If there be any spot in England consecrated alike by sacred and poetic traditions, it is surely the “thrice famous isle” of Glastonbury, where, according to common belief, the faith was first planted in Britain by St. Joseph of Arimathea, and which was regarded by the inhabitants of this island with a veneration which induced a vast number of the British saints who flourished before the Saxon conquest to retire before their death to the Glassy Isle, that their dust might mingle with its sacred soil. Still surrounded by the marshy waters which once formed a glassy lake around it; still made beautiful in spring by the apple blossoms to which it owes its poetic name of Avallon; still preserving that mysterious hawthorn-tree which, like the roses of Pœstum, “boasts its double bloom,” and marks the spot where our first apostle struck his staff into the ground; and still covered with the ruins of that noble abbey which kings vied with one another in beautifying and enriching as “the fountain and origin of all religion in the realm of Britain,”--Glastonbury might well claim, even in its present desolation, to draw pilgrims to its ruined shrines. The poet wanders there to weave new Idylls over the grave of Arthur, whilst the devout client of our native saints kneels to kiss the soil which was the cradle of St. Dunstan. And some may even recall the thought of days long since fled away into the haze of the past, when those two names, so rich in legendary lore, were first cast like golden grains into the storehouse of their memory, as they stood rapt in childish wonder amid those venerable walls, and there taking root, gave birth in their souls to a new idea, so that they passed out of the ruins of Glastonbury, believers, for the first happy moment of their lives, in the possibility of an heroic life.