According to Professor Freeman, Glastonbury became, in the year 601, the great sanctuary of the British in the place of Ambresbury, which had but lately fallen. How it grew, how it was ruled by great leaders in the church, how it became the largest, the most beautiful, the most wealthy of all abbeys, how its fall was compassed, and how the last of its abbots, an aged man, was dragged to the hill-top and hanged, are historic facts which belong to a date far later than that with which we are concerned. We cannot even dwell upon St. Patrick’s sojourn at Glastonbury, or upon Dunstan’s retirement to its cloisters in order to devote himself to study and music. Here it was that he wrestled with the Evil One in person while labouring at his forge; here it was that heavenly visions were vouchsafed to him; here it was that he began his work of reformation in the Church and made the Abbey the centre of religious influence in the kingdom. After the lapse of centuries we gaze only upon the ruins of the fabric, and from them learn how majestic the temple in its prime must have been, comprehending a little of the truth half revealed and half concealed in the silent storied places with their shattered walls, their crumbling archways, their unroofed chambers, their windows darkened with trailing weeds, and their floors overgrown with lank grasses and moss. King Arthur’s connection with Glastonbury cannot be deemed wholly mythical, though the mysteriously beautiful narrative which tells of his last days in Avalon seems too poetical for reality. There are, however, other links, not so generally recognised, connecting him with this consecrated place. Glastonbury was not only his “isle of rest;” nor was the Abbey known only to him as a shrine. He claimed, or it was claimed for him, that he was descended on his mother’s side from Joseph of Arimathæa, the genealogy being thus given:--“Helianis, the nephew of Joseph, begat Joshua; Joshua begat Aminadab; Aminadab begat Castellos; Castellos begat Mavael; Mavael begat Lambord, who begat Igerna of whom Uther Pendragon begat the famous and noble Arthur.” Glastonbury, in addition to its celebrity as a Christian sanctuary, would therefore have a claim upon King Arthur’s attention for the sake of his venerated ancestor, though there seems little reason to doubt that in his day it was the cynosure of the eyes of all who claimed to be within the religious fold. Lady Charlotte Guest, in one of the valuable notes to her translation of the _Mabinogion_, calls attention to a record of William of Malmesbury, which proves how much Glastonbury was in King Arthur’s mind on all occasions. “It is written in the Acts of the illustrious King Arthur,” we read, “that at a certain festival of the Nativity, at Caerleon, that monarch having conferred military distinction upon a valiant youth of the name of Ider, the son of King Nuth, in order to prove him, conducted him to the hill of Brentenol,