he could have found for his
mingled regret, yearning, and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries
for help, with outbursts of faith and praise - its recurrent responses and the
familiar rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of
worship could have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from
their childhood upward in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have
seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the street.
The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle
relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathising
observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odours.
    But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the
service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village nooks in
the kingdom - a reason, of which I am sure you have not the slightest suspicion.
It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann. Where that good shoemaker got his
notion of reading from, remained a mystery even to his most intimate
acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it chiefly from Nature, who had
poured some of her music into this honest conceited soul, as she had been known
to do into other narrow souls before his. She had given him, at least, a fine
bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone
had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the
responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence,
subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the
lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its
strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the wind among the autumn
boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking about the reading of a
parish-clerk - a man in rusty spectacles, with stubbly hair, a large occiput,
and a prominent crown. But that is Nature's way: she will allow a gentleman of
splendid physiognomy and poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and
not give him the slightest hint of it; and takes care that some narrow-browed
fellow, trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house, shall be as true to his
intervals as a bird.
    Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and it was
always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from the desk to the
choir. Still more to-day: it