abbey church might have vied in grandeur with the avenue at Strathfield-saye, I can hardly say; but certainly, as they stand, the venerable arched gateway, the rock-like masses of wall, the crumbling cloisters, and the exquisite finish of the surbases of the columns and other fragments, fresh as if chiseled yesterday, which are reappearing in the excavations now making, there is an interest which leaves the grandeur of life, palaces and their pageantry, parks and their adornments, all grandeur except the indestructible grandeur of nature, at an immeasurable distance. The place was a history. Centuries passed before us as we thought of the magnificent monastery, the third in size and splendour in England, with its area of thirty acres between the walls and gazed upon it now!

And yet, even now, how beautiful! Trees of every growth mingling with those grey ruins, creepers wreathing their fantastic garlands around the mouldering arches, gorgeous flowers flourishing in the midst of that decay! I almost forgot my search for the dear Phobus, as I rambled with my friend, Mr. Malone, the gardener, a man who would in any station be remarkable for acuteness and acquirement, amongst the august remains of the venerable abbey, with the history of which he was as conversant as with his own immediate profession. There was no speaking of smaller objects in the presence of the mighty past!. Vide note at the end of this article.

was not beaten by that tremendous day's work. After his return, this paddock was assigned to him, in which he passed the rest of his life in the most perfect comfort that can be imagined; fed twice a-day, (latterly upon oats broken for him,) with a comfortable stable to retire to, and a rich pasture in which to range. The late amiable duchess used regularly to feed him with bread, and this kindness had given him the habit, (especially after her death,) of approaching every lady with the most confiding familiarity. He had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut colour, but latterly he exhibited an interesting specimen of natural decay, in a state as nearly that of nature as can well be found in a civilized country. He had lost an eye from age, and had become lean and feeble, and, in the manner in which he approached even a casual visiter, there was something of the demand of sympathy, the appeal to human kindness, which one has so often observed from a very old dog towards his master. Poor Copenhagen, who, when alive, furnished so many reliques from his mane and tail to enthusiastic young ladies, who had his hair set in brooches and rings, was, after being interred with military honours, dug up by some miscreant, (never, I believe, discovered,) and one of his hoofs cut off, it is to be presumed, for a memorial, although one that would hardly go in the compass of a ring. A very fine portrait of Copenhagen has been executed by my young friend Edmund Havell, a youth of seventeen, whose genius as an animal painter will certainly place him second only to Landseer.

Gradually chilled by so much unsuccess, the ardour of my pursuit began to abate. I began to admit the merits of other dahlias of divers colours, and actually caught myself committing the inconstancy of considering which of the four Princes of Orange I should bespeak for next year. Time, in short, was beginning to play his part as the great comforter of human afflictions, and the poor Pho bus seemed as likely to be forgotten as a last year's bonnet, or a last week's newspaper — . when, happening to walk with my father to look at a field of his, a pretty bit of upland pasture about a mile off, I was struck, in one corner where the manure for dressing had been deposited, and a heap of earth and dung still remained, to be spread, I suppose, next spring, with some tall plant surmounted with bright flowers. Could it be? was it possible? — did my eyes play me false?- No; there it was, upon a dunghill—the object of all my researches and lamentations, the identical Phobus! the lost dahlia !

NOTE-By far the most interesting object in our neighbourhood has always seemed to me the rock-like ruins of Reading Abbey, themselves a history; all the more interesting because, until lately, that, the most important part of these remains has become the property of my friend, Mr. Wheble, the present High Sheriff of Berks, whose researches have drawn some attention to the subject, these venerable relics of an earlier day, situate close to a wealthy and populous town, not forty miles from London, and actually within sight of the great road from Bath and Bristol to the metropolis, have seemed utterly unnoticed and unknown. Here and there, indeed, some fanciful virtuoso, like Marshal Conway, (best known as the friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole,) has evinced his passion for antiquity by the desire of appropriating what he admired, and has dragged away whole masses of the walls to assist in his fantastical doings at Henley and elsewhere,-or a set of Goths and Vandals, the county magistrates of fifty years ago (sure am I that their successors would not have dreamed of such a desecration) have pitched upon the outskirts of the old monastery for the erection of their huge, staring, glaring gaol and Bridewell, with all its miserable associations of wretchedness and crime,-or an education committee, with equal bad taste in a different way (they really seem to have imagined that they had done a fine thing) have run up a roof of red tiles within the walls of the refectory, and moved the children of a national school, upon Dr. Bell's system, into the noble hall, where kings had signed edicts and parliaments framed laws. This last nuisance has been abated. The children have now a schoolroom of their own, far better adapted to its object, more healthful and more comfortable, and the Abbey is left to the silence and solitude which best beseem the recollections and associations attendant on this stupendous structure.

