Wonders Of Operative Masonry.

"Beware ! beware of the Black Friar , He still retains his sway , For he is yet the church ' s heir Whoever may be the lay . Amuudeville is lord b y day , But the monk is lord by night , rvor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal To question that friars right . "

In the lake , near the Abbey , some years ago , there was found a brazen Lectern , or reading desk , and inside of it a number of parchment deeds bearing the seals of Edward III . and Henry VIII . One of them Avas a lenary indul for several

p gence sins of a sensual and peculiarly unfriar-like character . So the Friars of Newstead Avereno better than those of Fountains and St . Albans . Byron often wrote of this Abbey . AVo quote as follows :

" Through thy battlements , Newstead , the hollow winds whistle , Thou , the hall of my fathers , art gone to decay . In thy once smiling garden , the hemlock and thistle

Have choked up the rose which once bloomed in the Avay . " Of the mail-covered Barons , who proudly , to battle Led thy vassals from Europe to Palestine ' s plain

, The escutcheon and shield , ivliicli with every wind rattle , Are the only sad vestiges IIOAV that remain . "

Visitors to Newstead are shown Byron ' s bath , a dark , cold hole in the basement : his bedroom—Avhich in monastic times was the Abbot ' s chamber , — IIOAV kept precisely as when the poet slept in it ; and the famous monk ' s skull which Byron transformed into a drinking gobletwith silver

, rim , the naked inner bone receiving the Avine , and holding over a pint . Odd as this freak Avas , it Avas not so revengeful as the conduct of him , who , Hawthorne tells us , fashioned the skull of his enemy into a spittoon ! The old Abbey garden is still

laid out in the same fashion as the monks left it , and near by it is the tree on which Byron carved his own name and that of his half-sister , Augusto . It is a tree of twin stems . The names are still legible , although the stem on which they wore cut

is dead , as though the inscription had proved fetal to it . In front of the Abbey is an oak that Byron planted—now a vigorous tree— and a marble monument which he erected to his Newfoundland do "

. Lhe front of Newstead Abbey is an exceedingly beautiful specimen of Early English . The south aisle of the Church is incorporated into the present mansion , but the western front remains , a picturesque ruin . It Avas founded by Henry II . as a peace-offering to the Church for having

added a martyr to its calendar , in the person of Archbishop Thomas-a-Becket , GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL , at Gloucester , 100 miles Avest from London , is built upon the foundation of a Nunnery erected A . D . C 81 , under patronage of Ethelred King of Mercia . Afterwards it Avas altered into a

Benedictine Abbey , and in A . D . 1541 to a Cathedral . Its income at the Dissolution , Avas £ 1 , 550 , The Avest front Avas finished A . D . 1437 , and the central toAvor A . D . 1457 , Avhich latter is croAvned by singularly beautiful pinnacles . The Avfiole exterior is massivebut elegantly adorned . The

in-, terior has lofty Norman circular piers , and the prevailing character of the architecture is Norman . The 'Prentice ' s Bracket , ( a Masonic relic ) is in the south transept . Among the effigies here is that of Alderman Blackleeeh" Avho Avas admitted to the

, glory of eternity 1639 , " and of John Bower ( 1615 ) , " AVIIO had nyne sones and seaven daughters by his Avife , Anne Bower . " Above the name of the latter is this inscription : " Vay ne , Vany tie . All is but Vay ne .

Witnesse Solomon . ' The choir vaulting is one of the richest examples in England . The great East wiudoAV is the largest in England , containing 3 , 798 square feet of glass . It was built in the time of Edward III ., when it cost only £ 139 , being one shilling a square foot . Over the high Altar are

angels in full choir , with every instrument of music used in the 15 th century . Among the royal personages commemorated in this Cathedral are ; Osric , the founder of the first Nunnery ; Edward II . who has a superb altar-tombAvith effigyand canopied

, , by a mass of exquisite tabernacle work Avhich fills the entire aich . On the step of the Altar is the effigy of Robert , eldest son of William the Conqueror . The Crypt is one of five founded prior to 1085 , and is