The tunes themselves have also been new set to jiggish measures, and the sober drawl, which used to accompany the two first staves of the hundredth psalm, with the 'Gloria Patri,' is now split into as many quavers as an Italian air. For this purpose there is in every county an itinerant band of vocal musicians, who make it their business to go round to all the churches in their turns, and, after a prelude with a pitch-pipe, astonish the audience with hymns set to the new Winchester measure, and anthems of their own composing.
As these new-fashioned psalmodists are necessarily made up of young men and maids, we may naturally suppose that there is a perfect concord and symphony between them; and, indeed, I have known it happen, that these sweet singers have more than once been brought into disgrace by too close a unison between the thorough-base and the treble.
It is a difficult matter to decide which is looked upon as the greatest man in a country church, the parson or his clerk. The latter is most certainly held in the higher veneration, where the former happens to be only a poor curate, who rides post every sabbath from village to village, and mounts and dismounts at the church door. The clerk's office is not only to tag the prayers with an amen, or usher in the sermon with a stave, but he is also the universal father to give away the brides, and the standing god-father to all the new-born bantlings. But in many places there is still a greater man belonging to the church than either the parson or the clerk himself. The person I mean is the 'squire; who, like the king, may be styled the head of the church in his own parish. If the benefice be in his own gift, the vicar is his creature, and of consequence entirely at his devotion: or, if the care of the church be left to a curate, the Sunday fees, roast beef and plum-pudding, and the liberty to shoot in the manor, will bring him as much under the 'squire's command as his dogs and horses.
For this reason the bell is often kept tolling, and the people waiting in the churchyard an hour longer than the usual time; nor must the service begin till the 'squire has strutted up the aisle and seated himself in the great pew in the chancel. The length of the sermon is also measured by the will of the 'squire, as formerly by the hourglass, and I know one parish where the preacher has always the complaisance to conclude his discourse, however abruptly, the minute that the 'squire gives the signal by rising up after his nap.
In a village church, the 'squire's lady, or the vicar's wife, are perhaps the only females that are stared at for their finery; but in the large cities and towns, where the newest fashions are brought down weekly by the stage-coach or wagon, all the wives and daughters of the most topping tradesmen vie with each other every Sunday in the elegance of their apparel. I could even trace their gradations in their dress according to the opulence, the extent, and the distance of the place from London. I was at a church in a populous city in the north, where the mace-bearer cleared the way for Mrs. Mayoress, who came sideling after him in an enormous fan-hoop, of a pattern which had never been seen before in those parts. At another church in a corporation town, I saw several Négligées with furbelowed aprons, which had long disputed the prize of superiority; but these were most wofully eclipsed by a burgess's daughter just come from London, who appeared in a Trollope or Slammerkin with treble ruffles to the cuffs, pinked and gimped, and the sides of the petticoat drawn up in festoons. In some lesser borough towns, the contest I found lay between three or four black and green bibs and aprons; at one, a grocer's wife attracted our eyes by a new-fashioned cap called a Joan, and at another, they were wholly taken up by a mercer's daughter in a nun's hood.
I need not say any thing of the behaviour of the congregation in these more polite places of religious resort; as the same genteel ceremonies are practised there as at the most fashionable churches in town. The ladies, immediately on their entrance, breathe a pious ejaculation through their fan-sticks, and the beaux very gravely address themselves to the haberdashers' bills, glewed upon the lining of their hats. This pious duty is no sooner performed, than the exercise of bowing and courtseying succeeds: the locking and unlocking of the pews drowns the reader's voice at the beginning of the service; and the rustling of silks, added to the whispering and tittering of so much good company, renders him totally unintelligible to the very end of it.
I am, dear cousin, yours, &c.
No. CXXXVIII.
Servatâ semper lege et ratione loquendi.—Juv.
Your talk to decency and reason suit,
Nor prate like fools, or gabble like a brute!