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This second reference to the minstrelsy of the grove, will not be wondered at by those who have visited that region in the spring of the year. The various notes of the feathered choristers are enchanting, even now, when the din of population has frightened them into coverts. But then, free and fearless, the strains were lively and joyful, and the chorus full.
Take away the beautiful choristers from the woods, and those, who live in the country, would but half enjoy the spring.
Midmost summer, which stills the more tuneful choristers amidst their coverts. Waife lighted his pipe, and smoked silently; Sophy, resting her head on his bosom, silent also. She was exquisitely sensitive to nature: the quiet beauty of all round her was soothing a spirit lately troubled, and health came stealing gently back through frame and through heart.
Spain had eleven thousand convents, more than a hundred thousand friars, and forty thousand nuns, and to these must be added seventy-eight thousand priests and the innumerable servitors and dependents of the Church, such as alguaciles, familiars, jailors, and notaries of the Inquisition, sacristans, stewards, buleros, convent door-porters, choristers, singers, lay brothers, novices and I know not how many other people.
The two end panels of Luca's are supplied in the cantoria by casts; the originals are on the wall below and may be carefully studied. The animation and fervour of these choristers are unforgettable.
Years after, Sir Richard Phillips jotted down his memories of Chiswick how he, a schoolboy then with his eyes just above the pew door, the bells in the old tower chiming for church, watched 'Widow Hogarth and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, draped in their silken sacks, their raised head-dresses, their black calashes, their lace ruffles, and their high crooked canes, preceded by their aged servant Samuel: who after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew. State and dignity still remained to the widow; and there, up in the organ loft, was the quaint group of choristers Hogarth had so admirably sketched, headed by the Sexton Mortefee, grimacing dreadfully as he leads on his terrible band to discord.
And at the foot of a grave a father stands With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands; And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels. The coming of the chaunting choristers Between the avenue of cypresses, The silence of the many villagers, The candle-flames beside the surplices.
The poet Herrick sings of this pleasant beginning to the day's festivities. Addressing a maiden named Corinna, he says The men blew cow-horns to usher in the spring, and the maids carried garlands to hang them in the churches; while at Oxford the choristers of Magdalen College assemble at the top of the tower at early dawn, and sing hymns of thankfulness because spring has come again.
Magdalene College at Oxford, founded in the fifteenth century by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor, was one of the most remarkable of our academical institutions. A graceful tower, on the summit of which a Latin hymn was annually chanted by choristers at the dawn of May day, caught far off the eye of the traveller who came from London.
'But, alas! nothing disturbs the inertia of that aged, and invalid shepherd, who is, indeed, never to be seen either in his garden, in the cathedral, or in the town. "Ah! But this is something better than all the vocal flourishes of the choristers!" said Durtal to himself as he listened to the bells aroused from silence to shed the blessed drops of sound over the city.
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