Christianity; that this building was the mother of our Church; that far back in the bygone ages of barbarism vagrant missionaries wandered footsore and worn to this very spot; planted with their own hands the cross of Christ; built up with those hands the rude rush-covered shed which served as the first temple raised to God in these islands; spent their lives here in preaching that good tidings to a benighted pagan people, laid their bones down by the side of the work of their hands, and left their mission to their successors; that in process of time this little community became a mighty power, and that rush-covered shed a splendid temple, whose history is collateral with that of the country for nearly twelve centuries, and now it lies all battered and broken, crumbling away and wasting like human life itself-the mind shrinks appalled at the thought of the vicissitude which brought about so complete a ruin.

"O who thy ruine sees, whom wonder doth not fill

With our great fathers' pompe, devotion, and their skill?

Thou more than mortall power (this judgment rightly waid)

Then present to assist at that foundation

laid;

On whom for this sad waste, should justice

lay the crime?

Is there a power in fate? or doth it yield to

time?

their journey. As the legend goes, St. Joseph is said to have stuck his staff in the earth and left it there. when lo! it took root, grew, and constantly budded on Christmas Day This was the legendary origin of the far-famed holy thorn. Up to the time of Queen Elizabeth it had two trunks or bodies, and so continued until some nasal psalm-spoiler of Cromwell's "crew" exterminated one, leaving the other to become the wonder of all strangers, who even then began to flock to the place. The blossoms of this remaining branch of the holy thorn became such a curiosity that there was a general demand for them from all parts of the world, and the Bristol merchants, then very great people in their "line," turned this relic of the saint into a matter of commercial speculation, and made goodly sums of money by exporting the blos soms to foreign countries. There are trees from the branches of this thorn growing at the present moment in many of the gardens and nurseries round about Glastonbury, nay, all over England, and in various parts of the Continent. The probability

is, as suggested by Collinson in his "History of Somerset," that the monks procured the tree from Palestine, where many of the same sort flourish.

In the abbey church-yard, on the north side of St. Joseph's chapel, there was also a walnut tree which, it was said, never blossomed before the feast of St. Barnabas (the 11th June). This is gone. These two trees. the holy thorn and the sacred walnut, were held in high estimation even long after the monasteries had disappeared from the land. Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm are said to have given large sums of money for cuttings from them; so that the "odor of sanctity" clung about the old walls of Glaston bury long after its glory had departed: nay, even the belief in its miraculous waters lingered in the popular mind. and was even revived by a singular

incident so late as the year 1751. The circumstances are somewhat as follows:-One Matthew Chancellor, of North Wootton, had been suffering from an asthma of thirty years' standing, and on a certain night in the autumn of 1750, having had an unusually violent fit of coughing, he fell asleep, and, according to the depositions taken upon his oath, dreamed that he was at Glastonbury, somewhere above the chain gate, in a horse track, and there found some of the clearest water he ever saw in his life; that he knelt down and drank of it, and upon getting up, fancied he saw some one standing before him, who, pointing with his finger to the stream, thus addressed him: "If you will go to the freestone shoot, and take a clean glass, and drink a glassful fasting seven Sunday mornings following, and let no person see you, you will find a perfect cure of your disorder, and then make it public to the world." He asked him why he should drink it only on Sunday mornings, and the person replied that "the world was made in six days, and on the seventh day God rested from his labor, and blessed it beside, this water comes out of the holy ground where a great many saints and martyrs have been buried." The person also told him something about Christ himself being baptized, but this he could not distinctly remember when he awoke. Impelled by this dream, the man kept the secret to himself, and went on the Sunday morning following to Glastonbury, which was three miles from the place where he lived, and found it exactly according to his dream; but being a dry time of the year, the water did not run very plentifully; however, dripping his glass three times in the pool beneath the shoot, he managed to drink a quantity equal to a glassful, giving God thanks at the same time. This he continued to do for seven times, according to the injunction of the dream, at the end of which period he had entirely lost his complaint. The effect of this story is re

markable.

As soon as it was noised abroad, thousands of people of all sects came flocking to Glastonbury from every quarter of the kingdom to partake of the waters of this stream. Every inn and house in the town, and for some distance round, was filled with lodgers and guests; and it is stated upon reliable authority that during the month of May, 1751, the town contained upward of ten thousand strangers. Even to this day, there is a notion amongst the peasantry, more especially the old women of both sexes, that the water is good for the "rheumatiz."

