There is an enormous organ, all clad in
rich oaken carving, of similar pattern to that of the stalls. It was
communion day, and near the high altar, within a screen, I saw the
glistening of the gold vessels wherewith the services were to be
performed.
The choir was respectably filled with a pretty numerous congregation,
among whom I saw some officers in full dress, with their swords by their
sides, and one, old white-bearded warrior, who sat near me, seemed very
devout at his religious exercises. In front of me and on the
corresponding benches, on the other side of the choir, sat two rows of
white-robed choristers, twenty in all, and these, with some women;
performed the vocal part of the music. It is not good to see musicians,
for they are sometimes coarse and vulgar people, and so the auditor loses
faith in any fine and spiritual tones that they may breathe forth.
The services of Easter Sunday comprehend more than the ordinary quantity
of singing and chanting; at all events, nearly an hour and a half were
thus employed, with some intermixture of prayers and reading of
Scriptures; and, being almost congealed with cold, I thought it would
never come to an end. The spirit of my Puritan ancestors was mighty
within me, and I did not wonder at their being out of patience with all
this mummery, which seemed to me worse than papistry because it was a
corruption of it. At last a canon gave out the text, and preached a
sermon about twenty minutes long,--the coldest, driest, most superficial
rubbish; for this gorgeous setting of the magnificent cathedral, the
elaborate music, and the rich ceremonies seem inevitably to take the life
out of the sermon, which, to be anything, must be all.
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