Chapter LII: Part V: They Sang (4)

The organ is regarded by us as essentially a church instrument by its nature and the associations we connect with it; indeed it never fails to arouse in us deeper feelings of reverence and devotion, and we cannot do without it.

An attempt was made in several of the German cathedrals some years ago to revive music of the Palestrina style, to the exclusion of the more modern; but circumstances, we think, have already led to some modifications of the strict rules first proposed.

III.

Practically, we can hardly hope ever to exclude from our churches modern figured music—as Benedict XIV. says, that would be an extreme measure; but we can exclude, and are bound, he says, to exclude, such compositions of it as are unsuitable for church purposes.

But how shall we determine what is suitable and what is not?

Music, it will be said, is a mere matter of taste, and the adage has it, _De gustibus non est disputandum_.

But there is bad taste as well as good taste. Moreover, church music is a matter of principle as well as of taste, and good taste in this case is closely allied to principle.

Taste is the instinct or habit, or rather the instinct following habit, and perfected by it, whereby we are enabled to discern and detect what is most proper and congruous in each province of art.

Now, the reason for employing music in the service of the church is religious or it is none. Unless the musical sounds, therefore, subserve the meaning of the text, they are better away. “Where the religious song is accompanied by musical instruments,” says Benedict XIV., “these must serve solely for adding to its force, so that the sense of the words penetrate deeper into the hearts of the faithful, and their spirit, being roused to the contemplation of spiritual things, be elevated towards God and the love of divine objects.” That style of music, then, will be the most religious which deals most reverently with its subject, and gives the least scope to the play of irreligious dispositions. Being the most suitable to its subject, it will also be in the truest taste.

Hence that music will be the most suitable and the best which in its construction will correspond most perfectly with the peculiar spirit of each festival and with the special character of each service; which will most naturally and reverently render the sense of the words without changing, inverting, or abridging them, or marring their sense by useless and tiresome repetitions,—which, in other words, will speak as distinctly and as religiously to the ear as the altar, the vestments of the priest, and the ceremonies speak to the eye. Music and ceremonies, and everything connected with them, should be in the most perfect harmony, reminding all that they are in the house of God, and assembled in his presence to pay him homage on earth like that rendered him by the members of the church triumphant in heaven.

Hence, 1, church music should not in any way recall the world, its temptations or its pleasures; and the prohibition made by popes and councils against the introduction into the church of compositions written originally for the theatre or the concert‐room, but with other words, or of compositions written for the church, but in a style suggestive of the stage, is so evidently just and proper that any one who objects to it must be wanting in common sense.

“Humana nefas miscere divinis” finds its application here. To carry the minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a crime, for it is a desecration.(168)

Hence, 2, not even the feelings of the congregation should ever tempt the director of the music of the church to admit what is not in every respect most suitable to the place, the time, and the occasion. Fortunately, we have no difficulty here in the United States with our own people. The only trouble is when we go out of our way to satisfy the expectations of non‐ Catholics who occasionally are present at our services, or of a few musicians not otherwise interested in the services.

Hence, 3, undue prominence should never be given to individual singers. It is, to say the least, very distracting.

Hence, 4, the director of the music should never be willing to sacrifice the liturgy, even the least part of it, to the exigencies of the music, whatever they may happen to be; but, on the contrary, he should be ever ready, if need be, to sacrifice even the most admirable musical numbers to the exigencies of the ceremonial.

In other words, he should never forget that music is one of the many accessories to our public worship—never the essential—and is never to be heard merely for its own sake.

This is brought out clearly and distinctly in two decrees that have for us in this section of country the full force of law—a decree of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, and another decree of the Third Provincial Council of New York:

“That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn rites of the church may be preserved in their integrity, we admonish pastors of churches to labor earnestly to remove those abuses which in our country have crept into the church chant. Let them therefore provide _that the music be subservient to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other offices_, and not _the divine offices to the music_. Let them also bear in mind that, according to the ritual of the church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the vernacular languages at High Mass and at solemn Vespers.”(169)

“At solemn Masses singers are prohibited from so protracting the Offertory, the _Sanctus_, and the _Benedictus_ that the celebrant is obliged to delay till they have made an end of singing.”(170)

The general principles we have laid down will be still better understood if we examine the declarations made by the church through several of the popes.

The most notable and the most precious of these are the brief of Benedict XIV. already mentioned, and the rules for composers given by Pius IX.

Pope Benedict XIV., in his Constitution _Annus_ 19, February, 1749, begins by laying down the general principle that the music of the church must be so ordered that nothing profane, nothing worldly, and especially nothing theatrical, be heard in it. He repeats this principle again and again, and says that there is no one who does not detest operatic music in the church, and who does not look for and desire a difference between the music of the church and the music of the stage.

