II.--<g>The Vale of Tinterne</g>,[181] as it is seen from a point--in the woods covering the left bank of the Wye--called the Devil’s Pulpit. This engraving conveys a most correct, beautiful, and comprehensive view of the abbey, and its circumjacent scenery. In the backgrounds is seen the hill country stretching westward towards Monmouth. On the left, crowning an eminence that overlooks the village and abbey, stands the church of Chapel-hill, with the characteristic feature of an immense yew-tree expanding its gloomy branches over the cemetery. Beneath is seen the public road from Chepstow running westward, and branching off in the village to right and left; the latter branch running along the hills towards Raglan, and the former following the course of the Wye to Monmouth. To the right, under the wooded rocks which appear to overhang its channel, the Wye is seen making a curve like a horseshoe, so as to form a peninsula, the outer rim of which, as described in the text, is lined with houses that rise one above the other, and planted here and there with tall poplars, and refreshed with numerous springs and rivulets, that, after murmuring down the rocks, throw their crystal tribute into the Wye. Here the river is seen enlivened with passage-boats, by means of which a daily communication between the villages above and below the abbey is kept open for the conveyance of market produce, or the convenience of passengers.
In the foreground lies the glory of the scene--the <g>abbey</g> and its appendages--the latter much curtailed; but once, as history informs us, enclosing the goodly space of thirty-four acres. The view looks down upon the conventual church, showing the nave and transepts in their cruciform proportions, with the magnificent east window opening upon some rich productive orchards, the ground of which was consecrated in former times as the abbey cemetery. Stretching along the river eastward is a luxuriant tract of pasture land, called the Abbots’ Meadows, already described. Nothing can be more soothing and tranquil than this scene, embosomed, as it is, among sylvan landscapes, and bordered by a river whose smooth yet swift-flowing waters are heard in the calm summer evening like distant music.