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He was light and supple in figure, perfectly formed, with a clear brown skin and a face such as one sees in early Italian paintings of angelic singing-boys a face with broad, serious brows, soft, oval cheeks, curved lips, and delightfully dimpled chin. He had large, brown eyes and a mass of tangled, curling hair.
When we were a quarter of a mile from the churchyard, the funeral was met by a dozen of singing-boys, belonging to a chapel choir, which the priest, who was fond of music, had some time before formed. They fell in, two by two, immediately behind the corpse, and commenced singing the Requiem, or Latin hymn for the dead.
Among the crowd of white surplices which seemed to overflow the grating, shone the golden capes of the choristers, and the red robes of the singing-boys.
Your singing-boys have gone to the Cave of Harmody; you and your choir have split why should not these ladies lead it? He caught at the idea. You never heard the chants more finely given and they would be better still if the congregation would but hold their confounded tongues. It was an excellent though a harmless dodge, sir: and drew immensely, to speak profanely.
Girding up their skirts a little way, the whole body of clerics awaited their turn in silence, while the captain of the singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of an ecclesiastical ceremony.
Another grand vicar of the same Bishop, in the same city, of the name of Rami, has two of his illegitimate children as singing-boys in the same cathedral where he officiates as a priest. Their mother is dead, but her daughter, by another priest, is now their father's mistress.
Lady Fareham supported the August heats sitting on her terrace, with a cluster of friends about her, and her musicians and singing-boys grouped in the distance, ready to perform at her bidding; but Henriette and her brother soon tired of that luxurious repose, and would urge their aunt to assist in a river expedition.
Yet, should he live to be hanged in them, this good they would do him: the very hangman would pity his case. The table he keeps is able to starve twenty tall men. His servants have not their living, but their dying from him, and that's of hunger. A spare diet he commends in all men but himself. He comes to cathedrals only for love of the singing-boys, because they look hungry.
To put the innovator to shame, Sir William Gascoigne, the judge before whom the case was laid, observed in open court, "Though I can compel an immediate payment, it being a demand of right, and not a mere gift, yet I will set him an example by gifts which I might refuse, but will not, because they are customary," and forthwith addressing the steward, added "Call the sheriff's coachman, his pages, and musicians, singing-boys, and vergers, and give them the accustomed gifts as soon as the sheriff comes."
He could only distinguish, by their complexion, about twelve Europeans. 'The general of the Portuguese ships in the Indies' had the honor of placing himself beside our Frenchman. As soon as the procession was formed, it marched off in the usual order. "First, the Dominicans, honored with everlasting precedence on all such occasions, led the way. Singing-boys also preceded, chanting a litany.
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