fervent with zeal for the glory of God, I had never seen their equals; and now, to hear them stigmatized in a manner so cool and professional, by one who soon betrayed his personal animosity by adding—“and us, dissenting preachers, they treat as a race of upstart tinkers”—made me lament for poor human nature and its deceitful workings even in good men’s hearts! I consoled my friend by hinting that, in America, the Presbyterian and Congregational pastors had long professed a somewhat similar contempt for the clergy of the Church, having for nearly two centuries been the religious chieftains of our country; but I ventured to intimate that we did not on that account feel the less respect for ourselves, or think it right to deny them the credit of many estimable qualities, and the right of being judged by Him who alone searcheth the heart. I believe it was after this, that the worthy man proposed adding himself to our population; a scheme in which I could not discourage him, convinced, as I was, that a taste of our religious condition might perhaps change his views as to the comparative evils of the English Church, and those of the Saturnalia of unbelief which are fast developing under the influences of our illimitable sectarianism. CHAPTER XXVII. _Glastonbury—Wells—The Jubilee._ I found in the ruins of the abbey at Glastonbury a full reward for my efforts to pay them a visit. The architecture of these ruins is of a character widely different from that of Tintern; and the surrounding scenery, though marked by one bold eminence called the Tor, is that of a fat agricultural region, wholly unlike the romantic valley of the Wye. Yet the old wattled church of the early Britons which once stood here; the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea proclaimed the gospel on this spot; the legendary interest that attaches to the memory of St. Dunstan, and the superb remains of what was once the richest monastery in the kingdom, invest the now silent precincts of the Abbey with peculiar charms. The chapel called St. Joseph’s is still an exquisite specimen of art, and in its crypt is a spring reputed to derive extraordinary virtues from some association with his visit. A huge stone coffin, lying empty and dishonoured in the aisle of the Abbey Church, was shown to me as having once contained the corpse of King Arthur. Here again was the figure of an old abbot; and as I strode over the clovered floor of the holy place, amid broken corbels and shattered columns, I found an artist seated among them, at his task, sketching the beautiful remnant of an old turret, which rises amid the surrounding wreck, almost the only uninjured memorial of the former glory of the pile. At a distance, which gives one an idea of the great extent of the old establishment, stands the kitchen of the monastery still entire. It is an octagon, of vast circumference, and contains several curious relics of the Abbey. I next visited St.