Free Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay

black and white tower of San Domenico in the small piazza up the street, the more distant, but patronal, Santa Caterina along the sea road beyond the town, the church of the Collegio up the hill path, the chapel of the convent school, all with one accord awoke to Christmas morning and clanged their summons to Mass. They were insistent, commanding, almost menacing. English bells, sweetly and uncertainly tumbling as they chime, seem to sing,
Come along to church, good people if you please, come along to church on Christmas Day
. These bells cry,
Venite, venite, il Signore v’aspetta, levatevi pronto, pronto, e fate il dovere
.
    But to me they only shouted,
Christmas Day! Christmas Day!
    Soon the piazza and streets were alive with hurrying feet, and with such resonant cries as Italians emit even between bed and Mass.
    I crawled back under the bed-clothes and curled up to wait for Christmas Day. When it should be held to have fully arrived, we should all assemble on one bed and open the stockings. To me, lying in the clanging dark, forbidden to go and wake others before it was light, the propitious and blest day seemed half the night away. How foolishly the others slept, oblivious of the jubilant occasion!
    Full little thought they than
    That the mighty
Pan
    Was kindly come to live with them below;
    Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep
,
    Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep
.
    Whatever it was, and regardless of the bells, they slept like pigs in straw.

Church-Going
1.
Anglican
    How dignified, how stately, how elegant, with ranks of tapers wavering gold against a dim background, while boys’ voices lift the psalm
Audite hæc, omnes
high above the pealing organ to the high embowed roof, to linger and wander there among ten thousand cells. Through the windows richly dight, slant crimson, violet and deep blue rays of October evening sunshine; it touches the round heads and white surplices of little singing boys; it glints on the altar, dimming the tall, flickering flames, gleaming on the heads of thoughtful clergymen who listen to the quire’s chant.
For he shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth: neither shall his pomp follow him. For while he lived he counted himself an happy man: and so long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee. He shall follow the generation of his fathers: and shall never see light. Man being in honour hath no understanding: but is compared unto the beasts that perish. …
    The soft and melancholy chant dies on a falling lilt. The clergy, quire and people sit down in deep oak seats, all but the lector, who rustles to the lectern,adjusts his pince-nez, and says gently,
“Here begin-neth the first verse of the sixth chapter of the Book of Micah. Hear ye now what the Lord saith: Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. …”
    The musical Eton-and-Cambridge monotone, just not parsonically pitched, strolls on, relating the Lord’s controversy in the mountains with his people. I turn the pages of my Prayer Book, read the charming rubrics, read the Preface, of 1662, so gentlemanlike, so suavely urbane.
It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes. …
    And then, Of Ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained. …
And moreover, they be neither dark nor dumb ceremonies, but are so set forth, that every man may understand what they do mean, and to what use they do serve. … And in these our doings we condemn no other Nations, nor prescribe anything but to our own people only: For we think it convenient that every Country should use such Ceremonies as they shall think best to the setting forth of God’s honour and glory, and to the reducing of the people to a most perfect and godly living. …
    Meanwhile, the Eton-and-Cambridge voice is gently putting searching inquiries, becoming