"Chancel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reveal the true Van Dyck touch, and are highly prized by the people of the village and the good priests of the church. Each night a priest carries in a cot and sleeps in the chancel to see that these priceless works of art are protected from harm. When you go there to see them, give the cowled attendant a franc and he will unfold the tale, not just as I have written it, but substantially. He will tell you that Van Dyck stopped here on his way ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... archway of St. Peter ad Vincula, and there Hal perceived a figure in a dark mantle just touched with gold, kneeling near the chancel step, almost crouching. Did he not know the attitude, though the back was broader than of old? He paused, as did his companions; but there was one who did not pause, and would not be left outside. Watch unseen had pattered up, and was rearing up, jumping ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its light—the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the former by the richly carved and fretted screen, which, however beautiful in itself, mars the grand effect of the whole) leading to the altar—we are old-fashioned people, and fear not to offend by this old-fashioned term—whose sacred garniture glows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... when Roger de Walden, Bishop of London (1405-1406), built a chantry-chapel to the north-east of the choir, and inserted a new clerestory, in the then fashionable style, in place of the original. He also made a considerable alteration in the chancel by substituting a square east-end for the circular apse, part of which was taken down and used as building material for the innovation. But de Walden's work was cut short by his death, when he had scarcely held the See of London for two years, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... above. Although only mid-afternoon, altar and chancel candles made a true vesper atmosphere, and the flickering wicks in the hanging lamps gave starlight. This is as it should be. The appeal of a ritualistic service is to the mystical in one's nature. Jewels and embroideries, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... died in 1667, at Hempsted-Marshall House, which he had himself designed, the seat of Lord Craven, and was buried in the chancel of the adjoining church. Portraits of Gerbier were painted by Dobson[2]—the picture was sold for L44 at the sale of Betterton the actor—and by Vandyke. The work by Vandyke also contained portraits of Gerbier's family, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... keep up Martin's-tide, vor I Shall keep it up till I do die. 'Twer Martinmas, and ouer feaeir, When Jeaene an' I, a happy peaeir, Vu'st walk'd, a-keepen up the tide, Among the stan'ens, zide by zide; An' thik day twel'month, never failen, She gi'ed me at the chancel railen A heart—though I do sound her praise— As true as ever beaet in stays. How vast the time do goo! Do seem ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... before. Once or twice the lad's life was in peril, as when his foot slipped on the top of the church, and he was unpleasantly suspended for some time between the rafters of the ceiling and the floor of the chancel. On another occasion he had a narrow escape from drowning. It seems that on the Yare are little boats out together very slightly, for the purpose of carrying a man, his gun, and dog over the shallows of Braydon, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... for the assistant chorister was ill. His voice was broken now, for he was old; but it seemed to Oyvind that it did the heart good to hear him. When the young man had given Marit his hand, and was leading her to the altar, the school-master nodded at him from the chancel, just as Oyvind had seen him do, in fancy, when sitting sorrowfully at that dance long ago. Oyvind nodded back while tears welled ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers," etc. (Elze's Life of Lord Byron, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... can't read much; but I can spell as well as some here and there. Doan't ye mind, sir, that blustrous night when ye asked me to hold the candle to ye in yer workshop, when you were making a new chair for the chancel?' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... burden unknown to the boys and girls of this Canada of ours. No, not grand and old and magnificent, but still to these two sacred and hallowed because it was God's House and theirs. They knelt on the chancel step—the old woman and the little boy. There they knelt and prayed—ay, prayed for the mother and the daughter now dead and gone; "for all who are any way afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate"; and for one so ...
— Irish Ned - The Winnipeg Newsy • Samuel Fea
... royal priesthood, a holy race, ye are a peculiar people chosen into the lot of God, ye are priests and ministers of God, nay, ye are called the very Church of God, as though the laity were not to be called churchmen. Ye, being preferred to the laity, sing psalms and hymns in the chancel, and, serving the altar and living by the altar, make the true body of Christ, wherein God Himself has honoured you not only above the laity, but even a little higher than the angels. For to whom of His ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... family regularly each Sunday morning. He walked down the aisle in his uniform in the most dignified manner, and led the congregation in the responses in an audible voice. By the plan an organ and choir are shown in the gallery as well as one in the chancel, but the dates 1859 and 1862 explain that in 1862 there was a new organ, and the old one removed, and the gallery done away with. It was in this gallery my services commenced as organ blower, and the only one I can now remember as singing in the choir at that early date was John Butts, a young man ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... the two rival inns, which are very primitive in their arrangement, the entrance hall forming the kitchen, as in many old Breton houses. A second frowning old gateway leads to the single street, which, passing between two rows of