He then reminds us of the Constitution of Pope Innocent XII., by which it is forbidden to sing at solemn Mass and Vespers motets or hymns that are not a part of the Mass or the Vespers of the day; that is, at solemn Mass, the only pieces allowed to be sung besides the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, _Credo_, _Sanctus_, _Benedictus_, and _Agnus Dei_ are the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion of the Mass of the day (a single exception being made for Corpus Christi, when the _O Salutaris!_ or other hymn of the office of the Blessed Sacrament may be sung at the Offertory), and at solemn Vespers only the Antiphons and the proper hymn with the Psalms.

He then proceeds to condemn frequent repetitions of the same words, and places the chief distinction between theatrical music and church music in this: that in the former the words are made quite subservient to the singing and the accompaniment; whereas in the latter the words are rendered intelligibly, and the music is made subservient to them.

He next instructs bishops to banish from the church absolutely all instruments except the organ; but with the organ he allows the use of violins, violas, violoncellos, contrabassos, and bassoons, because these add, he says, to the force of its tones; but he prohibits cymbals, horns, trombones, oboes, flutes—in general, all wind‐instruments, as also harps and guitars, because all these, he says, recall the theatre.

He directs that while the singing is going on the instruments must merely accompany, never take the place of, the voices.

He allows suitable symphonies when these are dissociated from the office proper—probably meaning the pieces played at the beginning and the end of service, and to fill up pauses when the choir is silent.

He closes by urging the Italian bishops to comply with these instructions faithfully, that foreign bishops coming to Rome may see in Italian, and especially in Roman, churches the public offices properly carried out, and thus be induced to imitate them.

The present vicar‐general of Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizzi, by order of the Pope, wrote two letters to composers of church music in Rome, on the 18th and 20th of November, 1856, and in them he so far supplements the directions of Benedict XIV. that we have wherewith to determine without much difficulty what music is, and what music is not, admissible in Catholic choirs.

In his first letter he says:

“The most sustained gravity is to be observed, and nothing introduced suggestive of theatrical pieces, either by the arrangement or by the melody; too many repetitions, and all changes and arbitrary inversions of the words are to be avoided.

“At Mass, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and other sacred ceremonies, organists are forbidden to execute the whole or parts of theatrical pieces, or to play in a too florid or distracting style; and their music ought to be such as to promote the recollection and devotion of the faithful.

“As we consider an interruption between the various parts of the words of the liturgy very unbecoming, even when any verse is finished, as being an occasion of distraction and noise among the musicians and hearers, we order that every part of the offices, especially at Mass, shall be sung through continuously, so that the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, and other parts may each have a unity of structure.”

In his second letter he teaches composers the necessity of their having for their object the praise of God and the devotion of the faithful, and shows how church music in its whole construction ought to differ from that of the stage.

“If all composers,” he says, “drew their inspirations from piety and religion, as some of them have the good spirit to do; if they always kept before their minds that their music ought to tend to praise God in his holy temple, and to excite the devotion of the faithful, there would have been but little need to make rules for musical composition. But it is only too true that, in some instances, to the great surprise of the truly religious among the faithful, there has been heard in the churches certain music unworthy of the house of God, and showing that the composer, far from having in view the service of the divine Majesty and the edification of his hearers, has only aimed at displaying his own imagination, and that he has forgotten the church and written for the theatre, not only by borrowing its style of melody, but also by introducing portions of theatrical music, to which he has sometimes violently adapted the words of the sacred liturgy. In order that so great a scandal may not be renewed, and that those who write music for the church may have a rule to keep them within due bounds, we prescribe as follows:

“1. Music destined for execution in the churches ought to be distinguishable from profane and theatrical music, not only in its _melodies_, but also in its whole character; hence

“2. Those movements are forbidden which would not be naturally inspired by the sacred character of the words, and which would be suggestive of the theatre.

“3. We forbid too lively or exciting movements; if the words require cheerfulness and joy, let it be expressed by the sweetness of religious mirth, and not by the unbridled liveliness of the dance.

“4. In all movements, whether slow or quick, the words of the sacred text must be pronounced clearly, and never more quickly than in ordinary discourse.

“5. The words must be put to music in the order which they occupy in the sacred text. When the sense has been entirely expressed, it will be allowable to repeat some word of it, or some phrase of it, as may be necessary, without inversion, without confusion of the sense, and with the required moderation.

“6. All the words must be sung, and none added nor any omitted. It is not allowed for one syllable of them to be changed.

“7. We forbid ariettas, duets, and trios in imitation of theatrical pieces. Recitative and everything approaching to it is forbidden; as also operatic finales, such as are known by the term _cabaletta_.

“8. As regards instruments, long introductions and long preludes are to be avoided, whether with full orchestra or with solos.

“9. Without depriving instrumental music of the grace and coloring which art and good taste suggest, an effeminate softness is to be avoided, as well as immoderate noise, which is always tiring and unbecoming in the house of God.

“10. The composer must not forget that _the use of instrumental music in the churches is in a state of simple toleration_; the object of it must be to sustain and enrich the singing, to be far from overpowering it, or from enfeebling and deadening it, or reducing it to a mere accessory.”

