OF CAMELOT AND ALMESBURY “With tabor blithe and bugle sound, Unto King Arthur’s Table Round, Right valiant hearts I wot, Drink, in thy spirit’s lusty glee, And pledge with fullest jollity These knights of Camelot.”--_Richard Hengist Horne._ “King Arthur at Camelot kept his Court Royall With his faire Queene, Dame Guiniver the gay: And many bold barons sitting in hall, With ladies attired in purple and pall: And heraults with hewkes hooting on high, Cryed ‘Largesse! Largesse! Chevaliers très-hardies!’” --_Percy Reliques._ “God’s holy name was on his tongue, Thine in his heart--Queen Guinevere.”--_Paton._ Those who press the question, where is many-tower’d Camelot, where is the royal mount rising between the forest and the field, where is the flashing city of the marvellous gate, may be referred by the veracious historian to a village in France, or by the unromantic antiquary to a hamlet in Scotland. Time has razed the real city, wherever it was, and the poet can invest it with charms and environ it with wonders which it never possessed. The simple lover of the legend will be content to find King Arthur’s favourite haunt in the fair domain of England, amid the sleepy vales and the undisturbed hills of restful Somerset. On the Mendips, within sight of a long range of wooded verdant hills, many a tower and steeple dotting the vale which sweeps away until lost in the bluish haze of distance, here and there a bright homestead twinkling on the heights or nestling in the bowery hollows, there is a deserted place called Cadbury Camp. A stone wall winds round an ancient encampment and marks its bounds, and just across the open land looking towards Portishead lie the widening waters of the Bristol Channel. The hills around show every variety of green as they stretch further and further from the shore, and one would think that the region had been unvisited for a thousand years. And if tradition be true, this was Camelot, Camelot where King Arthur sought repose; Camelot where Sir Lancelot brought the daughter of King Leodegraunce of the land of Cameliard, “the gentilest and fairest lady”; Camelot where the king was wedded “unto dame Guenever in the church of St. Stevens with great solemnitie.” It was at Camelot, on the occasion of this ceremony, that Merlin bade the knights of the Round Table (the gift of Leodegraunce to King Arthur) to sit still while he showed them “a strange and marvellous adventure.” As they sat waiting and expectant, a white hart ran into the hall, followed by a white brachet (or scenting hound) and by thirty couple of black running hounds “with a great crie”; and the hart, wounded by the brachet, overthrew one of the knights, and led Sir Gawaine, accompanied by Sir Gaheris, upon a wonderful quest, in which he fought against great odds, slew a lady in a castle by misadventure, learnt that “a knight without mercy is without worshippe,” and