The largest ivy I ever saw buttressed one of the windowed walls with ten thousand cross-folded fingers and foliage of vivid green piled thick and high upon the teeth-marks of time.

The trunk was a full foot through at the butt.
A few years ago a large mound was uncovered near the ruin, and found to be composed of cinders, showing incontestably that the monks had worked iron ore very extensively, thus teaching the common people that art as well as agriculture.

These cinders have been used very largely in repairing the roads for a considerable distance around.
On returning to Thirsk over the Hambleton range of hills, we crossed thousands of acres of moor-land covered with heather in full bloom, looking like a purple sea.

It was a splendid sight.

My friend, who was an artist, stopped for a while to sketch one or two views of the scene.