GLASTONBURY ABBEY.
Aug. 19.—To vary the scenery we breakfasted at Bridgewater, in as much dirt and noise, from the judges filling the town, as at Taunton we had enjoyed neatness and quiet. We walked beside the river, which is navigable from the Bristol channel; and a stream more muddy, and a quay more dirty and tarry and pitchy, I would not covet to visit again. It is here called the Perrot.
Thence, however, we proceeded to what made amends all—the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. These are the most elegant remains of monkish grandeur I have ever chanced to see,—the forms, designs, ornaments,—all that is left is in the highest perfection of gothic beauty. Five hundred souls, the people told us, were supported in this abbey and its cloisters.
A chapel of Joseph of Arimathea has the outworks nearly entire, and I was quite bewitched with their antique beauty. But the entrance into the main front of the abbey is stupendous; its height is such that the eye aches to look up at it, though it is now curtailed, by no part of its arch remaining except the first inclination towards that form, which shows it to have been the entrance. Not a bit of roof remains in any part. All the monuments that were not utterly decayed or destroyed have been removed to Wells. Mere walls alone are left here, except the monks’ kitchen. This is truly curious: it is a circular building, with a dome as high—higher I fancy—than the Pantheon’s; four immense fireplaces divide it Into four parts at the bottom, and an oven still is visible. One statue is left in one niche, which the people about said was of the abbot’s chief cook!
If this monastery was built by the famous old cruel hypocrite abbot, Dunstan, I shall grieve so much taste was bestowed on such a wretch.[347] We had only labourers for our informants. But one boy was worth hearing: he told me there was a well of prodigious depth, which he showed me, and this well had long been dried up, and so covered over as to be forgotten, till his grandfather dreamed a dream that the water of this well would restore him from a bad state of health to good; so he dug, and the well was found, and he drank the water and was cured! And since then the poor came from all parts who were afflicted with diseases, and drank the water and were cured. One woman was now at Glastonbury to try it, and already almost well! What strange inventions and superstitions even the ruins of what had belonged to St. Dunstan can yet engender! The Glastonbury thorn we forgot to ask for.