Reading Abbey was founded by Henry the First, in the beginning of the year 1121, and dedicated to the honour of the Virgin Mary and St. John, as appears by the charter granted four years afterwards :vide Dugdale's Monasticon; "for my soul's health, and the souls of King William my father, of my son William, of Queen Matilda my mother, of Queen Matilda my wife, and of all my predecessors and suc

cessors.

The charter then goes on to recite the immense pos

sessions and regal privileges bestowed upon the monastery at Reading and its cells at Leominster and at Cholsey.

It grants them a mint, with the privilege of striking money.

It gives "the abbot and his monks full power to try all offences committed within or without the borough, in the highways, and all other places, whether by their own servants or strangers, with all causes which can or may arise with socca* and sacca,† tol, and theam, and infangentheft, and outfangentheft. and ham socna. within the borough and without the borough, in the roads and footpaths, and in all places, and with all causes which do or may arise.

"And the abbot and his monks shall hold courts of justice for trials of assaults, thefts, and murders, for the shedding of blood, and breaches of the peace, in the same manner that belongs to the royal authority," &c. &c.

Then follows a paragraph which we insert in honour of the accomplished founder. It is worthy of Alfred. "But this also we determine and appoint to be for ever observed, that seeing the Abbot of Radynge hath no revenues but what are in common with his brethren; therefore, whoever by devise, consent, and canonical election shall be made abbot, shall not be stow the alms of the monastery on his lay kindred or any others, but reserve them for the entertainment of the poor and strangers."

And William of Malmesbury certifies that this part of the charter was so well observed, that there was always more expended upon strangers than upon the inhabitants, "the monks being," as he asserts, "great examples of piety."

The charter concludes with a strenuous recommendation to all succeeding kings to continue the above privileges and immunities to the monastery, and with this remarkable malison, the fear of which Beauclerc's burly successor, Henry, the eighth of that name, most assuredly had not before his eyes, when he hanged the abbot and knocked down the walls.

"But if any one shall knowingly presume to infringe, diminish, or alter this our foundation charter, may the great God of all withdraw and eradicate him and his posterity, and may he remain without any inheritance, in misery and hunger," &c.

The extent and magnificence of the monastery were commensurate with the high privileges granted by the royal founder, and with the station of the superior, who ranked as third amongst the mitred abbots of England: next after the abbots of Glastenbury and St. Alban's.

A space of thirty acres was comprised within the outer walls; and though a considerable part of this was devoted to the inner and outer courts, the cloisters, and the gardens, yet the building itself was stupendous in size and in strength. I have seen decayed specimens of gothic architecture which bear more striking traces of lightness and ornament, but none that ever seemed so calculated for duration, so prodigally massive and solid. The great hall, whose noble proportions are eighty feet in length, forty in width, and forty to the centre of the arched stone ceiling,

*Socca, the place or precinct wherein the liberty of

court was exercised.

Sacca, a liberty granted by the king to try and judge causes, and to receive the forfeitures arising from them.

Theam, a privilege to take and keep bondsmen, villains, and serfs, with their generations, one after another. $Infangentheft, a liberty to try and judge a thief taken within the jurisdiction of the manor or borough.

Outfangentheft, the same privilege to try any thief. taken out of the jurisdiction of the manor or borough. Ham Socna, the levying a fine on the disturbers of the king's peace.

were seven feet deep and twelve wide; and the excavations making in the church, of which many of the surbases of the columns, bits of stained glass and other ornamental parts, remain as fresh as if only finished yesterday, prove that the execution of this magnificent pile was as perfect and beautiful as the design was stupendous and grand. Sir Henry Englefield says, (Archælogia,) every form of Saxon moulding, and many never seen before, may be found in the stones dispersed through the town.

