and have lain and listened to their wild minstrelsy, its solemn swells and "dying falls" kept musical by the distance and made holy by the time, till we have felt amid all those influences as if it were
"No mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes,"
and could have fancied that the "morning stars" were again singing, as of old they "sang together for joy," and that the sounds of their far anthem came floating to the earth. This sort of fancy has occurred over and over again to him who has looked out from his bed upon a sky full of stars, and listened at the same time to invisible and distant music, under the holy impressions of the season. Shakspeare has helped us to this feeling, perhaps, as we can trace his influence upon all our feelings, and upon none more than the most sacred or the most solemn:—
"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls."
To the rudest carol that ever flung its notes upon the still air of these solemn hours we have hearkened with a hush of pleasure which recognized how well—
"Soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony!"
And the wildest music that ever broke upon that solemn calm from the instruments of the most unskilful waits,—if it were but remote enough to keep its asperities out of the ear, and send us only its floating tones,—has brought Shakspeare into our hearts again:—
"Portia. Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Nerissa. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam."
The waits of to-day are the remote and degenerated successors of those ancient bards who filled an important place in the establishments of princes and nobles, as also of those wandering members of the fraternity who, having no fixed position, carried their gift of music from place to place as the tournament or the festival invited. Those of our readers who have much acquaintance with the old chroniclers have not to be told by us that these latter were frequently drawn together in considerable numbers by the Christmas celebrations. The name "wait," or "wayte," itself is of great antiquity amongst us, and appears to have been the title given to some member of the band of minstrels who either replaced the ancient minstrel-chronicler in the royal establishments, or was probably under his direction, the duty of which particular member it was to pass at night from door to door of the chambers and pipe the watches upon some species of instrument. As early as the reign of Edward III. we have mention of this individual minstrel by his title of "wayte," and in the subsequent ordinances for royal households the name frequently occurs. Dr. Burney, in his "History of Music," quotes from the "Liber niger domus regis," of Edward IV.'s time, a full description of the duties, privileges, and perquisites of this ancient officer. It is probably from this member of the royal household and his office that the corporations for towns borrowed their earliest appointment of watchmen; and the ancestors of those ancient gentlemen whose most sweet voices are amongst the lost sounds of the metropolis, and whose mysterious cries will soon, we fear, be a dead language, were no doubt in their original institution minstrels or waits. The sworn waits are, we believe, still attached to many corporations (although some of their duties have been alienated, and some of their prerogatives usurped), and amongst others to that of the City of London. The bellman and those "wandering voices," the watchmen, where they still exist, have, however, a title to the same high and far descent, and have succeeded to most of the offices of the ancient waits. It would seem, too, that both these latter important personages have at all times had it in view to assert their claim to a minstrel origin, their announcements being generally chanted in a species of music quite peculiar to themselves, and such as the world can never hope to hear again when these gentry shall be extinct. "Oh, what a voice is silent!" wrote Barry Cornwall long before the introduction of the new police into our streets; and the passionate exclamation must surely have originated in a prophetic vision of the extinction of the Dogberry who piped the night-watches in Bedford Square. As for those wandering musicians who charm the long nights of the Christmas time with unofficial music, and are waits by courtesy, they bear the same relation to the corporation minstrels of modern times as did the travelling bards of former days to the ancient minstrels who were established in the households of nobles or of kings. The waits still on some occasions close their performance by calling the hour, and by certain other announcements descriptive of the weather or characteristic of the season.