These rules, if adhered to, would give us music which would meet the requirements both of devotion and of art; nor do they exclude such variety as the diversity of our feelings calls for. It could, by its placid, quiet, and smooth‐flowing measures, soothe and subdue us into that mood which best fits us to offer to God reverential homage, and to make acts of resignation when we feel the hand of affliction bearing heavily upon us; but also, by more joyous and inspiriting strains, dispose us to praise God according to the immensity of his greatness, in joy and gladness, on loud‐ sounding cymbals (_in cymbalis jubilationis_), and send us back to the battle of life with renewed courage and strength.

IV.

But, it will be asked, can this style of music which we have just sketched be had? Most certainly.

It is true our organists do not know it; for they are lamentably ill‐read in musical lore. They seem to imagine that whatever is published as music for the service of the Catholic Church is to be regarded as “Catholic music,” and perfectly proper, and they scarcely dream of looking further than to the publications or importations of Ditson, Peters, and Novello, or of critically examining these to test their fitness for the purposes of divine worship. To take the two best composers of their class, how few organists have taken the trouble to study critically the Masses of Haydn and Mozart. Of the sixteen Masses composed by Haydn, there are only four in which the words are all correct. These are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 9. All the others are consequently defective.

In Nos. 7, 8, and 11, although all the words are to be found in one or other of the voice parts, yet each voice is often singing different words at the same time.

In Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 16 the words _Qui ex patre filioque procedit_ are altogether omitted. In Nos. 3 and 16 the words _et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum_, are wanting. In No. 2 the words _Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur_ are omitted. In No. 10 the words _Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis_, are omitted. In the _Credo_ all the words from _et in unum Dominum_ as far as _per quem omnia facta sunt_ (inclusive), and again all the last part of the _Credo_ from _et in Spiritum_ to the end, are altogether omitted.

In No. 12 the words _Qui tollis peccata mundi_ (_secundo_) are omitted.

In No. 13 the words _Jesu Christe, Domine Deus_, are omitted. The words _Filius Patris_ are immediately followed by _miserere nobis, quoniam tu solus_, etc.

Again, in the _Credo_ of this same Mass, after the words _et invisibilium_ we find the text read thus: _credo per quem omnia_, etc., with all the intermediate part left out. No. 14 consists of a _Kyrie_ and _Gloria_ only. In the _Gloria_ the words _Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe_, etc., _qui sedes_, etc., are omitted. In No. 15 the words _Qui tollis peccata mundi_ (_secundo_) are omitted. In the _Credo_ of this Mass, beginning with _Et resurrexit_, different words are sung simultaneously by each part, as remarked above of Nos. 7, 8, and 11.

While it cannot be denied that much of the Mass music of Haydn is the most beautiful in the world, some of it is trivial and undevotional, and it would seem as if, by some of his movements, he wished to

“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven.”

Concerning the sacred compositions of Mozart, a recent French author, M. Felix Clement,(171) makes the following startling assertion:

“The religious musical compositions of Mozart are much less numerous than is generally believed, and the catalogues of music publishers and the repertories of _maîtres de chapelle_ are not to be trusted. Many of these musicians frequently take the liberty of stealing from Mozart’s operas, and even from his compositions for instruments, and of adapting them to a Latin text, let the adaptations be worth what they may.... The only authentic religious compositions of Mozart are the following:

“A _Stabat mater_ for four voices, without instruments, and very short.

“A _Veni Sancte Spiritus_ for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two horns, a clarinet, tympanum, alto, and violoncello.

“A solemn Mass for four voices, two violins, two hautboys, two altos, four clarinets, and tympanum, 1768.

“A short Mass for four voices and the same accompaniment, 1768.

“A Grand Offertory for four voices and similar accompaniment, 1768.

“An _Ave Verum Corpus_, 1791.

“The Mass of Requiem.

“Two solemn Masses in C major.”

There are adaptations in many of Peters’ publications that are simply shocking, and even our most worthy Anthony Werner forgot himself while he was compiling the _Memorare_ and the _Cantate_, and inserted a few compositions that are out of rule, and therefore out of taste.

Again, few organists amongst us have a sufficient knowledge of Latin, of the structure of the ritual, and of the traditions of the church to judge of the appropriateness of compositions; and the evil is aggravated to the last degree by the custom of making the organist the director of the music as well. Hardly any of them know either the theory or the practice of plain chant.

Music of the kind we have described as fit for church use abounds in Italy, but mostly in the condition of MS. The works of the Augustan age of Italian music, from the time of Carissimi to that of Jommelli, including those of Durante, Leo, Clari, Steffani, Martini, and Pergolesi, and even of later masters, like Terziani, afford inexhaustible treasures almost entirely neglected.

The new order of things in Italy has wrought and is working mischief there in more ways than one. Thus it has already been the occasion of the loss of a great number of valuable musical manuscripts, and unfortunately the end is not yet. The revolution of 1848 caused a great deal of wanton destruction, the result of that spirit of vandalism which seems to possess all revolutionists; and the recent suppression of so many churches by the Italian government has brought about the dispersion and consequent loss of the manuscripts of as many musical libraries—a loss that can never be repaired.

