re brought
to an end, and the mechanical organ took their place. The very fact that
all these players took a keen interest in the conduct of Divine service
was in itself an advantage.

The barrel-organ killed the old musical life of the village. England was
once the most musical nation in Europe. Puritanism tried to kill music.
Organs were broken everywhere in the cathedrals and colleges, choirs
dispersed and musical publications ceased. The professional players on
violins, lutes, and flutes who had performed in the theatres or at Court
wandered away into the villages, taught the rustics how to play on their
beloved instruments in the taverns and ale-houses, and bequeathed their
fiddles and clarionets to their rustic friends. Thus the rural orchestra
had its birth, and right heartily did they perform not only in church,
but at village feasts and harvest homes, wakes and weddings. The parish
clerk was usually their leader, and was a welcome visitor in farm or
cottage or at the manor when he conducted his companions to sing the
Christmas carols.

The barrel-organ sealed the fate of the village orchestra. The old
fiddles were wanted no more, and were hung up in the cottages as relics
of the "good old times." For a time the clerk preserved his dignity and
continued to take his part in the music, turning the handle of
the organ.

Then the harmonium came, played by the school-mistress or some other
village performer. No wonder the clerk was indignant. His musical
autocracy had been overthrown. At one church--Swanscombe, Kent--when, in
1854, the change had taken place, and a kind lady, Miss F----, had
consented to play the new harmonium, the clerk, village cobbler and
leader of parish orchestra, gave out the hymn in his accustomed fashion,
and then, with consummate scorn, bellowed out, "Now, then, Miss F----,
strike up!"

It would have been a far wiser policy to have reformed the old village
orchestra, to have taught the rustic musicians to play better, than to
have silenced them for ever and substituted the "grinstun" instrument.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE CHOIR]

Archbishop Tait once said that there is no one who does not look back
with a kind of shame to the sort of sermons which were preached, the
sort of clergymen who preached them, the sort of building in which they
preached them, and the sort of psalmody with which the service was
ushered in. The late Mr. Beresford Hope thus describes the kind of
service that w