antique gabled houses, and under the chancel of the little parish church, conducts one to the almost interminable flight of stone steps leading to the gateway of the monastery. Upon ringing the bell a polite lay brother opens the iron-studded door, and we are admitted into a solemn, vaulted hall, with another stone ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... leaden box, and placed it in her tomb "with great devotion;" and in 1715, Dr. Rawlinson told Hearne the antiquary, that he had seen it there "inclosed in an iron grate." This was fully confirmed in 1835, when the chancel of the church being repaired, the Roper vault was opened, and several persons descended into it, and saw the skull in a leaden box, something like a bee-hive, open in the front, and which was placed in a square recess, in the wall, with an iron-grating ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... radiated, the town was constantly stretching out fresh arms along country roads, all living and working, and gradually absorbing the open spaces between. One of these arms was known as St. Ambrose's Road, in right of the church, an incomplete structure in yellow brick, consisting of a handsome chancel, the stump of a tower, and one aisle just weather-tight and usable, but, by its very aspect, begging for the completion of the beautiful design that was suspended above ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Berlin branch of the great European banking firm of Levison, had come over to act the part of father to his orphan niece, and stood near the chancel to ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... enclosure of the altar, the priest in his white stole, and the choir boys in their snowy surplices. The waxen candles looked like stars against the white hangings of the chancel; and above the altar, a sweet-faced Madonna looked down with sad eyes upon the man and woman kneeling before her. Through the parti-colored windows, crossed with broad bands of red, the branches of the lindens swayed in the wind, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the chancel in plain view, after the procession of choir-boys had taken their seats. He was an elderly man with thin cheeks and a large nose. He had one of those great, orotund voices that occasionally roll out of little men, and he read the service with a misjudged ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... first, divided, and disappeared successfully in the shadows, on either side of the chancel steps. A long wait and then Marie Penney followed, walking alone, as maid of honour; she had insisted upon having plenty of room, as she said so few people walked well that they spoiled her gait. Next came the six bridesmaids on a gallop, then Papa Penney and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... hunted animal will sometimes seek shelter from imminent danger in the human habitation, or in other places of refuge most alien to its nature and habits. Not even the sound of the organ, and of one or two flutes which accompanied the psalmody, prevented her from following her guide into the chancel of the church. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... For each saint's day, also, they have them ready for the generations yet unborn to say. They can tell you, also, when you shall kneel, when you shall stand, when you should abide in your seats, when you should go up into the chancel, and what you should do when you come there. All which the apostles came short of, as not being able to compose so profound a manner; and that for this reason included in this scripture, because the fear of God tied them to pray ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said that he had been sent by the Bishop to ask if I cared to witness the lying-in-state from some private vantage-ground. I went to the cathedral, and the Bishop himself escorted me to the organ-loft, whence I could see the silent crowds move slowly in pairs past Alresca's bier, which lay in the chancel. It was an impressive sight, and one which I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... sacristan in the church, for it was the hour of matins, and between them they set what we had brought in the ambry which was built in the chancel wall. I do not know if Selred told the man why they were to be kept there. Then came Offa's two chaplains, and the bell rang for the service; and it was good to kneel and take part therein, while outside the quiet church the noise of the great palace went on unceasingly, as the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young Mont's face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a bland and holy morn, Like one, on very purpose, born, A gray godmother stood, Before the chancel's sacred place, With Frankie's sweet and artless grace, And heard the preacher good. And as the bright baptism fell, Upon her fallen tresses well, And o'er her bosom's chastened swell, The beauteous maiden smiled: She looked a wingless cherub then— My inmost spirit fluttered, when I said, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... up the aisles, just lit by the trembling priests, who had come in by ones and twos to find out what all the uproar was about. But the English pressed on, undeterred by their presence, and, moving up the long chancel, reached the altar. