in Glastonbury has a fine tower, elevated one
hundred and forty feet and richly adorned with canopied niches, being
crowned by an open-work parapet and slender pinnacles. Almost the entire
town of Glastonbury is either constructed from spoils of the abbey or
else is made up of parts of its buildings. One of the most
characteristic of the preserved buildings is the Tribunal, now a suite
of lawyers' offices. Its deeply-recessed lower windows and the oriel
above have a venerable appearance, while beyond rises the tower of St.
John the Baptist. Behind the town is the "Weary-all Hill," from which
arose the foundation of the monastery. Tradition tells that Joseph of
Arimathea, toiling up the steep ascent, drove his thorn staff into the
ground and said to his followers that they would rest there. The thorn
budded, and still flowers, it is said, in winter. This was regarded as
an omen, and they constructed the abbey there around the chapel of St.
Joseph. The ponderous abbot's kitchen, we are told, was built by the
last abbot, who boasted, when Henry VIII. threatened to burn the
monastery, that he would have a kitchen that all the wood in Mendip
Forest could not burn down. King Arthur was buried at Glastonbury, and a
veracious historian in the twelfth century wrote that he was present at
the disinterment of the remains of the king and his wife. "The shin-bone
of the king," he says, "when placed side by side with that of a tall
man, reached three fingers above his knee, and his skull was fearfully
wounded." The remains of King Arthur's wife, which were quite perfect,
fell into dust upon exposure to the air.

[Illustration: GLASTONBURY TRIBUNAL.]

SEDGEMOOR BATTLEFIELD.

Proceeding westward towards the Bristol Channel, the low and marshy
plain of Sedgemoor is reached. Much of it is reclaimed from the sea, and
here and there the surface is broken by isolated knolls, there being
some two hundred square miles of this region, with the range of Polden
Hills extending through it and rising in some places three hundred feet
high. In earlier times this was an exact reproduction of the
Cambridgeshire fenland, and then, we are told,

"The flood of the Severn Sea flowed over half the plain,
And a hundred capes, with huts and trees, above the flood remain;
'Tis water here and water there, and the lordly Parrett's way
Hath never a trace on its pathless face, as in the former day."

It is changed now, being thoroughly drained, b