nts, a work on the Properties of Things, two costly Psalters,
and a most beautifully bound Benedictional.

But doubtless many a bookworm nameless in the page of history, dwelled
within those walls apart from worldly solicitude and strife; relieving
what would otherwise have been an insupportable monotony, with sweet
converse, with books, or the avocations of a scribe.

Well, years rolled on, and this fair sanctuary remained in all its
beauty, encouraging the trembling christian, and fostering with a
mother's care the literature and learning of the time. Thus it stood till
that period, so dark and unpropitious for monkish ascendency, when
Protestant fury ran wild, and destruction thundered upon the heads of
those poor old monks! A sad and cruel revenge for enlightened minds to
wreck on mistaken piety and superstitious zeal. How widely was the fine
library scattered then. Even a few years after its dissolution, when
Leland spent some days exploring the book treasures reposing there, it
had been broken up, and many of them lost; yet still it must have been a
noble library, for he tells us that it was "scarcely equalled in all
Britain;" and adds, in the spirit of a true bibliomaniac, that he no
sooner passed the threshold than the very sight of so many sacred remains
of antiquity struck him with awe and astonishment. The reader will
naturally wish that he had given us a list of what he found there; but he
merely enumerates a selection of thirty-nine, among which we find a
Grammatica Eriticis, formerly belonging to Saint Dunstan; a life of Saint
Wilfrid; a Saxon version of Orosius, and the writings of William of
Malmsbury.[319] The antiquary will now search in vain for any vestige of
the abbey library; even the spot on which it stood is unknown to the
curious.

No christian, let his creed be what it may, who has learnt from his
master the principles of charity and love, will refuse a tear to the
memory of Richard Whiting, the last of Glastonbury's abbots. Poor old
man! Surely those white locks and tottering limbs ought to have melted a
Christian heart; but what charity or love dwelt within the soul of that
rapacious monarch? Too old to relinquish his long cherished
superstitions; too firm to renounce his religious principles, Whiting
offered a firm opposition to the reformation. The fury of the tyrant
Henry was aroused, and that grey headed monk was condemned to a barbarous
death. As a protestant I blush to write it, yet s