If we do not resume the execution of the compositions of the older masters, we must at least recur to them for the purposes of study. In no other way can we shake off the influence of the drama.

We have learned from the instructions of Benedict XIV. and the cardinal vicar of Pius IX. that there is a distinction between the music of the stage and that of the church, and that this distinction is based on the fact that in the latter the music must be written to suit the words of the sacred text, and that the music, whilst having that serious and chastened expression which befits the language of devotion, should be distinctively vocal and choral; whereas in the former the tendency is to make the words suit the modulations of the music, to subordinate the voices to the rich and powerful instrumental symphony which accompanies them, to flatter the popular ear by light and taking airs, and to display to the best advantage the voices of individual singers and their wonderful execution.

These characteristics of secular music, due to the influence first of Mozart and afterwards of Rossini more than to that of any other composers, have been too long felt in the music of the church, and to be rid of them we must lean more towards the past, and return to the study of those grave and solemn forms which existed prior to their day, and in which the instrumental accompaniment contained no suggestion of levity, and was used to support and enrich the vocal harmony without drawing attention from it.

The celebrated Robert Franz is now editing some of the works of Durante, who flourished not long after the departure from Palestrina was made, and whose piety and exclusive devotedness to church music have given a more ecclesiastical character to his compositions than to those of any other composer of his day.

In France the war between those who advocate the exclusive use of plain chant and those who plead that music may have some share in the divine service is waged fiercely, and the consequence is that both parties go to extremes, and both assert principles with regard to the respective merits of the two styles that are utterly untenable. There is no country in the world where plain chant is so much sung, and none where so much wretched stuff is palmed off as sacred music. Nevertheless, France has composers of merit, who might achieve great results if they had a public of broader views to write for, chief among whom is Gounod, who, in his _Messe Solennelle_ and his _Ave Verum_, has struck the right chord, and proved himself able to write sacred music for great occasions, in which all the resources of modern art may be combined with a solemnity and an expression of piety not less remarkable than that which we find in the compositions of Palestrina.

In England the advocates of what we may call the canonical style of church music are not inactive.

The late Cardinal Wiseman had an excellent collection of Palestrina music, published in the most elegant style by Burns.

Years ago Monsignor Newsham, at the cardinal’s suggestion, composed for smaller choirs four chorus Masses, to be sung in unison or in parts _ad libitum_. They are easy, flowing, and very devotional, and strictly in rule. They are published by Novello.

Mr. Richardson, an excellent musician, has revised some of the Masses of Haydn and Mozart, and, without altering substantially the music of these two great composers, reset the words with rare skill; so that we have all the beauty of the music, while the text of the Mass does not suffer. They are published by Burns & Oates.

Of late years Archbishop Manning has had a series of six Masses composed by excellent musicians, chiefly for unison singing, but they may also be sung alternately in parts. They have a full and artistic organ accompaniment, and are so arranged that the effect produced by them is scarcely inferior to that of vocal part music, while they are not hard to learn, and do not overtax the voices.

He has also had other Masses published _for four voices_ in the highest style of art. These are by eminent composers, and have organ _obbligato_ accompaniment. They are full without being of inconvenient length.

In these, as in the preceding Masses, the _Sanctus_ and _Benedictus_ in no case exceed the proper limits.

They are published by Burns & Oates.

Other compositions of the same class are promised.

Of what is being done in Belgium we cannot speak so confidently; but at the last Catholic Congress of Mechlin the subject of church music received due attention; prizes were offered for compositions that would meet the requirements of devotion as well as art, and a _concursus_ actually took place, and the works of the contestants published.

It is in Germany that the movement in favor of the reform of church music has been the most active and has made the most progress.

We have already mentioned the introduction of the Palestrina style of music into some of the German cathedrals, and four immense volumes of music of that class have been published by Pustet, of Munich; and, as we have just said, Franz is publishing and drawing attention to the works of Durante, who represents the style that came into vogue when Palestrina was first departed from.

But they have a large and able society, called the Cecilia, extending all over Germany, which last year numbered 7,000, and is ever increasing. They have at their head F. Francis Witt, an exemplary priest of Spire, whom the Germans call “the modern Palestrina.” He is trying to achieve in our day the success that Palestrina met in his.

The number of compositions for the church published by this society or under its own influence is immense.

A writer in the London _Tablet_ stated recently that by means of S. Cecilia’s Society a thorough reform had been effected in the church music of Germany, and that frivolous compositions in the secular style have at last been banished from the churches.

The writer of this paper remembers hearing in the autumn of 1869, in the Cathedral of Munich, two Masses of this school, which contained no passages for _soli_, and in which the words were treated as respectfully as in the compositions of Palestrina and his school, none being repeated or inverted. The accompaniment of the organ and the orchestra, in which no wind instruments were heard—except, perhaps, the bassoon—was so fully subordinated to the voices and so perfect otherwise that his ear has been spoiled, as it were, and every similar performance heard since in other places has been a grievous disappointment. He never heard any music more pleasing artistically, and at the same time more devotional and proper. It showed that composers can give us the best music which modern art can furnish, and yet keep strictly within the limits marked by ecclesiastical authority.

