274 . WAYFARING NOTIONS 



to sample the place at a run, so to speak, and, at 

 any rate, did the Tor, with its church-tower 

 remnant of the fine edifice said to have been 

 destroyed by an earthquake, and a carving of the 

 devil trying to beat St Michael in a weighing 

 match by putting his foot on the scale. Further, 

 I visited the George — I could not do the Abbey 

 properly and the inn also (formerly, according to 

 tradition, a house of call for Joseph of Arimathea 

 and Henry VIII.), so the former was remanded — 

 and Inspected Glastonbury thorns, which had 

 bloomed this — i.e., last — Christmas. The wet 

 season beat me this time from getting into the 

 peat country, which is not exactly like any I 

 ever visited before in Ireland, France, or the 

 Eastern Counties fenlands. Weird to come upon 

 as a stranger are the tracts of land where the 

 turfs are cut and stacked In conical "houses " such 

 as children build with boxes of bricks, and after a 

 fashion like to giant chocolate-coloured bee-skeps. 

 The country talks to you whole libraries about 

 Arthur and Alfred and the Norman swells, among 

 them Robert of Lewes, one of the De Warrennes, 

 who did Wells a lot of good ; Monmouth, who 

 did it a lot of harm, and Sir Walter Besant, the 

 best chronicler of that pretender's misbegotten 

 campaign ; and it suggests that, for the benefit of 

 succeeding generations, adding a second Van 

 Houten to cope with these West-country fens 

 would be extremely useful, since for all the old- 

 world glamour ague and such ought to be 

 anachronisms when you know what brings them. 

 However, give me the place as it is in ordinary 

 years before it has been altered or reclaimed 

 further, or done anything to or with, as one in 

 which to spend a happy week or two. 



