An Oxford college about the year 1860 instituted “Choral Scholarships,” with the view of attracting undergraduates, who should be able to take an intelligent part in rendering the choral services for which it was so famed; and the wag of the period unkindly described them as “_Vox et praeterea nihil_.” This is possibly true of some minor canons also, especially of those who are gifted with a tenor voice: for nature bestows this supreme gift with so sparing a hand that she can hardly be expected in every case to add wisdom. I cannot remember that I ever met a minor canon with a _basso profondo_. But baritones abound, and when they, or the tenors, retire to their country living, there is much lamentation in the Close. One such glorified minor canon I used to meet annually. The Reverend A. Chaunters had risen to the rank of precentor[27] in a southern city: let us call it Sudchester: then he had been offered the snug rectory of Q., and in that country parish he had spent many happy years. His cathedral days shared a fond place in his memory with his undergraduate days at Oxford. I think, if I may be allowed the vain thought, that it really pleased him to get me to lunch every autumn after his school inspection: and with coffee and tobacco to prolong the session till the October twilight warned me to go. It was my part to tell him year by year of the Cathedral services in the city in which I dwelt; of Services[28] by Stainer and Stanford; of anthems by Gounod, Stainer, and Martin; of the surpassing merits of the organist and choirmaster. He would respond with chronicles of Magdalen and of New in the ’forties and ’fifties; of Elvey and Corfe; and of the Musical Society in which he took an active part; and then of the much-loved cathedral, where he was precentor; of the wonderful tenor, and of the surpassing boy who sang Rossini’s “Inflammatus”--“with the C in alt, you know”--and Mendelssohn’s “Hear my Prayer.” He would fetch out old folios, worn at the edges and weak in the back; and looking lovingly through them, he would ask, did I know “I beheld and lo,” _Blow_; and “They that go down,” _Attwood_? Had I ever seriously studied Purcell? Ah-h. Then it was mine to tell him of changes in Oxford: of new buildings, even of new colleges: and it was his to bring up memories of (I forget what) college, where he matriculated before I was born. He was there at the time of the “Oxford Movement.” He had heard the sermon of Pusey which was condemned: he had sat under Keble: under John Henry Newman himself. He must have continued at Oxford as Chaplain of New, Magdalen, or Christ Church after he took his degree, for he remembered the day in 1845 when Bounder of Queen’s met him and said, “Have you heard that Newman has gone over at last, and a good job too?” That was John Bounder, who afterwards was Archdeacon of Nevermindwhere, &c., &c.