46 THE KEY. J. G. WOOD. 



and enthusiasm, and at once set himself to raise the 

 standard both of the music and of the actual service 

 itself. 



There was plenty of room for improvement in both. 

 In 1868 my father attended the festival, and was much 

 shocked to see the slovenly, and even irreverent, be- 

 haviour of those who, of all men, should have known 

 better. Walking up the centre of the choir of the 

 cathedral itself might be seen clergy, arrayed in full 

 canonicals, carrying an ordinary tall hat in one hand, 

 and with a gaily dressed lady on either arm. The alms 

 at the festival service itself, instead of being presented 

 at the altar, were deliberately and openly placed in 

 a hat, and so carried off to the Chapter House. And all 

 else was conducted on similar principles. 



The combined choirs, again, numbered but some four 

 hundred voices a meagre show from a diocese compre- 

 hending more than as many parishes. And, finally, the 

 festival service itself was of the most ordinary type ; 

 scarcely, in fact, superior to that which one may now 

 hear upon every day in the week in almost every 

 cathedral in England. 



All this my father set himself to reform ; but, of 

 course, he had to go to work carefully, and to do what 

 he wished to do by slow degrees. Cathedral corporations 

 are proverbially conservative and difficult to move ; and 

 argument, entreaty, sarcasm, invective, and bitter scorn 

 were all freely employed without bringing about very 

 much in the way of results. Perseverance and patience 

 did their work, however, and after a time one or 



