Battle Abbey; Lady Webster. The word Battle is impressive of itself, and the feeling is well supported by the abbey, which exhibits grandeur in all its dimensions, length, breadth, and height, enhanced by antiquity, by the high ground on which it stands, and by the grand entrance, forming the termination to the main street of the town. There are few gate-houses which exhibit such a mass of building extending on each side of the gate, high, and flanked by towers. It must have been a lodging place for travellers, as well as a gate-house. The impression made by the gate-house is well supported by the first view of the main body of the abbey, as seen immediately after passing through the gates. There is a large mass of habitable building to the left, connected with a still larger mass, of which the walls are preserved; but the windows are without glass, and the interior neglected: this leads the eye, along a line of low ruined foundation-walls, to two lofty towers on the right, and completes the impression made by the embattled walls, that the building was occupied for military as well as for religious purposes, for defence as well as for devotion. There are a few lofty elms and other trees in a part of what has been the grand courtyard of the abbey edifice, and some trees also in the extensive park which the buildings overlook: but though there are as many trees as we could wish about the precincts of the abbey, yet there are rather too few in the park; and, what corresponds ill with the ruins, there are none in the park of any age; none, at least, that we could see, that carried the imagination back to the time when the abbey was in all its glory.
