our steps to its precincts and no effort had been made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it.  The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural pretension.  The locality, it would seem, was well supplied with abbeys, for Rievaulx is less than ten miles away, but we learned that Bylands was founded by monks from the former brotherhood and also from Furness Abbey in Lancashire.  In the good old days it seems to have been a common thing when the monks became dissatisfied with the establishment to which they were attached for the dissenters to start a rival abbey just over the way.

Coxwold is a sleepy village undisturbed by modern progress, its thatched cottages straggling up the crooked street that leads to the hilltop, crowned by the hoary church whose tall, massive octagonal tower dominates the surrounding country.  It seems out of all proportion to the poverty-stricken, ragged-looking little village on the hillside, but this is not at all an uncommon impression one will have of the churches in small English towns.  Across the road from the church is the old-time vicarage, reposing in the shade of towering elms, and we found no difficulty whatever in gaining admission to “Shandy Hall,” as it is now called.  We were shown the little room not more than nine feet square where Sterne, when vicar, wrote his greatest book, “Tristram Shandy.”  The kitchen is still in its original condition, with its rough-beamed ceiling and huge fireplace.  Like most English cottages, the walls were covered with climbing roses and creepers and there was the usual flower-garden in the rear.  The tenants were evidently used to visitors, and though they refused any gratuity, our attention was called to a box near the door which was labeled, “For the benefit of Wesleyan Missions.”

Two or three miles through the byways after leaving Coxwold brought us into the main road leading into York.  This seemed such an ideal place for a police trap that we traveled at a very moderate speed, meeting numerous motorists on the way.  The day had been a magnificent one, enabling us to see the Yorkshire country at its best.  It had been delightfully cool and clear, and lovelier views than we had seen from many of the upland roads would be hard to imagine.  The fields of yellow grain, nearly ready for harvesting, richly contrasted with the prevailing bright green of the hills and valleys.  Altogether, it was a day among a thousand, and in no possible way could one have enjoyed it so greatly as from the motor car, which dashed along, slowed up, or stopped altogether, as the varied scenery happened to especially please us.