of apartments is reduced to a heap of rubbish.
Leading from the abbey to the modern part of
the habitation, is a noble room seventy feet in
length, and twenty-three in breadth, but every
part of the house displays neglect and decay, save
those which the present lord has lately fitted up."
The lay owners seem to have established
themselves in the monastic buildings as they
stood at the dissolution of religious houses, and
to have altered them so little that the whole
aspect of the priory spoke less

      Of the baron than the monk.

The church, however, was allowed to fall into
ruin, and only the buildings that were suitable
for residence were preserved; but the domestic
architecture of the monks has been so far
combined with the additions dictated by the more
elegant requirements of modern times, that the
feature of Newstead which to a stranger seems
the most characteristic is the transformation of a
monastery into an inhabited mansion. The
picturesque cloisters, with the vaulted chapterhouse,
now the domestic chapel, the low-arched
dining-room, formerly the prior's chamber, and the
fine crypt, now known as the servants' hall, are
the most antique portions of monastic architecture
that have been incorporated with the house.

It was not Lord Byron's fate to see the
domestic buildings of the monastery restored and
preserved as they have since been, or to leave
many permanent traces of his ownership at
Newstead; but it was his destiny to surround the
spot with poetic associations which will be more
enduring than its walls. At Newstead, when

      The boy was sprung to manhood,

Lord Byron lived; here lie wrote many of his
lesser poems. Near Newstead is the "gentle
hill" on which, in his pathetic Dream, he

     —— saw two beings in the hues of youth
  Standing;

and it was while living at Newstead that he saw
the face

                                      ——which made
                The starlight of his boyhood—

Mary Chaworth, the granddaughter of his
predessor's victim.

One memorial of his boyhood's home at
Newstead is, however, still green and flourishing,
namely, the oak which he planted near the house
soon after his arrival. His name, too, has been
attached to a spring that rises near a group of
yews, which were probably old before his
ancestors had a name in history.

Byron took up his residence at Newstead in
September, 1808, and there celebrated his
coming of age (on the 22nd of the following
January) by such festivities as his narrow means
and limited society could furnish. Besides "the
ritual roasting" of an ox, a ball was given in
honour of the day. Nor were these the only
revels of his "hours of idleness" at Newstead
that startled the owls and woke the long silent
echoes of the cloister. In the same year (1809),
when contemplating a long absence from
England, he assembled round him a party of young
college friends for a sort of festive farewell, and
in a letter (written many years afterwards), in
speaking of his friendship for Mr. Matthews,
Byron himself describes their unhallowed doings :

"We went down to Newstead together, where
I had got a famous cellar, and monks' dresses
from a masquerade warehouse. We were a
company of some seven or eight, with an occasional
neighbour or so for visitors, and used to sit up
late in our friars' dresses, drinking Burgundy,
claret, champagne, and what not, out of the
skull-cup* and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning
all round the house in our conventual garments.
Matthews always denominated me the abbot."

* The skull found in digging within the priory,
which had been polished and mounted in silver for
a drinking- cup, and is now among the Byron relics
at Newstead. It is of a dark colour, mottled, and
resembling tortoiseshell.

"The place," says Byron in a letter to Moore,
after returning, in July, 1811, from his
Eastern tour, "is worth seeing as a ruin, and I
can assure you there was some fun there even
in my time; but that is past. The ghosts,
however, and the gothics, and the waters, and the
desolation, make it very lively still." He
peopled the gloomy and romantic pile with
shadowy as well as substantial inhabitants;
and it seems to have been during his visit to
Newstead in 1814 that he himself actually
fancied he saw the ghost of the Black Friar
which was said to have haunted the priory from
the time of the Dissolution:

                         "——a monk array'd
    In cowl and beads and dusky garb appear'd,
Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade,
    With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard :

               *                *                *                *

    He moved as shadowy as the sisters weird,
But slowly——"

This is the apparition that seems to have
been a sort of evil genius of the Byrons.

Hardly less shadowy appears the life and the
brief dominion of the noble poet himself.
Writing to his mother, in 1809, he says:

"Newstead and I stand or fall together. I
have now lived on the spot, I have fixed my
heart upon it, and no pressure, present or future,
shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our
inheritance. I have that pride within me which
will enable me to support difficulties. I can
endure privations, but could I obtain in
exchange for Newstead Abbey the first fortune in
the country, I would reject the proposition."

Nevertheless, three years afterwards,
Newstead was put up for sale, but only £90,000.
being offered, a private contract for its sale at
£140,000 was afterwards made. This contract,
however, was not completed, and in September,
1814, Lord Byron wrote: "I have got back
Newstead." But in 1815 (on the 2nd January) he
married, and on the 25th of April, 1816, at the
age of twenty-eight, took a last leave of his
native country, 'in 1818, Newstead was
purchased by Colonel Wildman (the
purchase-money did not exceed 100,000); and his noble
school-fellow expressed to him his satisfaction
that the place which had cost him "more than