and one of the "regulation" sights for the casual tourist. No one can
be said to have "done" Somerset who has not seen Glastonbury. Its
associations are romantic as well as historical. Though the modern town
is commonplace enough, poetry and piety, fact and fiction, have
conspired to make it famous. Here was the cradle of British
Christianity. In this "deep meadowed island, fair with orchard
lawns"--the fabled _Avalon_--blossomed the flower of British chivalry
in the persons of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. It was
when a Glastonbury monk that Dunstan made his vigorous onslaught on the
powers of darkness. And it was this "parcel of ground," already
consecrated by the bones of St Patrick, King Edgar, and St David, which
became the favourite burying-place of mediaeval saints and heroes. The
legend which accounted for its early pre-eminence is even in these
sceptical days worth retelling, for from its popularity the future
importance of the abbey sprang. Joseph of Arimathaea was despatched by
St Philip along with eleven companions "to carry the tidings of the
blessed Gospel" to the shores of remote Britain. Providential winds
wafted them across the waters of the Severn Sea, and at length the
wayworn travellers landed at Glastonbury, then an island. As their
leader, like Jacob, leant in worship on the top of his staff on
Wearyall Hill, the rod took root and became a thorn tree, which
blossomed every year as surely as the Feast of the Nativity came round.
The "Holy Grail" (the cup of blessing from the Last Supper), which
Joseph brought with him, he buried at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, and
from the place of its sepulchre gushed forth the Bloody Spring, which
may be duly inspected to this day. The pilgrims made more friends than
disciples, and the king, after a dilatory conversion, set apart for the
maintenance of the newcomers "twelve hides of land." Here the
evangelists possessed their souls in patience and built for worship a
little shrine of wattle and daub, which was many generations afterwards