was one of those fortunate incidental combinations that the artist is so anxious to, preserve. The walk in which I stood, was dark; its trees, formed the fore-ground, and hung pendulous, over the scene, just clearing the objects, in part, from the sky. Beyond appeared a Gothic gate, highly illuminated by the setting sun, the recess of the gate being quite dark; a cart, and two or three figures, were seen just touched by the evening ray, sparkling against it in the most lively and magical manner.*

Roche, or De-Rupe, a Cistercian Abbey, was founded by Richard de Builli, and Richard FitzTurgis, or De Wickerslai, A. D. 1147, and was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its yearly

revenues

While busy in securing the transitory beauties of this scene, a stranger asked permission to sit down by me to sketch. He had been much perplexed, he said, with the dark under the arch of the gate, to know how to force it back; to obtain which end, he had made the trees on the fore-ground very black; but this had made his sketch muddy and heavy. Lobserved, that he should have left the recess the darkest, as it appeared in nature, and all would have been well; as neither light nor dark had, in themselves, the power to advance in a picture. Besides, he must recollect, what Sir Joshua Reynolds had some where observed, "that the best effect would not result from the strongest dark being on the fore-ground, but the contrary." The strongest relief will often be obtained by the great dark being thrown into the middle distance, and perhaps the most natural. A young lady once asked me, if a landscape could be made without a tree in the corner?" She might have put the same query of dark fore-grounds. I never think of “ in the corner," but it makes me tremble for the arts, when thus subjected to the unnatural caprices of bad taste.

a tree

revenues were rated, in the twenty-sixth of Henry the Eighth, at 2241. 2s. 5d. according to Dugdale; and at 2711. 19s. 4d. by Speed. The site was granted, in the thirty-eighth of Henry the Eighth, to William Ramsden, and Thomas Vavasor.* Here were seventeen monks, who, with Henry Cundell, the last Abbot, subscribed to the oath of supremacy, and afterwards to the surrender, June 23, 1539.† The estate is now the property of Lord Scarborough, whose good taste directs him still to improve this terrestrial paradise. I departed from this charming spot with the heart ache, that all the people I loved in the world, had not been present to partake in the enjoyment of its beauties.

In my return to Maltby, I pursued a romantic footway down the middle of the valley. In some places it passed large masses of rocks, from which the trees were shooting out in a manner extremely wild and picturesque. A pleasant walk, of about a mile, terminated in the road just above the town. From Maltby, it is seven miles of rich pastoral country, by Bravel and Clifton, to

CONISBOROUGH.

THIS town lying at a short distance between Rotherham and Doncaster, does not afford a

post

* Tanner.

+ Willis's History of Abbies.

post-chaise. It is situated on the side of a hill, and near the river Don, whence the Castle is seen to the best advantage; though by no means a picturesque object, either in itself, or from its situation, the country here losing its rich character. The CASTLE is built on a rocky eminence, overgrown with trees: it was called by the British, Caer Conan.

If I might be permitted to judge, I should pronounce this Castle a Roman work; not only on account of its figure, which (speaking of the Keep) is a circle, divided as an hexagon, and at each division a strong square buttress, running from the bottom to the top of the building; the whole spreading regularly down to the base, from about a third of the height of the keep; but the workmanship itself, seems also to indicate its being Roman; it being built of wrought stone, laid in regular courses, stratum super stratum. The little Castle at Bowes, in this county, is cased with stone smoothed with the chissel, in the same way as the above; and if not Roman, has been built with materials prepared to hand, and probably taken from some Roman building. The outer walls are polygonal, with round towers at some of the angles: the whole is very strong: some parts, that I measured, were ten feet thick, and upwards. In these walls are the remains of chimnies, distinctly to be seen; but this part I imagine

E

imagine to be more modern than the keep, which is situated at the north-east angle of the area, where the access has been the most difficult. The ascent into the keep is by an exceedingly high flight of steps, four feet and a half wide, which leads to a low door: the area within forms a complete circle, of twenty-one feet diameter; and the walls are fourteen feet thick: this part of the Castle must have been a place of great strength. The principal entrance is very distinct; and also the ditch, which tradition says, was supplied with water by leaden pipes from the opposite hills.

Hengist retired hither after being defeated at the battle of Maisbelly, where the Saxons had been put to a disorderly flight by Aurelius Ambrosius.* Shortly after, taking the field against the Britons, his troops were defeated, and himself taken prisoner, and beheaded; if the authority of Matthew of Westminster can be deemed sufficient; though the Saxon annals are silent as to that particular. Coningsburg, from which term the present name is derived, was the property of Harold, afterwards King of England. At the Conquest, it came into the possession of William de Warrene, with all its privileges, which are said

to

Gibson's Camden.

+ Near the Castle is a tumulus, which tradition reports to be the burial-place of Hengist.