<g>Music-schools</g>, says Davies, were built within the church. Great pains were taken with the pupils, who were instructed in the musical service of the altar.[153] Music, says Giraldus, was so prevalent in the middle age, that even _whistling_ became a fashion and amusement, from being asked for by an archbishop. In his own time, as Erasmus informs us, “they introduced into the church a certain elaborate theatrical species of music, accompanied with a tumultuous diversity of voices. All,” says he, “is full of trumpets, cornets, pipes, fiddles, and singing. We now come to church as to a playhouse; and for this purpose ample salaries are expended on organists, and societies of boys, whose whole time is wasted in learning to sing,--not to mention the great revenues which the church squanders away on the stipends of singing men, who are commonly great drunkards, buffoons, and chosen from the lowest of the people. These fooleries,” he adds, “are so agreeable to the monks, especially in England, that youths, boys, &c., every morning, sing to the organ, the Mass of the Virgin Mary, with the most harmonious modulations of voice; and the bishops are obliged to keep choirs of this sort in their families.” <g>Libraries.</g>--Mr. Nichols has made the following excellent remarks upon the library of Leicester Abbey:--From the catalogue it seems rather doubtful whether, in the library of this religious house, there might be any one complete collection of all the Holy Scriptures. Supposing _Biblie_, in the first article, to have included both the Old and the New Testaments, it was a tome defective and worn. The second consisted of each book of the Old Testament only; and the third contained the Gospels, without any mention of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Epistles, or of the Apocalypse. There is, however, a second mention of “_Actus Aplor’ gloss’_, _Apocalyps’ gloss’_, _Eple Pauli_ [but of no other apostle] _gloss’_, _Eple Canonice_;” and among the last occurs the “_Canticus Canticorum_.” Perhaps, he adds, there might be some of those Augustine monks, to whom the divine oracles in the learned languages would have been of little use; and yet to these was not indulged a translation in English, there being in the Consistorial Acts at Rochester, the minutes of a rigid process against the <g>Precentor</g> of the priory of that cathedral, for retaining an English Testament,[154] in disobedience to the general injunction of Cardinal Wolsey, to deliver up these prohibited books to the bishops of the respective dioceses.[155] It is worthy of remark, that Petrarch, as we learn from his “Memoires,” whenever he made a long journey, carried his books along with him upon extra horses, as carefully as others, passing through the Desert, carry their provisions of daily food.