Full of historical memories (it is supposed that the Danes brought their war-ships up the Thames to the mouth of the Kennet), Reading is proudest, perhaps, of the abbey, of which so many interesting portions are well preserved in connection with the Forbury, the name given to the pleasure-grounds for the people, most creditably maintained by public subscription. There were four noted abbeys in the south of England--Glastonbury, Abingdon, St. Albans, and Reading, and Reading was not the least important. The wife of King Edgar founded the establishment as a nunnery, and Henry I. pulled it down to make room for two hundred Benedictine monks. It was given out that the hand of St. James the Apostle was deposited in the abbey, and the so-called relic "drew" a perennial inflow of support. Royal bones were laid in the abbey. Henry himself expressed a wish to be buried within its walls, and his body, accordingly, having been rudely embalmed at Rouen, was wrapped in bull-hides, and conveyed to Reading for ceremonial interment. At the Dissolution the royal tomb was destroyed and the king's bones ejected, with other _débris_, to make room for a stable. But the abbey during its existence was a power in the land. In it John of Gaunt married his Plantagenet wife, and there the marriage of Henry IV. to Lady Grey was proclaimed. The abbots of Reading were peers of Parliament, ranking only below their brethren of Glastonbury and St. Albans. They had the right of coinage; they gave to the abbey much wealth; and amongst the relics was one sent to Cromwell, and described by the commissioner who was sent down to inquire into the revenues as "the principell relik of idolytrie within thys realme, an aungell with oon wyng that brought to Caversham the spere hedde that percyd our Saviour is syde upon the crosse." The last abbot of Reading, defying the bulky Defender of the Faith, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, with a couple of monks, within sight of his own abbey gateway. What of the building was left after the energetic measures of bluff King Hal, was finally razed by Commonwealth victors. Portions, however, of the ancient chapel and chapterhouse are left, and the old gateway stands, patched up with modern materials, in excellent preservation on the south side of the Forbury. It is understood that the abbey stones have been worked up into some of the public buildings of the town, and some of them were undoubtedly carted right and left, far and near, for miscellaneous use. The most interesting fragment is a Norman archway belonging to the abbey mill, and still spanning the mill race known as Holy Brook. [Illustration: FLOODED MEADOWS, FROM CAVERSHAM BRIDGE.]