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Anson, its present head, showed me, begun at last doing good work after four hundred years of uselessness. In the chapel was shown me the restored reredos, which was of great size, extending from floor to ceiling, taking the place of the chancel window usual in churches, and made up of niches filled with statues of saints. As the heads of all the earlier statues had been knocked off during the fanatical period, there had been substituted, during the recent restoration, new statues of saints ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the little church in the afternoon was crowded in every corner. The older women—their heads covered with dark-coloured handkerchiefs, occupied the left side of the aisle, the men crowded in on the right and at the back under the organ loft. Round about the chancel rail and steps the bevy of girls in gayest Sunday dresses looked like a garden of giant animated flowers. When the sexton went the round with the collecting-bag tied to the end of a long pole, he had the greatest difficulty in making his way through the maze of many-hued petticoats ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... story, an octagonal tower, and spire. The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly any chancel, wide galleries on three sides standing on piers, from which columns rise to the elliptical ceiling. The part of the roof over the galleries is bayed at right angles to the curve of the central part. Monuments hang on the walls and columns, and occupy every available space. By far the most striking ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... wavering—had not leisure at present! The necessity of forswearing the practise of head-taking deters the old men from becoming Christians: they fear to lose influence with their tribe. The little party then fixed upon the spot where the church should be built, a permanent bilian chancel to which a nave could be added when the additional room was required. Twenty-five pounds from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was all the money then in hand to begin with; but very soon more was collected, and when I visited Banting ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... of the church remaining. About 1680, more than a century after the Reformation, the great tower fell, destroying the choir, chancel, and transept, which have never been rebuilt. May the reviving faith of the nation in its own history, and God at the heart of it, lead to the restoration of this grand old monument of the belief of their fathers. Deformed as the interior then was with galleries, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the roof don't hold it off it 'ull spoil the Lord's Commandments that's just done up on the chancel front." ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... memorial of this myth, for Mr. Baring-Gould tells us that "there is an ancient pictorial representation of our friend the Sabbath-breaker in Gyffyn Church, near Conway. The roof of the chancel is divided into compartments, in four of which are the evangelistic symbols, rudely, yet effectively painted. Besides these symbols is delineated in each compartment an orb of heaven. The sun, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... then that Burton saw, though he says now he didn't. He won't own up to having seen him. We had hidden ourselves behind the mourners in the chancel and he swears that he didn't see anybody but Antigone, and that he only saw her because, in spite of her efforts to hide too, she stood out so; she was so tall, so white and golden. Her head was bowed with—well, with grief, I think, but also with what I've no doubt ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... 53d year of his age, and was bury'd on the north side of the chancel, in the great church at Stratford, where a monument, as engrav'd in the plate, is plac'd in the wall. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into the curate's pew before any one else arrived there. But he was still left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate's pew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... priory at night and visiting drinking houses and other places; but, such was the sum of his wickedness, he did not scruple to question and make mock of the very doctrines of the Church, alleging even that there was nothing sacred in the image of the Virgin Mary which stood in the chancel, and shut its eyes in prayer before all the congregation when the priest elevated the Host. 'Therefore,' said the prior, 'I pray you take back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than that which runs through the gates ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... site of what was known as Queen's Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by fire December 24, 1806. The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline, who furnished the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two solid mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John's. Within the chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in 1758, and presented to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The peculiarly sweet-toned bell which calls the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... grand old fane To hear the Vesper prayer Rise, with the organ's solemn strain, On incense-laden air; While the last dying smiles of day Athwart the stained glass pour— Flooding with red and golden ray The shrine and chancel floor. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... of the Mission, a great oblong of white-washed adobe with a flat ceiling, was lighted dimly by the sanctuary lamp that hung from three long chains just over the chancel rail at the far end of the church, and by two or three cheap kerosene lamps in brackets of imitation bronze. All around the walls was the inevitable series of pictures representing the Stations of the Cross. They were of a hideous crudity of design and composition, yet were ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a notice of a Mr. Richard Hoby, youngest brother of Sir Philip, as churchwarden in 1602, and a monument, much dilapidated, is to be seen in the chancel of Badsey Church, erected to the memory of his wife and that of her first husband by Margaret Newman, their daughter, who married Richard Delabere of Southam, Warwickshire, in 1608. Aldington afterwards became the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... general effect, after various improvements, is, to say the least, pleasing, and it has its interesting features. The plan of the church (he says) is normal; it consists of nave, with north and south aisles; chancel, with south aisle and north chantry, the modern vestry being eastward of this; a plain low tower, crowned with wooden spirelet and covered with lead. Taking these in detail: the tower has two lancet windows in the lower part of the west wall, above these a small ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... relatives, the Queen felt able to accept this legacy; but she first increased the legacies to the executors from L100 to L1000 