THE OLD CATHEDRAL ORGANISTS They dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine in hours of fear Or grovelling thought, to seek a refuge here THEY HEY began with Tallis and Byrde; they continued with Blow, Farrant, Attwood, Turle, Wesley; they will probably come to an end with the pupils of Samuel Sebastian Wesley; and to hear the old spirit of the English cathedrals uttered upon their organs you must go to Manchester Cathedral or St. George's Chapel, Windsor. That a perfect tradition should thus have been neglected until its voice is dying out reflects upon two things; upon the condition of religion and the reverence for art in England. England is not religious, and it is not artistic, although it pretends to both qualities; and this is why a revival meeting will always be crowded, and the dim aisles of our cathedrals left empty and echoing. The habit of both qualities has been lost; or rather the conditions of modern life seem to have made of both anachronisms-an unhappy reflection on modern life. Gounod and Wagner have nothing to do with the religion of the English cathedrals, and their influence upon the music which is heard in those places has been deadening and unhappy-far more so than the influence of the greatest pedant, the most academic contrapuntist, who ever wrote fugal amens or set his glorias per retre et retro. This neglect of a pure tradition seems to me part of a pervading defect of the modern worldneglect of style. Sense of style pertains no more exclusively to literature than does a sense of propriety or proportion; it is a gift of the aristocratic intellect, a flair for excellence which should run through the whole of life. One has just the same right to say a tactless thing, to combine ugly colours in one's dress, to allow one's butler to wear a moustache, or to conduct one's correspondence in green ink, as one has to split one's infinitives; but a sense of decency, no less than a faculty for imitating what is seemly, should make all equally impossible. But the English have little reverence for finish doubt it is part of their strength and a defect of their undoubted qualities; but it is a defect that weighs very heavily against their progress in matters of art. And it is to this lack of sense in style and propriety that we must attribute the debased methods of those who play organs in churches. If our English cathedrals have ; no meaning at all in a world and time which is hurrying past all for which they stood, they should surely be the home of tradition. No one, I imagine, claims for them any great use as centres of what is called religious life, and certainly they are not suited to any of those purposes of social amelioration to which many churches in crowded cities have so closely directed their energies. Old foundations inextricably entangled in the meshes of ecclesiastical law, rich, well organised, in the possession of buildings and properties unsuitable for utilitarian purposes, they are admirably adapted for preserving the old traditional spirit of the Anglican Church. Go into any one of them on some twilight afternoon when the roar of the city traffic is muffled to a mere murmur within their doors; listen to the pure academic English, the old quaint music, and you will know that you could be nowhere else than in England. That in itself seems to me an infinitely important thing, for with the standardising of modern secular life nationality and tradition become ever more and more merged in the great pool of a new and momentary civilisation. It is not my business to speak of ritual; but even if it were only from the artistic point of view, that has its |