After the scenes of violence, the ruthless vandalism, which this old abbey has gone through, it cannot be a matter of surprise that so little remains of all its grandeur; but it is a fact much to be lamented, because, as it was in its time one of the grandest ecclesiastical edifices in the country, so, if it had been preserved intact like its old rival, the cathedral at Wells, it would have been one of the most important and valuable items in the monumental history of England; that broad page where every nation writes its own autobiography; how valuable we find it in our researches as to the life of bygone times; and yet how little do we appear to do in this way as regards our own fame; how little do we cultivate our monumental history. One of the most lasting evidences of greatness which a country can leave behind it for the admiration and instruction of posterity, is the evidence of its national architecture-its architecture in the fullest sense of the term, not its mere roofs and walls, but the acts which it writes upon those walls, its statues and monuments. There are only two agencies by which national fame can be perpetuated-literature and art. The pen of the historian or the poet may give the outline of national manners and the description of national achievements, but art, as it exists in the extant monuments of the architecture of that nation, gives the

representation of the actual life as it was, fills up the outline, and presents us with something like the substance: it does not describe, but illustrate; it is, in fact, the petrified manifestation of the very life itself. We have read much about the splendor of those extinct civilizations of the Pharaohs, and of the marvels of Babylonish grandeur, but what a flood of light was thrown upon our dim conceptions by the resuscitated relics of a buried Nineveh! In Grecian poets and Grecian historians we make the acquaintance of the heroes and the heroism of that heroic existence; but in the Elgin marbles we see the men and the deeds in all their natural grandeur, petrified before us in the graphic sublimity of motionless life. To come a little nearer our own times and to the mother of our civilization, what a confirmation of the historic tradition of the Rome of our studies have we found under that hardened lava which for centuries has formed the tombstone of Herculaneum and Pompeii. What vivid illustrations of Roman life and Roman manners are continually being discovered in those buried cities; and so of every nation and time it is its history which narrates its glory, but it is its architecture alone which must illustrate and confirm it. There is no fear of the present age of our country leaving no evidence of its power behind it. That evidence is written in indelible characters deep even to the very bowels of the earth itself, through the heart of mountains, over broad rivers, across plains, its scroll has been the broad bosom of the country, upon which it has engraven its character truly with a pen of iron; but there is a danger that we shall leave very little monumental history behind us in our architecture.

Protestantism, too, was an iconoclast as regards Catholicism, but it content ed itself with desecrating temples, pulling down altars, tearing away paintings, but it substituted nothing in their place; it would admit of no allurements in the Church but that of

genuine piety, and supplied no attrac tions for the thoughtless, the careless, the unbelieving, but its bare walls and cold ministrations. This feeling & now undergoing a marked change; we are beginning to see that plainness in externals may conceal a considerable amount of pride and worldliness, and thus Quakers are leaving off the curious garb, and Methodists are building temples; it is beginning to dawn upon men's minds, at last, that ugliness is one of the most inappropriate sacri fices man can offer to his God, that as in the olden times the patriarchs used to offer up the first-fruits of the field, so in these later times we should offer up the first-fruits of our achievements; the choicest productions of art, science, and every form of human genius should be presented to him who is the God of all humanity. As we raise up temples to his honor and glory, where we may come with our supplications for his mercy, our adoration of his power, where we may bring our purest thoughts, our noblest hopes, our highest aspirations, and our best emotions; so let us decorate that temple with the best works of our hands as we hallow it with the best feelings of our hearts. Solomon for exerting all the power and wealth of his kingdom to decorate the temple was simply, "This house which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods;"* and the ap proval and acceptance of it by him for whom it was built is recorded in his own words: "Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place, for now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever, and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually." And that we may not go to the other extreme. as some churches have done and do in our day, and imagine that if we decorate our temple with all the choic est offerings we can bring it is enough. and God will be satisfied with the mere offering, there is, following in

The reason given by

* 2 Chron. ii. 5

6

mediately upon his gracious acceptance and approval of Solomon's temple, the solemn warning in his own words: "But if ye turn away and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them, then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for my name will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And this house which is high shall be an astonishment to every one that passeth by it, so that he shall say, Why hath the Lord done this unto this land and unto this house?' And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them and served them; therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them.' 999* That is the canon of church building as ordained by God himself-make the church as grand an offering as you can, but keep the ritual pure-fill the temple with all the emblems of his glory, but remember that it is he only who is to be worshipped. Such is the teaching of revelation; and now we turn to nature, that boundless temple which God has built up to himself with his own hands. Had he been a God of mere utility instead of a God of beauty and glory; had he only considered the bare convenience and accommodation of the human race, a proportionate amount of dry land in one place, and

* 2 Chron. vii. 15, seg.

a proportionate amount of water in another, would have sufficed to meet all human wants; there was no practical need for the variegated aspect of natural scenery, of hill and dale, mountain and valley, of rippling stream and sweet-smelling flowers; but the world of nature was built for something higher than the mere dwelling place of man. It was built as a temple in which he should honor his God, and which was therefore filled with a myriad of beauties to excite his admiration, to please his eye, to fili his soul with gratitude and joy, and to raise his heart to that God who has given him such a beautiful home, furnished not only with the means of supplying his necessities, but embellished with the choicest beauties of creative power. What is nature but a gorgeous temple, laid out and decorated by the hand of God himself, with its broad pavement tesselated with endless varieties of verdure, with mountain altars which Christ himself loved to frequent and hallow with his prayers, its long aisles fretted with luxurious foliage pillared with tall trees, which bend their tops together in the matchless symmetry of nature's arch, all vocal with the deeptoned music of rushing waters, and melodies warbled by the unseen songsters of the air, spanned over with the boundless blue ceiling of heaven itself, lit up by day with the sunshine of his majesty, and at night by the stars placed there with his own hands?

Let us, whilst we endeavor to get at the truth of history, appeal also to revelation and nature.