each, made provision for Mr Neild's servants and others who had claims on him, restored the chancel of North Marston Church, Bucks, where he was buried, and inserted a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... like a tomb My little parlour sounds which only now Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice. So still! so empty! Surely one might fear The walls should meet in ruinous collapse That held no more his music. Yet they stand Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built But never came to sleep in; built, ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... autumn of 1862: "An indefinable feeling of gloom was thrown over a most auspicious event when the bride's youngest sister glided through a side door just before the processional. Tottering to a chancel pew, she threw herself upon the cushions, her slight frame racked with sobs. Scarcely a year before, the wedding march had been played for her, and a joyous throng saw her wedded to gallant Breck Parkman. Before another twelvemonth rolled around the groom was killed ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... convinced, from painful experience, that to die is gain. It was then I perceived that my uncle had contracted a sort of post-mortem hydrophobia. He fixed upon a church, on the top of a hill, and ordered a vault to be dug, at a great expense, out of the solid chalk, under the chancel of the church. There it would not only be dry below, but even defended from the rain above. It was finished— and (the last moisture to which she was ever to be subjected) the tears of affection were shed over her ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Constance.—"Hitherto [A.D. 1428] the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till his body was reduced to bones, and his bones almost to dust. For though the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the rectory on their way home. It was a large red brick house, taller almost than the church, which was a very old church, credibly dating from the thirteenth century, with a Norman arch to the chancel, which tourists came to see. The rectory was of the days of Anne, three stories high, with many twinkling windows in framework of white, and a great deal of ivy and some livelier climbing plants covering the walls, with the old mellow red bricks looking through ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... plainly-furnished chapel, where, in a silver dove, the only silver about the church, the reserved sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ was always kept for the sick in case of need. It hung from the beams of the chancel, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... appeared in the chancel, that Mrs. Morris was in her accustomed place, and Ruth and her father in theirs, and that Leonard was not yet reported back nor looked for; but exactly as he began to read, "'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... mass ended the old woman in the white cap coughed gently, the cure closed his book, stepped from the chancel, patted the child's head in passing, strode rapidly to the sacristy, and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... religion will reveal its truth as regards the soul of a belief. We recognize the fact outwardly in the buildings erected to celebrate its worship. Not among the Jews alone was the holy of holies kept veiled, to temper the divine radiance to man's benighted understanding. Nor is the chancel-rail of Christianity the sole survivor of the more exclusive barriers of olden times, even in the Western world. In the Far East, where difficulty of access is deemed indispensable to dignity, the material approaches are still ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Roscelin. The original building had the simple nave with its apse beyond, that we shall see on the other side of the town of St. Julien. There is a further disappointment in store when you find the incongruous windows inserted in the chancel and the aisles that were added later on to the original nave. To understand what has happened you must go to the outside of the east end, and there you will see how the old round Norman apse was cut ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... water as though it were sunlight and the daytime, giving a spectral look to the endless array of poplar trees on the banks, glittering on the foam of the rapids. The spangling stars made the arch of the sky like some gorgeous chancel in a cathedral as vast as life and time. Like the day which was ended, in which the mountain-girl had found a taste of Eden, it seemed too sacred for mortal strife. Now and again there came the note of a night-bird, the croak of a frog from the shore; but the serene stillness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was closing, and a ray of sunshine, slanting through a slit in the chapel wall, brought out the vision of a pale haloed head floating against the dusky background of the chancel like a water-lily on its leaf. The face was that of the saint of Assisi—a sunken ravaged countenance, lit with an ecstasy of suffering that seemed not so much to reflect the anguish of the Christ at whose feet the saint knelt, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... them long in suspense. He soon entered, dressed in his surplice, and took his place within the chancel. