Chaunters’ cathedral, he said, stood in the midst of a Close: there was the palace, there was the deanery, there were the houses of the four canons. Even the minor canons presumed to occupy modest dwellings or lodgings in the sacred precincts. There also was the devout centurion, Colonel A., and there the retired Admiral B. There, too, were godly matrons and still more godly spinsters, who revered the cathedral, adored either the bishop or the dean, associated with the canons’ families, and patronised the minor canons. The canons were appointed by the Crown. The King can do no wrong, but he may be misguided. One canon was the head of a college at Oxbridge; he “resided” at Sudchester in the Long Vacation. When October came, it brought with it the incumbent of a huge London parish, which he neglected till Christmas. Then came the archdeacon, who indeed never went away, for the Close was his home. The fourth was a voluble Irishman who had obliged his political party--Chaunters did not tell me which party--at a critical time, and had received his reward in the form of a canonry; though he was of opinion that a deanery would have been more fitting, and his wife criticised with some acerbity two recent appointments to the episcopal bench. The archdeacon, I have said, was a fixture; the others let their houses, when they were not in residence, and thus added a modest sum to their revenues. Two of them sided with the bishop, who was High; the others with the dean, who was Low. Chaunters was epigrammatic and symmetrical in his account. Just outside the Close, for the convenience of his music pupils, lived the organist, Dr. Pedler, whose Services--Pedler in C, and Pedler in E flat--are as well known as his anthems, “Oh my soul,” _Pedler_, and “Great and marvellous,” _Pedler_. He even wrote an oratorio, called Sennacherib. It was performed by the local Philharmonic Society, and Part I. was favourably received; but in Part II., when they came to the tenor and bass recitative (D minor) “And when they arose” (too-too) “early in the morning” (too-too) “behold” (burr-r-r) “they were all dead corp-ses” (vum-vum on the ’cellos), there was smothered laughter in the middle of the hall: and the really fine aria for the tenor, “For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast” was interrupted by guffaws from the back seats, where the humour of the recitative had more slowly penetrated. The dean, too, gave it to be understood that the blending of the Book of Kings with Lord Byron was hardly becoming in a cathedral official, and Sennacherib perished. “It was a pity, though,” said my host, “for that tenor air, sung by Sims Reeves with extraordinary power to a harp obbligato accompaniment, should have carried it through.” And the old gentleman sat down at the piano, and made as though he would play it; but he laughed sadly, and muttered, “No Sims Reeves, and no harp here,” and went on with his memories.