Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/57

Rh infidels a-piece;—the dean had fallen, it would seem, in these latter days, on a similar mode of doing penance, and expiated the crime of making canons residentiary for a consideration, by demolishing a whole conclave of geologists.

The cathedral service seemed rather a poor thing, on the whole. The coldly-read or fantastically-chanted prayers, commonplace by the twice-a-day repetition of centuries,—the mechanical responses,—the correct inanity of the choristers, who had not even the life of music in them,—the total want of lay attendance, for the loungers who had come in by the side-door went off en masse when the organ had performed its introductory part, and the prayers began,—the ranges of empty seats, which, huge as is the building which contains them, would scarce accommodate an average-sized Free Church congregation,—all conspired to show that the cathedral service of the English Church does not represent a living devotion, but a devotion that perished centuries ago. It is a petrifaction,—a fossil,—existing, it is true, in a fine state of keeping, but still an exanimate stone. Many ages must have elapsed since it was the living devotion I had witnessed on the previous evening in the double-bedded room,—if, indeed, it was ever so living a devotion, or aught, at best, save a mere painted image. Not even as a piece of ceremonial is it in keeping with the august edifice in which it is performed. The great organ does its part admirably, and is indisputably a noble machine; its thirty-two feet double-wood diapason pipe, cut into lengths, would make coffins for three Goliahs of Gath, brass armor and all: but the merely human part of the performance is redolent of none of the poetry which plays around the ancient walls, or streams through the old painted glass. It reminded me of the story told by the eastern traveller, who, in exploring a magnificent temple, passed through superb porticoes and noble halls,