The Cecilia Society of Germany has a branch in this country, which has recently begun to publish select music, and to issue a musical journal called the _Cecilia_. The editor is F. Singinberger, and the publishers Fisher & Brother, Dayton, Ohio.

The publications of sacred music amongst us have not been very numerous or very remarkable for excellence. Among the very best we feel bound to notice the publications,(172) and especially the elegant compositions(173) of Mr. Falkestein, who has shown that he knows how to unite in his skilfully‐constructed and charming yet devout compositions the depth and severity of the old ecclesiastical masters with the graceful and flowing melody and orchestral effects of the modern school.

There is no lack of good‐will and talent amongst our musicians, but the trouble is that they have not the models by the study of which they may form a true ecclesiastical style. A library is as necessary to the student of music who hopes to be a composer as it is to the student of literature who has the ambition of becoming an author. Our directors of church choirs need a larger acquaintance with the great masters, especially the older ones. Above all, they need to have a better knowledge of Gregorian chant. For this chant should not only form a part of our service, as was already stated in the first part of this paper, but it should also be the source of inspiration to those who wish to compose for the church, as it was to Palestrina and his followers, as it is to‐day to Gounod. The language of Mr. Ritter may be exaggerated, but it conveys a truth to be remembered:(174) “The Gregorian chant,” he says, “runs like a red thread through the musical part of the service of the Catholic Church; this really sacred song creates in Catholic countries the first impressions which touch the soul of the young Christian on his entrance into the church, and is, as such, the indestructible echo of his first sacred associations. As Holy Writ forms the invariable foundation of the religious and moral principles of the true Christian, so the Gregorian chant ought to form the ground and invariable theme of the true church composer; and as long as composers understood and valued this inestimable, noble, and really sacred practice their works composed for the church truthfully and appropriately fulfilled their solemn office; these works were thus imbued with the sacred character derived from the themes of the sacred songs; then necessarily a distinct line of demarcation was drawn between secular and sacred music.”

A Week In Wordsworth’s Haunts.

We had only a week to spare, but we were not long in choosing where to spend our holiday. At that time the Lake Country was accessible, but not yet crossed through and through, by railroads. The cars took us from London almost through to Windermere, but, that being the gate of the sanctuary, they went no further. We had to cross the “Black Country,” a weird region of coal‐mines and furnaces, where scarcely a blade of grass meets the eye; interminable plains, strewn with gaunt machinery and bristling with tall brick chimneys or low, wide, oven‐like buildings, stretch from the track of the railroad as far as the horizon; a muffled noise, rumbling and crackling, is the only sound besides the shrill whistle of the engine; the sky is black as with the promise of ten thousand thunder‐storms, the murky air hangs like a pall over the earth, and tongues of flame shoot up now and then from the mouths of the furnaces. At night the scene is gloomily splendid; everywhere lurid flashes leap up from these openings, for the work is incessant here; half‐ naked forms stalk from chimney to pit, wheeling giant barrows or pushing forward heavy trucks on tramways; no sound but the never‐ceasing rumble of wheels and crackle of flames—apparently a silent Pandemonium or Dantesque city of Dis; at any rate, a sight that one does not easily forget.

Windermere is the largest, the most fashionable, and the best known of the English lakes. It was Saturday night when we reached it and went to an inn overlooking the calm sheet of water. The moon was up, and streaked the shadows of the great mountains that lay across the lake with her shimmering silver pathway; the little boats moored by the various landings rocked to and fro in the gentle breeze, and the wavelets came with a “swish” against the pebbly shore. Next morning, on inquiring for the Catholic church, we were told that there was a private chapel in the house of a Catholic gentleman who lived on an island in the lake, and allowed any respectable tourist to come on Sunday. We rowed over to the island, and found it all a garden: smooth lawns to the water’s edge, broad gravel‐ paths through groves of elm and chestnut, a glowing parterre, rustic seats, fountains and marble balustrades, and by the boat‐house a little group of gay skiffs dancing up and down on the blue water. The chapel was up‐stairs, and there was an outside stair‐case leading to it, down which we saw a familiar figure coming slowly towards us. It was that of a London priest whom we knew, and who, like us, was spending a brief holiday among the lakes. He had come over to say an early Mass; the master of the house was not at home, he said, but the chaplain would be glad to welcome all Catholics, many of whom came during the touring season. After Mass we strolled for an hour about the garden, admiring the vistas contrived between the trees, at the end of which glimpses of the blue sky and sparkling water, with some gray or purple peak cleaving the line of the horizon, could be seen. From every point of the lake itself these mountains strike the eye; for the most part bare of trees, their lower ledges covered with green pasture‐land, and seamed here and there with the foamy streak of a beck or stream; their summits sheer rock. Their names all have a grand, free sound that suits their craggy, majestic beauty—Helm Crag, Hammar Scar, Silver How, Skiddaw. This one is the monarch of the lake country. Great How is a single, conspicuous peak rising at the foot of Lake Thirlmere, to the west of the lovely vale of Legberthwaite, near the high‐road between Ambleside and Keswick. Ambleside is a favorite resort of students; young men from the two universities often come to spend the long vacation here, where reading, walking, and boating can be combined. The scenery is very beautiful; the valleys are broken up into a thousand nooks where fern and heather grow, and some tiny rivulet trickles beneath the broad‐arched fronds of the bracken; every old wall wears a golden crown of celandine, or, in native dialect, pilewort; the “ghyll”—_i.e._, a short, steep, narrow gorge, a miniature cañon—is traversed by the foamy brook, leaping to the waterfall called in Cumberland a “force”; the birch, the rowan, the oak, cling to the rocky ledges that jut out over the little cataract, and everywhere above the greenery lies the shadow of the great lonely hills. Black Comb in Cumberland Wordsworth calls a spot fit for a “ministering angel” to choose, for from its summit, on a tolerably clear day, England, Scotland, and Ireland are all three visible. Many of the mountains, both in Cumberland and Westmoreland, have traces of inscriptions on the native rock which have by some learned men been supposed to be Runic, but which it is now generally agreed to call Roman. They are very rude, and much effaced by time and the action of the weather; hence the uncertainty.

