Glastonbury was at once the birthplace of St. Dunstan and the nursery of his greatness in riper years. There as an infant he was offered by his parents at the altar of Our Lady, and so soon as he could prattle, was given over by them to the care of some Irish monks who had settled in the deserted abbey, and earned a scanty subsistence by educating the children of the neighbourhood. His extraordinary genius soon displayed itself, not merely by a rapid acquisition of grammar, but by the excellence he attained in music, poetry, and the arts. Having been introduced to the notice of the king by his uncle Athelm, Archbishop of Canterbury, his superior talents excited the jealousy of the courtiers, who accused him of magic, a charge which they chiefly grounded on his musical skill, by which they declared that he bewitched the king, and his familiarity with the old bardic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Obliged to withdraw from court, he returned to Glastonbury, and for some time led an eremitical life in a small cell adjoining the church. We need neither the testimony of the old legend, nor the suggestions of romance, to understand how it was that a mind like Dunstan’s had to pass through much tribulation ere it could utterly resign itself to the guidance of grace. The noblest natures have the hardest combats to undergo, and are not crowned till they have striven and overcome. So it was in the midst of many trials that Dunstan spent his solitary noviciate, chasing away the tempter now with prayer, and now with manual labour. He did not lay aside his artistic tastes, but toiled away at his smith’s forge, producing those exquisite works in gold and other metals long preserved with reverence in many English churches, or carving in wood, or painting, engraving, and moulding in wax and clay. He used his musical skill, too, to soothe his weary spirit, by reminding himself of the heavenly harmonies, and once, having hung his harp against the wall, the wind, it is said, swept over the strings, and brought out from them a plaintive strain in which he recognised one of the antiphons sung in the Common of Martyrs, _Gaudent in cælis animæ sanctorum qui Christi vestigia secuti sunt_. At last King Edmund, the brother and successor of Athelstan, recalled him to court, made him his chief councillor, and bestowed on him the territory of Glastonbury, that he might restore the abbey to its former splendour. Dunstan therefore collected a community, to whom he gave the rule of St. Benedict, and according to many writers he is to be regarded as the first real founder of the Benedictine order in this country. Even if this be an historical error, and the early Anglo-Saxon monks may likewise be claimed as Benedictines (a warmly controverted point on which it is needless here to enter), St. Dunstan’s work as the restorer of the order is of no less importance than if we consider him the first English founder, for the firm