excelled in any branch of the polite or finer mechanical arts, could not fail of bringing him speedily into notice, and he seems to have had an introduction to the royal palace early in the reign of Edmund. No greater proof of his intellectual attainments can be adduced, than his being accused while at court of dealing in the arts of magic; for so far had he shot beyond the ignorance and error of the age, that what could now be readily comprehended by an ordinary understanding, was in that benighted period attributed to supernatural agency; and so strongly did the current of prejudice set in against him, that Dunstan was driven from the court. We can imagine with what shouts of derision he was pursued, and with what loathing and heartburning he must have quitted the palace as he fled before his insulting enemies, who, not content with having hurled him from his high estate, pursued him, and threw him into a miry ditch, beside a marsh, where they left him to escape or perish. We can picture him reaching his friend's house, at about a mile distant, the sorrow that wrapped his heart as he looked upon his blighted prospects, the anger that lighted his eye, and the burning scorn which he poured in withering words upon the unlettered herd, as he breathed his sorrow, and suffering, and disgrace, into the bosom of his friend, and, with a sigh, looked upon all his hopes thus undeservedly overthrown. For a short period, we here lose sight of Dunstan; when we next meet with him, he is on the point of marriage with a maiden to whom he appears to have been greatly attached. He is dissuaded from marriage by his relation, the bishop of Ælfheag, who tells him that such inclinations only emanate from the Evil one, and persuades him to become a monk. Love for a time made Dunstan eloquent, and our only marvel is, that a man who was so susceptible of the tender passion should, on a future day, become the unfeeling opponent of marriage, and wield the power he possessed with an unrelenting and iron arm over every priest who had entered into this honourable bond of union. For a long time the bishop argued in vain. Dunstan had then many reasons to urge in favour of love and marriage; and probably, at that period, never dreamed that he should have to use both force and argument against them; but he seems to have been doomed to suffer disappointment: and, although he endured it, it soured his better nature, for, like Jonah's gourd, all that promised him hope and delight seemed as if it only grew up to perish a withering mockery. Sickness again attacked him, a disease that brought him well nigh to death's door; he gave up all hopes of recovery, he renounced all earthly happiness, and when he began to turn his inward eye to that spiritual existence beyond the grave, earth heaved up slowly, and to him sadly, and shut out the coveted land of which he had obtained a dim glimpse, but that earth was no longer to him the garden of hope and love.