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... three brothers, was king last. His end was no better than that of the rest. Indeed, it was worse. Hardly yet forty years old, he died—poisoned, it was said, by the Abbot Arnfast, in the sacrament as he knelt at the altar-rail in the Ribe cathedral. He was buried in the chancel where the penitents going to the altar walk over his grave. So, of all Valdemar's four sons, not one died a peaceful, natural death. But kings they ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... at Saatzig Cathedral, for she was to be buried in this new church just finished by his Grace Duke Johann, and but one corpse had been laid in the vaults before her. [Footnote: The beautifully painted escutcheon of Duke Johann and his wife, Erdmuth of Brandenburg, is still to be seen on the chancel windows of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... know a man who says, rolling the whites of his eyes and clasping his palms together as if he were always saying his prayers, like the figures on that old fellow's tomb in the chancel—he says he was elected to salvation from all eternity, and cannot possibly be lost: and he is the biggest swearer and drinker in the parish. What say you to that? Am I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonesse about their Lord, King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... church, with some alteration, until 1891, when, at the time the chancel was built, it was unfortunately thrown out and not replaced. In 1910 the remnants of the old screen were reconstructed to fit the two archways that open into the church on either side of the chancel, and the panels of the original work ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... species of amusement that we had hitherto enjoyed. A consultation was held, and it was agreed, in order to be revenged upon the churchwardens, that we would all meet, in the dusk of the evening, or rather as soon as it was dark, and that every one should throw a stone into the chancel window. When the time arrived, this was religiously performed; and I believe myself and some half dozen more remained, while the rest were scampering off, and had a second throw, although the first did ample execution, and made a tremendous crash, particularly at that still ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the chapel were profusely ornamented with the richest carving; and the oaken panels of the chancel, were adorned with those exquisite festoons of fruit and flowers, so peculiarly English. The very ceiling exacted admiration. It closed no lantern—it obstructed no view—and its light ribs, springing from voluted corbels, bore ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... from Winchester to Lisford Church, where Percival Dunbar was buried in a vault beneath the chancel. The murdered man's coffin was placed beside that of his father, and a simple marble tablet recording the untimely death of Henry Dunbar, cruelly and treacherously assassinated in a grove near Winchester, was erected by order of Lady Jocelyn, who was abroad with ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... more—now! Do keep step, Pa! There, drop my trail, Jane!—is it straight? I hope I look timid, and shrinking! The church must be perfectly full— Good gracious, please don't walk so fast, Pa! He don't seem to think that trains pull. The chancel at last—mind the step, Pa!— I don't feel embarrassed at all— But, my! What's the minister saying? Oh, I know, that part 'bout Saint Paul. I hope my position is graceful— How awkwardly Nelly Dane stood! "Not lawfully be joined together, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... those melancholy beings to whom the name of home was a mockery. I ran on at my utmost speed until I found myself I knew not how, close to Westminster Abbey, and was attracted by the deep and swelling tone of the organ. I entered with soothing awe the lighted chancel, and listened to the solemn religious chaunt, which spoke peace and hope to the unhappy. The notes, freighted with man's dearest prayers, re-echoed through the dim aisles, and the bleeding of the soul's wounds was staunched by heavenly balm. In spite of the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the tower stood the vane, A black yew gloomed the stagnant air; I peered athwart the chancel pane, And saw the altar cold and bare. A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; "Cold altar, heaven and earth shall meet Before you ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... recognise, because of the peculiar lines of drawing with which we are already familiar in the illuminated manuscripts. In the Saxon chapel at Bradford-on-Avon there are two angels, of life size, or larger, carved in relief on stone. They appear in the wall high above the chancel arch, towards the nave; and it is supposed from the distance between them, and from their facing one another, that there was once a holy rood placed between them, towards which ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... tones down the appearance of newness and gives to the masonry of 1869 a suggestion of the glamour of the Middle Ages. Fortunately, some of the stalls with their "miserere" seats were preserved when the former chapel was taken down, and these, with an Early English piscina, are now in the chancel of the modern building. The Tudor Gothic altar tomb of one of Lady Margaret's executors—Hugh Ashton, Archdeacon of York—has ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... look; And never to tell where it was hid, Save at his Chief of Branksome's need: And when that need was past and o'er, Again the volume to restore. I buried him on St. Michael's night, When the bell toll'd one, and the moon was bright, And I dug his chamber among the dead, When the floor of the chancel was stained red, That his patron's cross might over him wave, And scare the fiends from ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... left the chapel, he paused on the steps which led to its Gothic chancel. "Gentlemen and friends," he said, "you have this day done no common duty to the body of your deceased kinsman. The rites of due observance, which, in other countries, are allowed as the due of the meanest Christian, would ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... of bards, and I mentioned to him Gruffydd Hiraethog, the old poet buried in the chancel of Llangollen church. The old clerk was not aware that he was buried there, and said that though he had heard of him he knew little or nothing ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... eight, but long before that hour St. Luke's was filled to overflowing, some coming even as early as six to secure seats most favorable to sight. And there they waited, until the roll of wheels was heard and the clergyman appeared in the chancel. Then seven hundred tired heads turned simultaneously toward the door through which the party came, the rich robes of the bride trailing upon the carpet and sweeping from side to side as she moved up the middle aisle. But not upon her did a single eye in