Ellen Middleton-A Tale

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION.

   "From each carved nook, and fretted bend,
   Cornice and gallery, seem to send
   Tones that with Seraph hymns might blend.

   "Three solemn parts together twine,
   In Harmony's mysterious line,
   Three solemn aisles approach the shrine.

   "Yet all are one, together all,
   With thoughts that awe but not appal,
   Teach the adoring heart to fall."

CHRISTIAN YEAR.

   "But let my due feet never fail
   To walk the studious cloister's pale,
   And love the high-embowered roof,
   With antic pillars massy proof,
   And storied windows richly dight,
   Casting a dim religious light;
   There let the pealing organ blow,
   To the full voiced quire below,
   In service high and anthems clear,
   As may with sweetness through mine ear
   Dissolve me into extasies,
   And bring all Heaven before mine eyes."

MILTON.

   "What child of sorrow
   Art thou, that com'st wrapt up in weeds of sadness,
   And mov'st as if thy steps were towards a grave?"

OTWAY.

It was on the 15th of October, 18—, that one of the best and most respected clergymen in the town of—, and a canon of the cathedral, turned his steps towards the western door of that ancient pile. It was a little before the hour of evening service; the rays of the declining sun were shining brightly through the windows of painted glass, and producing that mellow and chastened light that accords so well with the feeling of religious awe, which a gothic edifice, the noblest of the works of man, is calculated to inspire; a work where he has been enabled to stamp on what is material an indelible impress of that spirit of devotion, which unites the utmost simplicity of faith with the highest sublimity of creed.

Mr. Lacy's attachment to this particular cathedral had grown with his growth and strengthened with his years. In his youth he had learnt to love its long deep aisles, its solemn arches, its quaint carvings. During the pauses between the several parts of divine service, his childish imagination would dwell upon the topics of thought suggested by the histories of saints and martyrs depicted in the glowing colours of the stained glass windows, or in the intricate workmanship of the minster screen. The swelling peal of the organ, the chaunting of the choristers, awoke in his young mind strange and bright imaginings of those things "which the eye of man has not seen, nor his ear heard, and that it has not entered into his heart to conceive."

To wander in the cloisters, and gather the flowers growing there among the old tombstones, and to think the while of the lilies of the field, which Solomon in all his glory could not equal; or of the wilderness that blossomed like the rose, at the word of the Lord; to collect in his own hands at Christmas as much holly as his puny strength could carry, and add it to the shining heap already standing at the cathedral door; to follow it in, with timid steps, and watch with wondering eyes, the adorning of the altar, the pulpit, the stalls, and the pews; to observe with childish glee two tall branches, all glowing with their coral berries, placed by the bench where he knelt in church with his mother; to sit at home by that mother of an evening, and with his Prayer Book on his knee, learn from her lips how that glorious hymn which he so loved to chaunt in church, and which spoke of angels and martyrs, of saints and apostles, of Heaven and earth, uniting in one concert of adoration, had been bequeathed to the holy church universal by a saint who had served his Creator from the days of his youth, and never wandered from the sacred shade of the sanctuary; for the baptism of another, who, after straying far and wide in the ways of sin and the maze of error, followed the while by a mother's prayers and tears, returned at last to the foot of the cross,* [* The Te Deum is supposed to have been composed by St....