A ceremony connected with Magdalen Tower seems likewise to have had its origin in this pious custom of remembrance of the dead. "On the 1st of May," says Anthony Wood, "the choral ministers of this house do, according to ancient custom, salute Flora from the top of the tower, at four in the morning, with vocal music of several parts." Of course, as a chronicler remarks, it was not to salute Flora that any Catholic choristers thus made vocal the sweet air of May. "The sweet music of Magdalen Tower," remarks the author of the Knights of St. John, "had a directly religious origin. On the 1st of May the society was wont annually to celebrate the obit or Requiem Mass of King Henry VII., who proved a generous benefactor to the College, and who is still commemorated as such upon that day. The requiem was not, indeed, celebrated _on the top of the tower_, as Mr. Chalmers, in his history of the university, affirms, in total ignorance that a _requiem_ is a Mass, and that a Mass must be said upon an altar; but it is probable that the choral service chanted on the 1st of May consisted originally of the _De Profundis_, or some other psalm, for the repose of Henry's soul, and as a special mark of gratitude." Some semblance of the old custom is still kept up, as ten pounds is still annually paid by the rectory of Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire, for the purpose of keeping up this ceremony. Such are a few brief glimpses of this belief in Purgatory, which was so dear to the hearts of Englishmen, in those centuries before the blight of heresy had fallen upon the Island of the Saints. These hints upon the subject are given very much at random, and will simply serve to show how prayer for the dead was a part of all Christian lives in those ages of faith. It was incorporated in the rules of every collegiate institute, and more especially those two most notable ones of Oxford and Cambridge. It entered into every man's calculations, and was provided for in every Will and Testament. Had it been in our power to go backwards, into a still more remote antiquity, it would have been our pleasant task to find this belief in suffrage for the dead taking so vigorous root in every heart. Do we not find the Venerable Bede, "the Father of English Learning," who was born in 673 and died in 734, asking that his name may be enrolled amongst the monks of the monastery founded by St. Aidan, in order that his soul after death might have a share in the Masses and prayers of that numerous community, as he tells us himself in his Preface to the Life of St. Cuthbert. "This pious anxiety," says Montalembert, "to assure himself of the help of prayer for his soul after death is apparent at every step in his letters. It imprints the last seal of humble and true Christianity on the character of the great philosopher, whose life was so full of interest, and whose last days have been revealed to us in minute detail by an eye-witness." [1] [Footnote 1: "Monks of the West," Vol v, p 89.]