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Through the narrow streets, between crowds of people standing on the pavements or looking down from the windows, while the church bells ring and wreaths of incense fill the air, bands of music, squadrons of cavalry, crucifixes, shrines, images, the banners of the parishes and the guilds, heralds in their varied dresses, bareheaded pilgrims from England, France, and other countries, pages, maidens in white, bearing palms, or crowns of thorn, or garlands, priests with relics, acolytes and chanting choristers, pass slowly along.
Almost immediately an aerial chant descended from the cupola, from a lofty gallery where one hundred and twenty choristers were concealed, and the enraptured multitude marvelled as though the angels had indeed responded to the clarion call.
James's is the only Preston church in which surpliced choristers sing, and we believe they have tended materially to increase the congregation. The choral system now followed at St. James's was inaugurated in 1865, Originally, the choir consisted of 12 boys and 10 men, but, if anything, parties who are under the painful necessity of shaving now preponderate.
Between two and three o'clock on the following morning, Moffat got permission to retire to rest; his slumbers were, however, disturbed by the assiduity of the sable choristers; and on awaking after a brief repose, his ears were greeted on all sides by the familiar notes of the Scotch air. Very pleasing progress was made by these people in Christian knowledge. Mosheu brought his daughter to Mrs.
At noon there had been a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds, leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers.
He was chanting a low dirge. On each side of him marched the choristers, Lovelace and Hunter, in white sheets and enormous psalters that they had borrowed from the chapel. They also sang in a strange outlandish tongue. But the pièce de resistance was the banner. It consisted of a long piece of white calico on which was inscribed in red ink: "Up, Up, Oxford. Down with the Cantabs."
At the head are the tallest and most robust youths, the best developed and most buxom girls. Following these, the dancers are less and less carefully assorted and matched, while boys and old women, little girls and old men, bring up the rear. As the last couple emerges, the chorus bursts out in full force, the choristers themselves issuing from the dark passage-way.
Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and instead of the crozier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee. Alas! who indeed would have expected the bitter historical truth, and have dreamed that poor Valentine, instead of being that rosy vision, was one of the Church's most unhappy martyrs?
The spectacle is impressive, and the silence along the route, save for the chanting of the choristers, and the recitation of prayers in an undertone by the clergy, adds to the solemnity of the occasion. In days gone by, the murdered empress used to figure in the procession in full court dress and followed by her ladies, but now women take no part therein.
Our sailors carried the coffin; the musicians commenced a mournful march; the priest, with the choristers, led the way and the others followed in pairs; the captain conducted the mother, and I the daughter. Our sailors sent up some rockets, and at this signal the schooner fired minute guns for a half hour.
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