They shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is
winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from
off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary
glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or
other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the words "There the
ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting it
out again. How marvellously old Handel understood these people!
They bob to Theobald as they passed the reading desk ("The people
hereabouts are truly respectful," whispered Christina to me, "they know
their betters."), and take their seats in a long row against the wall.
The choir clamber up into the gallery with their instruments--a
violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. I see them and soon I hear them,
for there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if I
mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany. I have heard what I believe
was its remote musical progenitor in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo
at Venice not five years since; and again I have heard it far away in mid-
Atlantic upon a grey sea-Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves
are stirring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive
psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness
of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer.
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