all that ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Truesdale, decorated with a daring and wanton orchid, followed Paston out into the middle of the chancel of a crowded and buzzing church; when his father, despite his failing powers and an innate repugnance to the conscious dramatization involved in the ceremonial side of life, led Rosamond up a long aisle with the tremulous embarrassment ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... of those Dumfries girls! It was sickening, and I came near to flying before the close of the service. The others had the same sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not meet with some dreadful humiliation before he got the collection back into the chancel. It was a terrible strain on us, and his horrid unconsciousness that he was anything but perfect, and that the rest of us were anything more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was aggravating ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... accompanied by his wife, the stateliest matron in the country-side, and some three or four children, boys and girls together, as healthy as they are handsome. After a glance at a certain grave that lies near to the chancel door, they walk homewards across the budding park in the sweet spring afternoon, till, a hundred yards or more from the door of Outram Hall, they pause at the gates of a dwelling known as "The Kraal," shaped like a beehive, fashioned of straw ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... each other on opposite sides of the chancel were unoccupied, save by a tall young woman and a little girl, who now hurriedly took their places, and in a formal, perfunctory manner put down their heads for a supposed private prayer for a blessing on this opportunity of public worship. They very soon rose up ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... the 1st of May, 1607, there knelt at the chancel of the old church of St. Ethelburge, in Bishopsgate street, London, to receive the sacrament, a man of noble and commanding presence, with a broad intellectual forehead, short, close hair, and a countenance full of the dignity and courtly bearing of an honorable gentleman. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... at her feet; and when she stepped through the chancel door on the church pavement, it seemed to her as if the old figures on the tombs, those portraits of old preachers and preachers' wives, with stiff ruffs, and long black dresses, fixed their eyes ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Sunday-school festival, and after giving the children an unlimited supply of cake, strawberries, and lemonade, we amused them with some tableaux. Taking possession of a disused old church, we made an impromptu stage; by laying boards across the chancel railings; and the effect was so good, that some play-loving people enlarged on our idea by putting up rough side-scenes, and giving a series of entertainments there during the following winter, with the average amount ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... rein to his fancy a vision at one moment of the old ivy-covered church and the quiet graveyard, the evening sun streaming through the rich stained glass, the organ faintly heard through the long aisles and the deep chancel, and around and about the singing of some bird of late hours, and the hum of the bee as he flew by, well laden, to his ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... to the empress Judith, whose husband, Louis le Debonnaire, caused the remains of our saint to be translated into this new church, in 833, and from this treasure it is more frequently called the church of St. Bathlides, than our Lady's. Two rich silver shrines are placed over the iron rails of the chancel, in one of which rest the sacred remains of St. Bathildes, in the other those of St. Bertilla, first abbess of Chelles: these rails, which are of admirable workmanship, were the present of an illustrious princess of the house of Bourbon, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... intolerable nuisance by this time, and he made a vigorous effort to get rid of it by giving his mind to what was going on around him, and interesting himself in the people as they entered and took their places in stall and choir, and canon's pew, chancel and transept. Being Saturday, there was a good attendance even at this early service. Strangers from a distance came in to see the cathedral, and people in the place came in to see the strangers; so that there was plenty to observe, especially ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... plainness was not the barrenness of a non-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze lamp attached to one of the pillars scarcely dispelled the obscurity, but cast an unnatural light upon the gigantic crucifix that hung from a beam in front of the chancel. There were half a dozen rows of backless benches in the centre of the chapel. The bronze lamp, and the candles always burning upon the altar, rather accented than dissipated the heavy shadows in the vaulted roof. At no hour was it empty, but at morning prayer and at vespers ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shower of rain as he returned home from a friend's house, where he had been passing the evening. He therefore crossed, as quickly as his corpulence would allow, the deserted little square called "The Cloister," which lies directly behind the chancel of the cathedral ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... curtains; in counting, also, the number of small tassels between them, and from the data thus obtained, in calculating how many tassels there must be on all the curtains to the pulpit, and how many on the curtains behind the rail to the chancel. Mr. Greenhithe, therefore, had but little comfort ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... were the odes and philippics of M. La Grange, written in 1720, and published in Paris in 1795, in-12, with the title Les Philippiques, Odes, par M. de la Grange-Chancel, Seigneur d'Antoniat en Perigord, avec notes historiques, critiques, et litteraires. In these poems he attacked with malignant fury the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, and was