St. Edbert's festival, falling in the flowering month of May, is one which my heart hath always much affected. The house had kept it right merrily; and notwithstanding the unfinished state of portions of the abbey, I do opine that our ceremonies in church and choir were that day very magnificent, and fit to be a pattern to some other houses. All labours were suspended; for he is a niggard of the worst sort that begrudgeth even his serfs and bondmen rest at such a tide; and eager as was our lord abbat Edward for the completion of our stately edifice, and _speciliater_ for the finishing of our dormitory, he would not allow a man to chip a stone, or put one flint upon another, or hew or shape wood upon St. Edbert's day; and he was almost angered at the Italian limner for finishing part of a glory which he had begun in our Ladie's chapel. It was a memorable day, and, _inter alia_, for this: it was the first night that the good lord abbat slept within the walls of the abbey; for hitherto, on account of the cold and dampness of the new walls, he had betaken himself for his nightly rest either to a house close by in the town of Reading, or to the house of a God-fearing relation, who dwelt on the other side of Thamesis at Caversham. After the completorium and supper (we had both meat and wine of the best at that coena), the weather being warm, and the evening altogether beautiful, the abbat and reverend fathers, as well as the younger members of the house, gathered together in my lord abbat's garden at the back of the abbey, and sat there for a season on the green bank of the Kennet, looking at the bright river as it glided by, and at the young moon and twinkling stars that were reflected in the water, or discoursing with one another upon sundry cheerful topics. Good cheer had made me cheerful, and it remembers me that I made little coronals and chains of the violets that grew by the river bank, and of the bright-eyed daisies that covered all the sward, and threw them upon the gliding and ever-changing surface of the Kennet, and said, as I had done in my still happier childhood, "Get ye down to Sunning bridge, and stop not at this bank or on that, but go ye right down to Sunning, and tell my mother that I am happy with my shaven crown." The lord abbat, looking back upon the tall tower of our church, and the broad massive walls of our Aula Magna, said-- "In veritate, this is a goodly and substantial house, and one fitted to beautify holiness." "In truth is it," said that good and learned Italian father who had brought the limner from Pisa.