The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-11-06


and at the other, on the same side as the
cathedral, is the entrance to the deans
apartments. The little narrow flights OF
stone steps poking down into Tom Quad
from various parts of the college are the
entrances used by the students to their
own rooms. Each floor and section are IN
charge of attendants, whose duty it is to
serve meals, answer students calls, and
fulfil the duties usual to walters in big
hotels and lodging houses. The bed
makers are women.
1t was Just time for morning service
when we entered the beautiful chapel,
with its lovely roof resting on heavy
columns of stone, with its many fine old
tombs and monuments and rich stained
windows, and bishops throne fit for
king carved out of oak and adorned with
medallion portrait of Bishop Wherefore.
In the centre of the church is the choir,
rows on either side in the nave of carved
oak stalls, reading desk, pulpit, and a
few pews for the use of outside attendants
at service. In one of the transepts there
was beautiful hanging gallery of white
stone, the space underneath being sort OF
ante room or robing room for the chorist-
ers A narrow doorway was cut in the
stone wall, and three or four little steps led
from the robing room down into the body
of the church. We took our seats In the
carved oaken stalls, and just then heard off
in the distance priests voice making the
invocation before entering the church. He
was answered by the melodious voices of
all the invisible choristers, raised in the cry
of glorious ''Amen," and then the long
white robed procession of canons and pro-
fessors and choristers came filing one by
one down through the narrow doorway.
The verger led the procession, bearing
aloft silver staff and conducting the
clergymen to their seats in the stalls. The
entire service, almost identical with that in
our Episcopal churches, was intoned by the
clergymen and choristers, even to the read
ing Of the Gospel for the day, and the
Psalter was beautifully sung. Sometimes
the boys voices rang out, as an angels
might, filling the church with the melody
and thrilling us with the exquisite beauty
of their singing.
After service we spent an hour wander
ing about the old Cathedral finding a
tablet to the Burton who wrote "The
Anatomy of Melancholy" lovely marble
bust or bas-relief of the late Duke Of
Albany; %iiiiv was Christ Church graduate,
and many old tombs of long dead lords and
ladies. In these grand old churches,
where knights and their ladies are buried,
to say nothing of kings and cardinals and
archbishops, the usual tomb is large fiat
topped vault placed in a niche, or alcove, or
side chapel, the side aisles, or in front of
the chancel, or in the chancel itself. The
top of the tomb will be surmounted by
full length marble figures of the long de-
parted ones within, and tie knights will be
in armor and the ladies in their court
dresses, palm folded to palm, feet pressing
against an animal, and about the walls of
the tomb will be often kneeling efigies of
the entire family. Most of these figures
will have lost an arm or a nose or even a
head, but the general effect is fine, never
theless. In place of marble figures many
of the tombs have brasses. This means
fat surfaced outline figure or work in
brass, about an eighth of an inch thick,
inlaid upon. the stone or marble, tablet.
When church is famous for its fine
brasses you know that it has many tombo
or graves in the floor thus decorated.
Many tourists have almost Cromweliian
appetite for brasses and go about from
minister to cathedral, spreading blank
paper over the brasses, rubbing the paper
thus spread vigorously with shoemakers
wax, and thus securing very good impress
sions Of the brass figure underneath.
When we came out of the church by
ili..-s-lsuiig aas-a--t'seiSes III ii,sss;est
park. called the Christ Church Meadows.
The walk over this lasd, dotted with great
oak and elm trees, is more than three
miles, and far away the soft grasses dip
down into the gentle waters Of the Thames.
At our right the expanse of fair, sweet
fields stretched far away; to the left the
great solemn pile of buildings of the col
lege, and here and there beyond the trees
we could see the shoulder Of some other
chapel or college blocking the way. Ok
ford seemed a mass of colleges, a cluster of
grim and stately buildings gray as an
oyster shell.
Magdalen College, or, as they pronounce
it, "Maudlen," in the High street, is the
most beautiful of all the colleges. 1t
stands at the end of the street on the
banks of the river, with gentle reaches of
soft grass, making beautiful margin be-
tween its mellow buildings and the spic-
and-span cobble paved greaS thoroughfare
of the town. 1t presents an irregular face
to the passerby; here a soft, gray wall,
with lot of pretty windows, here bat
Element, here charming old tower feeding
the ivy, here a pointed gateway or door
cutting a tunnel-like entrance through the
building and giving glimpse of the quad
rangles beyond Magdalen stands on the
side of the ancient Hospital of St. John
the Baptist place of rest and refresh
ment for pilgrims to the shrine of St.
Frideswide. You enter through small
Gothic door at the right of the huge gate
way, and find yourself in sunny court,
with the old mellow stone college clasping
you in its three great gray arms. On your
left is the chapel, in front and behind you
the college aud the ruins of some ancient
building, gate house, and in one corner
of the building is wooden pulpit fixed
like cowled balcony in the second story.
AT one time, on St. John the Baptists day,
this court would be dressed out with
boughs and grasses to represent a wilder
ness, and sermon would be preached from
this small pulpit, over which hang two or
three gargoyles whose hideous faces have
been beaten away by the winds and rains
and storms Of centuries From this court
you pass under doorway into the great
quadrangle, where the beautiful cloisters
are draped with ivy. Each side of this
hollow square is fully block long, and the
walk around it shows innumerable
entrances by dim and steep little flights of
worn stone steps to the apartments above.