The Music.
"The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can the shade of John Knox endure a 'kist o' whistles' in good St. Giles?), but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most frequently. There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns, that touches me profoundly. I am often carried very high on the waves of splendid church music, when the organ's thunder rolls 'through vaulted aisles,' and the angelic voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my soul for me; but when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and the precentor leads in that noble paraphrase—
"God of our fathers, be the God
Of their succeeding race,"
there is a certain ascetic fervor in it that seems to me the perfection of worship. It may be that my Puritan ancestors are mainly responsible for this feeling, or perhaps my recently adopted Jenny Geddes is a factor in it; of course, if she were in the habit of flinging fauldstules at Deans, she was probably the friend of truth and the foe of beauty, so far as it was in her power to separate them."
Jenny Geddes and her Stool.
Ah! yes. Jenny Geddes. Of course, we made a point of attending service frequently in St. Giles, where that redoubtable assailant of "the papists and their apists" hurled her memorable missile. I trust the story is well known to many of my readers, especially our young people, but perhaps all are not familiar with the extremely racy version of it written by the late Professor Stuart Blackie, one of the most brilliant and versatile men of the age, and given to me by a kinswoman of his, whose charming hospitality I once had the privilege of enjoying for two weeks; so I will embody that version of it in my letter.
The Song of Mistress Jenny Geddes.
Tune: "The British Grenadiers."
Some praise the fair Queen Mary, and some the good Queen Bess,