The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland: / A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

by Thomas W. Silloway; Lee L. Powers

Of the many public buildings, such as hospitals, museums, libraries, it is useless to speak. They are noble institutions, and worthy the capital of even England itself. It has a very large pleasure-ground called Phoenix Park, on the edge of the city. This park is well laid out, and is for Dublin what Central Park is for New York, or Fairmount for Philadelphia. There is in it one of the largest and most admirably kept zoölogical gardens of the world. Glasnevin Cemetery, their Mount Auburn or Greenwood, is an elegant city of the dead. Here repose the remains of Daniel O'Connell, under a high, round tower visible from all parts of the grounds. The profusion of sweet-scented lime-trees, and the taste and beauty of the scenery and artificial work, enable it to vie with any cemetery in Europe. In a city like Dublin, where there is so much that is good and great, one is tempted to enlarge the range of his thoughts, and is loth to leave the spot.

Before speaking of the Cathedral of St. Patrick, we will give a brief history of cathedral service itself. Till the time of Constantine, Christians were not allowed to erect temples. Early, churches meant only assemblies, not buildings; and by cathedrals were meant their consistories, or places of meeting. It was in 312 that this emperor first granted absolute toleration to Christians. In 325 the Council of Nice was convened, and made, under his sanction, an open declaration that Christianity be thereafter the recognized official religion of the land. The earliest record we have of a distinctive cathedral service is near the end of the fourth century; although there are traces of it at an earlier date, too indistinct to be reliable. St. Basil, at the close of the fourth century says:—

The people flocked to the churches before daylight, first to pray on bended knees, then rising to sing psalms, either in alternate chorus, or one chanting, others following in an under-voice; and this was done in all Egypt, Libya, Thebes, Palestine, Arabia, and Syria.

In seventy years the Christians had many church edifices, or ecclesia cathedralis (church meeting-places), and a pretty well developed and organized prayer and singing service; but cathedral or church service did not come to great perfection till the days of Gregory the Great, who was born a. d. 540, and died in 604. Chanting had its origin in the church of Antioch during the episcopate of Lontius, a. d. 347-356. Theodoret informs us that Flavianus and Diodorus divided the choir into two parts, and made them sing the Psalms of David alternately, and that this method began first at Antioch. At the Council of Laodicea, held between 360 and 370, it was determined that there should be canonical singers, who should sing out of written books. We may imagine something of the state of affairs before the order passed; for Balsamon says that, prior to the convening of this council, the laity would many times, and at their pleasure, begin to sing such hymns and songs in the church as were crude and unusual. To obviate this the canon was made, ordering that none should begin to sing but those whose office it was to do so, the laity having permission, however, to sing with them in the entire service; and so was inaugurated our modern congregational singing, to be led, however, by an appointed choir. Choir-singing was carried into Rome in 380, under Pope Damasus; and in the time of Gregory the Great, about 620, it was brought to great perfection. Gregory sent Austin to introduce it into England. He found the clergy there unwilling to receive it, and it is said that he caused twelve hundred of them to be slaughtered at once. In 670 Theodore was sent by Vitalian to fill the See of Canterbury, and he succeeded in introducing the cathedral service; and he also has the credit of introducing organs into divine worship. The year 679 is the earliest certain date of cathedral worship in Great Britain.

In France Gregorian chant-work began about the year 787, and was patronized by Charles the Great. In the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. thirty-two commissioners were appointed to examine all canons, constitutions, and ordinances, provincial and synodal, and they declared against a cathedral service. The judicious and pious Hooker, ceremony-loving, and jealous of the interests of the church, yet under the ban and interdicted, could not suppress his thought, and he says:—

Cathedrals are as glasses, wherein the face and very countenance of apostolical antiquity remaineth, even as yet to be seen, notwithstanding the alterations which the hand of time and the course of the world hath brought.

So the work continued till a final establishment of present customs, and Seymour says of cathedrals and their service as at present carried on:—

They serve as parish churches, only on a more elaborate scale; and there can be no valid objection raised to their maintenance, except by those who condemn an intoned service, and the introduction of a highly cultivated musical choir. The canons preach in turn, and, provided the preaching is orthodox and purely evangelical

St. Patrick's being the first cathedral in which we attend services, the foregoing statement is made, preparatory to a consideration of this and other cathedrals we are to visit. It should be remembered that in all of them the service is intoned or sung, with the exception of the sermon itself, that being a part of the service only on Sundays or other important days. So strong is the force of habit, that the sermon also is generally delivered in a drawling, monotonous tone. This was a marked feature of the style of Dean Stanley in sermons delivered during his visit to America. Very strange did his elocution sound to American ears, and it was only tolerated because it came from a man so really great and truly honored.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is one of the most interesting churches in Ireland, and hours can be spent with pleasure and advantage in the grand old structure. It is said that St. Patrick here erected a place of worship, and baptized his converts with water taken from a well in the floor of the present cathedral, which is still shown to the visitor. As evidence of its antiquity as a place of worship, and of the importance and character of the original building, we have it as a well attested fact that in 890—almost a thousand years ago, and four and a half centuries after the establishment of worship here by St. Patrick, and the building of his church—Gregory of Scotland, with his adherents, attended worship here.