It was by the shores of Windermere that a party of young men, all enthusiastic Tractarians, spent a vacation in one of the first years of that movement now called Puseyite and ritualistic, but then known as the Young England movement. In those days ladies washed and ironed the church linen, and wore their dainty fingers to the bone sewing surplices and embroidering altar‐cloths; while others would take it by turn to sweep the churches and dust the pews; and others again, intent on doing penance, would kneel for hours on stone floors, and even use the _discipline_ unsparingly, until the doctor’s verdict put an end to their misguided zeal. Blindly they were beating about for the truth, and thought they had found it in practices of self‐denial. It was a touching blindness—one that God often and often enlightened during those fruitful years. Young men made a point of exercising bodily mortification, even in vacation time, and, when thrown by circumstances amid unsympathizing companions, would carry their zeal into the commonest actions, and make a silent boast of their new‐found faith. One Friday, for instance, a few young members of Parliament, assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons, called for “tea and toast” instead of the unfailing mutton‐chop of tradition, and the mild protest created quite a sensation. On going home they were received by their several households as champions of a holy cause who, from humble beginnings, were going to bring about a mighty revolution, a national awakening. It was very beautiful, this child‐like faith in their own ideal—so beautiful that God rewarded many of those who held it by leading them into the everlasting reality of the great universal, apostolic church. The athletic young hermits of Ambleside were not left out of the reckoning. One day one of them strayed out alone over the hills, with some old volume of the fathers under his arm, and his questioning young soul eager for the knowledge which the wonderful serenity of this mountain region seemed at the time to typify so well. He was out a long time, and, when he came home to his companions, he seemed to them transfigured. A new peace and yet a more ardent enthusiasm had come to him, and he spoke in words almost incomprehensible to them:

“I have found the man who has the idea!”

What had happened to him was this: In his walk he had met a young stranger, and spoken to him. Kindred thoughts and aspirations had led them into a long and eager conversation, wherein it soon appeared that the stranger, with his fair, girlish face and dreamy blue eyes, was the master, and his new friend only the humble disciple. They had talked on into the twilight, and the latter, entranced, at last asked the name of him who in a few short hours had taught him to see things in a clearer, diviner light than all the patristic reading had been able to do during his college course. The young man opened the book he had with him, and showed him his name written on the fly‐leaf. It was Frederick William Faber.

From Windermere we started on our real tour. The native conveyances are called “cars,” and hold four people sitting opposite each other, but sideways and parallel with the horses. From a rough, square box, painted dark blue or green, up to a real town‐made carriage in the same shape, this conveyance is universally in use over the north. Everywhere the same beautiful scenery—moist nooks, a natural fernery, tumbling waterfalls, walls covered with wild flowers; here and there an old‐fashioned inn with an old‐fashioned landlord, waiting himself on his customers, and sitting down to tell them at his ease all the gossip and the guide‐book lore of the neighborhood, the best time to go up the mountain, when it was safe to take a boat out on the mere, the accident in the lead‐mine last year, etc., etc. At such an inn, “The Swan,” we passed one night, and had an excellent and abundant rustic supper, not a hundred yards from the brand‐ new tourist hotel, “The Prince of Wales,” gas‐lighted and high‐priced, with saucy waiters and London upholstery, and each floor exactly the counterpart of the other, like a penitentiary.

Ullswater is a stormy lake, a sort of caldron enclosed in steep, forbidding rocks rising perpendicularly from the water. Above them is a wooded table‐land, with old houses hidden up the slopes beyond, one a ruined monastery, with a modern home fashioned out of a few available fragments of strong mediæval masonry, and a sort of museum or armory contrived among the standing arches of a less useful portion of the building. It was a steep climb to get to it, and for miles on either side of the pathway, that was half a natural staircase, there was no other road to it. The view over the dark lake was impressive; the waters, calm enough now, lay beneath us like a floor of black marble, with a fringe of heavy shadows along the edge where the cliffs overhung it.

