IN THE EUROPEAN ATMOSPHERE-1853-1856 543 



disappointed and disgusted was I, then, to hear prayer 

 made in what seemed to me a sickly, unmanly whine. 



Although the feelings thus aroused by religious ob 

 servances in England and other parts of Europe were 

 frequently unedifying, there was one happy exception 

 to the rule. Both in the Church of England and in the 

 Roman Catholic churches of the Continent I always 

 greatly enjoyed the antiphonal chanting of the Psalter. 

 To me this has always been the imprecatory psalms ex- 

 cepted by far the noblest feature in Christian worship, 

 as worship; for, coming down as it does from the Jew 

 ish Church through the whole history of the Christian 

 Church, and being practised by all the great bodies of 

 Jews and Christians, it had, and still has, to me a great 

 significance, both religious and historic. In the cathe 

 drals of the continent of Europe and I have visited 

 every one of note except those of Spain I cared little 

 for what Browning s bishop calls &quot;the blessed mutter 

 of the mass,&quot; but the chanting of the Psalter always at 

 tracted me. Many were the hours during which I sat at 

 vespers in abbeys and cathedrals, listening to the Latin 

 psalms until they became almost as familiar to me as the 

 English Psalter. On the other hand, I was at times greatly 

 repelled by perfunctory performances of the service, 

 both Protestant and Catholic. The &quot;Te Deum&quot; which 

 I once heard recited by an Anglican clergyman in the 

 chapel at the castle of Homburg dwells in my memory 

 as one of the worst things of its kind I ever heard, and 

 especially there remains a vivid remembrance of the 

 invocation, which ran as follows : 



&quot;Ha-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-ow-ly: La-a-rd Gawd 

 of Sabbith!&quot; 



But this was not the only thing of the kind, for I have 

 heard utterances nearly, if not quite, as bad in various 

 English cathedrals, as bad, indeed, as the famous 

 reading, He that hath yeahs to yeah, let him yeah. 



As to more important religious influences, I had, dur 

 ing my first visit to Oxford in 1853, a chance to under- 