obliged to fly for safety to Avignon. There he was betrayed by a false friend, who persuaded ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... it would be improper for her to kneel down on the decorated cushions around the chancel. She folded her hands and knelt outside of the choir on the bare stone floor. But what more was she to do or say now? Of what use was it all? Where ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cold white panes in place of that stained glass of gorgeous hue, which led the wondering gaze of our fathers to roam uncertain 'twixt the rose-window of the great door and the ogives of the chancel? And what would a precentor of the sixteenth century say if he could see the fine coat of yellow wash with which our Vandal archbishops have smeared their cathedral? He would remember that this was the color with which the executioner formerly painted those buildings judged "infamous;" he ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... death-bell—that solemn and oracular memento—announced that a funeral was on the eve of taking place. The funeral halted at the entrance gate, where the coffin was taken from the hearse, and and thence borne into the chancel. This ceremony concluded, the procession again set forth towards the home appointed for the departed in a remote quarter of the church-yard. And now the interest began in reality to deepen. As the necessary preparations were making for lowering the coffin into earth, the mourners—even ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... submissively, to his look as well as his words, and they knelt down together in the chancel. Mr. Masters prayed, not very long, but a prayer full of the sweetness and the confidence and the strength, of a child of God who is at home in his Father's presence; full of tenderness and sympathy for her. Diana's mind went through a series ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... donning his surplice, Dr. Upround revolved these things with gentle indignation, quickened, as soon as he found himself in white, by clerical and theological zeal. These feelings impelled him to produce a creaking of the heavy vestry door, a well-known signal for his daughter to slip out of the chancel pew and come ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Year's Eve, and my heart was heavy, so also was my husband's. For 'Verily our house had been left unto us desolate.' Our son Hilary had died in France, and our daughter, Grace, slept in the chancel of the parish church with dusty banners once borne by heroic Medlicotts waving over her marble tomb. 'Would God, that I had died for thee, my boy,' said dead Hilary's father when he looked at the empty chair in the chimney corner; 'and, my darling, life is savourless without thee,' I cried in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... near the entrance into the chancel of the church. According to village tradition, this rare relic was found on some of the neighbouring hills. It is curiously ornamented with symbolic devices in bold relief. "It has suffered dilapidation from the culpable neglect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... executed, the latter replying and reporting from time to time that progress is being made on the work to be performed, or that the missing objects will be soon supplied. Accordingly, at the archdeacon of Canterbury's visitation in 1595, we find the wardens of St. John in Thanet (Margate) reporting: "The chancel[46] is out of repairs, for the repairing whereof some things are provided."[47] Two years later they state to the court: "For repairing of the churchyard we desire a day."[48] At the same visitation the wardens of St. Lawrence ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... the parishioners, who had no right to enter the monastic church. This Church of St. Andrew opened into the north aisle of the Abbey Church, being separated from it by an arcade of four arches. It had a nave with aisle and chancel. Its total length was about 140 feet, its width about 61 feet. It is conjectured that the north-western tower was converted into a kind of antechapel or entrance porch for the Church of St. Andrew. There was a door leading from the aisle of the Abbey Church into ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,—and the friend to whom "In Memoriam" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Exodus, glossed, but old and of little value.[1] Possibly some books remained in the church even after an independent library was founded, for as late as 1414 a copy of Nicholas de Lyra was chained in the chancel for public use, where it was inspected by the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... or rather spell aloud, with equal eagerness and solemnity. He had refreshed his memory so well as to remember the whole, when the doctor, returning with his companions, gave him to understand that he had procured the key of the chancel, where he might watch his armour as well as in the body of the church; and that he was ready to conduct him to the spot. Crowe was not now quite so forward as he had appeared before, to achieve this adventure. He began to start objections ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... to be conducted to the north gallery, from which the whole choir of the church can be seen. There, in the midst of the darkness of this vast church, only illuminated by the pale light of the lamp from the chancel, I saw her near the grating on her knees, her hands joined, and praying with fervor. I also knelt, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... head to gaze at the chancel, so his vow should there be recorded. He tried to look at the chancel, but failed to see ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... drear. Scarce images of life, one here, one there, Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave Or word, or look, or action of despair. 