Now and then we would pass detached hamlets with their sturdy, grave population all astir, the women fine specimens of their sex, with that frank expression and grand physical development which are bred of mountain training and open‐air life. Together with all the people of the north, they have many peculiar customs, and altogether form a race apart from the inhabitants of other English counties. The accents of their nervous, expressive dialect, the names of their mountains and lakes, the flavor of quaintness and individuality that hangs about their life, somehow suggest the old times of early Christianity when S. Wilfrid ruled in York, or struggled inch by inch for his invaded territory and ignored rights. Stopping to water your horses in one of these hamlets, you may see a knot of men standing silently and expectantly round the door of a clean, home‐ like cottage, and just outside, laid on the porch seat, a basin filled with sprigs of box‐wood. The men are waiting for a coffin to be borne out, and, when it comes, they will all fall into line behind it, and each, taking a sprig from the basin, will throw it into the grave after the prayers have been said. Of course this is a Catholic reminiscence of the days when the box sprigs were used to sprinkle the coffin with holy water, as they are now in most countries on the Continent; but, besides this, box‐wood is an evergreen, and therefore a symbol of the immortality of the soul.

Sometimes we would come to a little mountain tarn, across which we were ferried, car, horses, and all. The regular travelling in these regions is done by stage‐coaches, of which we availed ourselves for sending forward our slender baggage, so as to be quite independent and unencumbered in our movements. The mountain lakelets, that are never mentioned in guide‐books, are very beautiful with their fringe of rushes and boggy earth starred with white and golden flowers, and their flocks of teal and wild duck dwelling in peace in these undisturbed wildernesses.

Grasmere, a village on one of the larger lakes bearing the same name, was Wordsworth’s home for eight years, the first eight of this century. He was born in Cumberland, and the home‐passion that has gained him his title of Lake Poet never left him. Fortunate in his worldly circumstances, he went to Cambridge, and, though a desultory reader, took a fairly creditable degree after four years’ study. He made tours on foot through Wales and Germany, and published his poetical reminiscences, though with little success; but through their medium he gained the friendship of Coleridge, his fellow‐poet and life‐long companion. He settled at Grasmere in 1799 with his sister, who was throughout his life, even after his marriage, his guiding star—the kindred spirit whose approval and sympathy were the secret sources of his intellectual life. Of her he says, speaking of a peak which they could see from their “orchard‐seat”:

“There is an eminence, of these our hills,
The last that parleys with the setting sun.

The meteors make of it a favorite haunt;
The star of Jove, so beautiful and large
In the mid‐heavens, is never half so fair
As when he shines above it. ’Tis, in truth,
The loneliest place we have among the clouds.
_And she who dwells with me, whom I have loved_
_With such communion that no place on earth_
_Can ever be a solitude to me_,
Hath to this lonely summit given my name.”

Of his wife he wrote, after three years of marriage, words contrasting his first impressions as a lover with the sweet, solemn experience of a husband. Then “a phantom of delight, ... a lovely apparition, ... a dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay,” but now

“A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly plann’d,
To warn, to comfort and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.”

Song seemed to gush from Wordsworth’s soul as naturally and copiously as water from a mountain spring. Some of his verses were written with a slate‐pencil on stones in lonely places; for instance, in a deserted quarry on one of the islands at Rydal, on a stone half way up the grim mountain of Black Comb, in Cumberland, or with a common pencil on a stone in an outhouse on the island at Grasmere. He _lived_ poetry. Everything with him was a pretext for verse; neither the commonest household occurrence nor the sublimest spectacle of nature up there among those rocky fells and green valleys lying under awful shadows of coming storms, was a stranger to his ready pen. He says of himself that

“The sounding cataract
_Haunted me like a passion_; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms were then to me
_An appetite, a feeling, and a love_.”

There are few places so thoroughly fitted for a poet’s home as the lake country of Cumberland and Westmoreland, yet more so then than now, when it has become the fashion to make a tour among the lakes, even as one does down the Rhine. England has wakened to the consciousness of her own beauty within the last forty years, and a home‐tour often takes the place of a foreign one; yet to those who first visited these Eden‐spots the rare charm is gone, for sight‐seers have taken the place of the “wanderer,” and regular guides usurp the simple escort of a stray shepherd whom in old times you might have happened to meet by some _force_, on the cool banks of which he would have told you, in his racy dialect, the old traditions and legends of the neighborhood—the legend of the horn of Egremont Castle, for instance, a Cumberland tale, telling how Sir Eustace Lucie and his brother Hubert rode away to the Holy Land, and the former, pointing to the “horn of the inheritance” that hung by the gate‐way, and which none could sound,