Everything belonging to these magnificent monks seems to have been conducted with this union of largeness and finish. They appear to have brought for their use, from the river Kennett, a canal called the Holy (or Hallowed) Brook, from Coley, an elevated spot nearly two miles from the Abbey, conducting it by a descent so equal and gradual, that it moved the Abbey mills (which still exist) with the same regularity in the most parching droughts or the wildest floods, even taking the precautions of paving it with brick, and arching it in great part over, during its passage through the town. And having thus provided themselves with soft water, and with the constant assurance of grinding their corn through every season, however unfavourable, they provided themselves with the luxury of spring water from the conduit, a celebrated spring rising on a hill on another side of Reading, and at least a mile from the abode of the lord abbot. This water was brought to the monastery in pipes, and from a discovery made accidentally by some labourers who were excavating a sawpit in a bank on the south side of the Kennett, in the middle of the last century, it appears to have passed under the Kennett. The story is told in Mann's history of Reading." They" (the men employed at the saw pit) "found a leaden pipe, about two inches in diameter, lying in the direction of the conduit, and passing under the river towards the Abbey, part of which, from its situation under the water, they were obliged to leave. The rest was sold for old lead." Coates also brings undoubted testimony to prove that the conduit spring supplied the Abbey, and that the water was brought under the Kennett.

Certainly, as the river runs between the conduit and the Abbey, the pipe must have gone under or over it; but the fact is worth mentioning as curious in itself, and as tending to prove, in these days, when we are a little apt, if not to overvalue our own doings, at least to undervalue those of our ancestors, that, not merely in architecture, (for in that grandest art we are pigmies indeed, compared to those great masters whose names are lost, though their works, in spite of a thousand foes, seem indestructible,) that not in architecture only, but in tunnel-making, we might take lessons from those old-fashioned personages the monks.

From the period of its consecration, we find the name of Reading Abbey occurring frequently in all the histories of the times. Parliaments and councils were holden there; legates received; traitors executed; kings, queens, and princes buried in the holy precincts. Speed mentions, picturesquely, King Henry and his Queen "who lay there veiled and crowned." Bishops were consecrated, joustings celebrated, knights dubbed, and money coined.

One incident which has reference to the Abbey, related by Stowe, is so romantic that I cannot refrain from giving the story. It would make a fine dramatic scene-almost a drama.

"In 1167, a single combat was fought at Reading, between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex, defendant; the occasion of which was as follows. In an engagement which Henry the Second

had with the Welsh. in 1157, some of his nobles, who had been detached with a considerable part of the army, were cut off by an ambuscade; those who escaped, thinking the king was also surrounded, told every one they met that he was either taken or slain. "The news of this imaginary disaster put to flight the greatest part of the surviving army. Among the rest, Henry de Essex, hereditary standard-bearer to the kings of England, threw away the royal banner, and fled. For this act of cowardice he was challenged by Robert de Montford as a traitor. Essex denied the charge, declaring he was fully persuaded that the king was slain or taken; which probably would have happened, if Roger, Earl of Clare, had not brought up a body of troops, and, by displaying again the royal standard, encouraged the soldiers; by which means he preserved the remainder of the army.

"The king ordered this quarrel to be decided by single combat; and the two knights met at Reading, on the 8th of April, on an island,* near the Abbey, the king being present in person, with many of the nobility and other spectators. Montford began the combat with great fury, and Essex, having endured this violent attack for some time, at length turning into rage, took upon himself the part of a challenger and not of a defender. He fell after receiving many wounds; and the king, supposing him slain, at the request of several noblemen, his relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the vanquished knight, and carried him into the Abbey, where he revived. When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the king."

Such was the Abbey from its foundation to the Reformation; succeeding Monarchs augmenting its demesnes and revenues by magnificent gifts, and confirming by successive charters the privileges and immunities enjoyed by the abbot and monks; for although the superior had various country-houses and parks, and was a spiritual peer of the highest rank, ↑ there yet appears, from many of the rules which have come down to us, one especially, in which no member of the community could absent himself for a night without first obtaining permission from every individual monk in the convent, sufficient reason to believe that the internal government of the house was not altogether monarchial, but that it partook somewhat of the mixed form of the English constitution, and that the commons, if we may so term the brethren of the order, had some voice in the management of its

concerns.