40 Creues was one; his ponderous iron mace Lay by him, and a shatter'd ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... had further beautified the place with a huge board of the royal arms, and with Moses and Aaron in white cauliflower wigs presiding over the tables of the Commandments. Four long dark, timber pews and numerous benches, ruthlessly constructed out of old carvings, occupied the aisle, and the chancel was more than half filled with the lofty "closet" of the Great House family. Hither the Delavie family betook themselves, and on her way Betty was startled by the recognition, in the seat reserved for the servants, of a broad ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strife and tumult of angry contention, Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Aisle. From this Chapel a door in the wall opened on to a path that led straight over the drawbridge across the moat to the Manor House. It must have been interesting for all the village children to watch for the opening and shutting of that door. But up in the chancel there was, and still is, something even more interesting: the big tomb that a certain Mistress Jocosa or Joyce Purefoy had put up to the memory of her husband, who had died in the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... 1380, from which time to the beginning of the present century there has been a succession of eminent musicians as organists and musical directors. There were two organs in this church, standing in galleries on opposite sides of the chancel. This circumstance had an important influence on the development of music in the cathedral, as will hereafter be seen. It was in this church, according to Italian tradition, that pedals were first applied to the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had participated ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. She pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony-carriage drove up in which, as Thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform the short journey. Then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel and kneel; and the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... waters. St. Romain demolished the temple, and dispersed the sinners. Farin, in his History of Rouen[64], says, that the church was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt by the Norman Dukes, to some of whom, the chancel, which is now standing, probably owes its existence. The nave is evidently of much more modern construction: it is thrice the width of the other part, from which it is separated by a circular arch. The eastern ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... John Deane, Captain RN, and of Elizabeth his wife, is to be seen on a little green promontory above the sparkling Trent and near the chancel of the parish church, where sweet strains of music, accompanying the sound of human voices and the murmurs of the river, are wont to mingle in harmonious hymns of prayer and praise. A more fitting spot in which to await in readiness ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... those in the room." On November 12th, "all his learned and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities die, but ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... into the Lohengrin march and Edward, with Tom for his best man, appeared at the chancel, Gertrude came down the aisle from the other end of the church. She wore a simple white trailing dress of soft silk, clasped at the breast with the ancient brilliant-framed miniature of another Gertrude Merriam. A pearl ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... was the convoy when at last the exhausted lady was helped over the stone stile that led to the churchyard. Highly picturesque was the grey structure outside, but within modernism had not done much; the chancel was feebly fitted after the ideas of the "fifties," but the faded woodwork of the nave was intact, and Magdalen still had to sit in the grim pew of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... upon his hands he left his luggage at the cloak-room, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest church. Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones and looked in at the chancel window, dreaming of something that was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of the coming month. He turned away and ascended the Hoe, viewed the magnificent stretch of sea and massive promontories of land, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... vast edifices" and the Protestant worship, which might as well be carried on in a barn or conventicle or square meeting-house. Hence, the nave has been blocked up with pews, the choir or transept partitioned off to serve as a parish church, roodloft and chancel screen removed, the altar displaced by a table, and the sedilia scattered about in odd corners. The contrast between old and new is strikingly presented, by way of object lessons, in a series of plates, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass, and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another part of my story. Now I have to do ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... altar and entrance were reversed; and, in several of the early basilicas at Rome, a space near the entrance of the nave was screened off, from which penitents and catechumens might watch the service. But, in the first instance, the eastern chancel and the structural narthex appear to have been introduced from the eastern empire. Neither at Ravenna nor at Rome did bell-towers originally form part of the plan of the basilica: the round campanili of both churches at Ravenna are certainly ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... the dying flame of day Through the chancel shot its ray, Far the glimmering tapers shed Faint light on the cowled head; And the censer burning swung Where, before the altar, hung The crimson banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Sung low in the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Miss Anthony found time to give one sitting for a large oil portrait by William Keith, which was completed after her death in the spring of 1906 and looked down upon the audience from the chancel of the Unitarian church in San Francisco at the memorial services for her on Palm Sunday, April 8. It was shipped to her home in Rochester, N. Y., the day before the earthquake of April 18, but it escaped destruction by fire only to meet with mishap after the death ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various |