“Save he who came as rightful heir
To Egremont’s domains and castle fair,”

said to his brother: “If I fall, and Christ our Saviour demand my sinful soul, do thou come back straight‐way, and sound the horn, that we may have a living house in thee.” And Hubert promised. But out in Palestine Sir Eustace disappeared, and, when the news was brought to Hubert that his elder brother lay “deep in Jordan flood,” he said darkly to the messengers: “Take your _earnings_. Oh! that I could have _seen_ my brother die.” He went home, and whether he sounded the horn or not none knew; it was never heard, but Sir Hubert lived in glee for years, with wife and sons and daughters, until one day

“A blast was uttered from the horn
Where by the castle gate it hung forlorn,”

and Sir Eustace came back safe and unsuspecting. Hubert rose up and fled in silence, and it was years before he was again heard of; then he came and asked forgiveness, and obtained it, and ended his penitent life in the cloister; so that Eustace’s “heirs of heirs, through a long posterity, sounded the horn which they alone could sound.” The same legend is told of the Hall of Hutton John, an old house of the Huddlestones in a lonely valley on the river Dacor, also in these parts.

Or it might be the tradition of Henry, Lord Clifford, the shepherd‐boy, whose father lost his title and estates during the wars of the Roses. Henry was restored, after twenty‐four years of shepherd life, in the first year of the reign of Henry VII., and it is recorded that, when called to Parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely, but otherwise came seldom to London or the court, and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles. “There is a tradition,” says Wordsworth himself, “current in the village of Threlkeld (in Cumberland, where lay the estate of his father‐ in‐law, Sir Lancelot Threlkeld), that in the course of his shepherd life he had acquired great astronomical knowledge.” The poet clothed this incident (as he did every other that struck his fancy in that poetic land of the north) in verse, singing a lay of the Red Rose, revived at last, the flower of Lancaster, and weaving in the tale of the boy’s wanderings on “Carrock’s side,” in “Rosedale’s groves,” and “Blencathara’s rugged coves.” The common name of this last‐mentioned mountain is Saddle‐Back. Near Threlkeld, hidden in the gorges of the purple hills, lies Bowscale Tarn, where the people of the country still believe two immortal fish to dwell. Tarn signifies, in north‐country dialect, a small mountain mere, or lake. Wordsworth’s descriptions of scenery are exquisite; everywhere you find the traces of that personal love of the places he paints, that patient, detailed minuteness of touch which only comes of long gazing on a favorite scene, and of familiarity with its every aspect, in winter and summer, in storm and sunshine, in mist and rainbow. Every place has some tender associations in his memory; the stately fir‐grove whither he was wont

“To hasten, for I found beneath the roof
Of that perennial shade a cloistral place
Of refuge, with an unencumbered floor,”

reminds him of a dear friend, “a silent poet” but a sailor by profession, after whom he called the pathway to the grove, whence

“The steep
Of Silver How, and Grasmere’s placid lake
And one green island”

could be distinctly seen. That friend never returned, but perished by shipwreck in the discharge of his duty. Here, too, in this beautiful lake country, both at Grasmere and at his later and more celebrated home, Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland, Wordsworth lost others dearer yet—two of his children, who died young, and Dora, his favorite daughter, who died six years after her marriage. When on his own death‐bed, three years later, his wife, brave and self‐forgetting to the last, comforted him by whispering: “William, you are going to Dora.” His poems are so complete a guide‐book to the lake country, as well as a series of living sketches of the people of the north, that it is almost unavoidable to treat them as tourists in Scotland do _The Lady of the Lake_, or tourists at Rome _Childe Harold_. In his day, however, many popular traits were in full vigor which now have almost disappeared. For instance, he says himself that “the class of beggars to which the old man here described belongs will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor and mostly old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighborhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions.” In his verse he describes the “Old Cumberland Beggar” thus:

“Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now.

He travels on, a solitary man—
His age has no companion.”

The passing horseman does not throw him a careless alms, but stops, lingers, and drops a coin safely into the old man’s hat; the toll‐bar keeper sees him from a distance, and leaves her work to lift the latch for him; the post‐boy slackens his horse’s speed, and turns with less noisy wheels out of his path; the very dogs do not bark at him.

“But deem not this man useless. Statesmen! ye
Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
Who have a broom still ready in your hands
To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud
Heart‐swoln, while in your heart ye contemplate
Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not
A burden of the earth.”

No; he is “a record binding together past deeds and offices of charity”; “a silent monitor” to those who sit sheltered “in a little grove of their own kindred”; an object to call forth that blessed feeling that you have, though “poorest poor,” been “the fathers and dealers‐out of some small blessings”; a prompter to “tender offices and pensive thoughts.” See this picture:

“Such pleasure is to one kind being known,
My neighbor, when with punctual care, each week,
Duly as Friday comes, though press’d herself
By her own wants, she from her chest of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old mendicant, and from her door,
_Returning with exhilarated heart,_
_Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven_.”

And the poet, the lover of nature, the child of the mountain, ends by a warning and a prayer:

“Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness
Gives the last human interest to his heart.
May never House, misnamed b‘of Industry,’
Make him a captive! For that pent‐up din,
Those life‐consuming sounds that clog the air,
Be his the natural silence of old age!”