Upon the whole, the rule of the monks of Reading over their vassals, the burghers, and their feudal tenants in the villages round, to say nothing of their dependent cells at Leominster and at Cholsey, seems to have been mild, benevolent, and charitable. Rich landlords are, generally speaking, kind landlords; it is those who are themselves pushed for money who become hard creditors in return; and besides the wealth that flowed into the good borough from the trains of knights and nobles who attended the parliaments and councils held in the Abbey, the fathers of the community were not only zealous protectors of their vassals against the aggressions so common in that age of violence, but they furnished alms to the poor, shelter to the houseless, and medical aid to the sick, from their own resources. Traces of their power and their charity, as well as of the manners of the

*Tradition assigns as the place of this combat a beautiful green island nearly surrounded with willows, in the midst of the Thames, to the east of Caversham bridge. A more beautiful spot could not have been devised for such a combat. It was in sight of the Abbey, and of the remarkable chapel erected in the centre of the bridge, of which the foundation still remains, surmounted by a modern house.

times, meet us constantly in the incidental allusions to the Abbey in our old historians and topographers; thus, for instance, amongst the hospitals attached to the foundation, mention is made of a house for lepers at Erleigh.

That the town flourished under their guardian care, is sufficiently proved, by the fact that Speed's map,t taken a comparatively short period after the Reformation, might almost have passed for a plan of Reading forty years ago, so little had the old town increased (it has made a huge spring in the present century) during the long period that intervened between Elizabeth and George the Third.

The palmy days of the church of Rome in this country were, however, numbered, and upon none of the great monastic establishments did the storm of the Reformation burst with more unsparing violence than upon the fated Abbey of Reading.

In September, 1539, John London, one of the commissioners for visiting and suppressing religious houses, arrived at Reading, and notwithstanding the submission of Hugh, the then abbot, which appears to have been implicit, he was hanged and quartered with two of his monks at one of the gates of the monastery, on the 14th of November following.

The work of destruction then commenced. No particulars of the demolition of the Abbey have come down to us; but it is clear that the magnificent church was levelled at once, partly, perhaps, for the sake of the valuable materials, and partly to prevent the people, attached by habit to the splendid ceremonies of the Catholic worship, from clinging to the cherished associations connected with the spot.

The site of the monastery itself remained with the crown, and a part of the house was converted into a royal residence, visited more than once by Elizabeth, and mentioned by Camden. But the enormous pos sessions of the Abbey granted to one favourite and another, were slowly frittered away, while what remained of the house itself was nearly destroyed in the siege of Reading during the civil wars.

Every twenty years has brought a fresh diminution, until little now remains, except the shell of the refectory, and of one or two other large detached buildings more or less entire, parts of the cloisters, and large rock-like fragments of the grey walls, denuded of the cut free-stone by which they were coated, some upright, some leaning against each other, and some pitched violently into the earth, as if by a tremendous convulsion of nature. But in the very absence of artificial ornament, in the massiveness and vastness of these remains, there is something singularly impressive and majestic. They have about them much of the hoary grandeur, the wild and naked desolation which characterize Stonehenge. And as the paltry modern buildings which disfigured them are gradually disappearing, there is every reason to hope, from the excellent taste of the present proprietor, that as soon as the excavations which have brought to light so much that is curious and beautiful shall be completed, they may be left to the great artist Nature, so that we may, in a few years, see our once-famous Abbey more august and beautiful than it has been at any period since the days of its pristine magnificence; rescued, as far as is now possible, from the din and bustle of

† Very curious is this old map of "Redding." The vacant spaces representing fields round the town being illustrated by certain curious representations of trees and animals particularly unlike, such as a cow in the act of being milked, (the sex of the milking figure is doubtful, the dress being equally unsuitable to man or woman, girl or boy,) two horses fighting, with sheep grazing, and another creature which may stand for a pig or an ox at discretion, standing at ease in a meadow. It is remarkable that each of these animals would make three or four of the trees, under which it is supposed to stand, and is very much bigger and taller than any church in the place. Those old artists had strange notions of perspective and proportion.