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Untitled Article
How could the patriots and philanthropists of Norwich tolerate these encroachments on the pleasures , which are the rights of the poor ? Even Mousehold is no more , which in my boyhood was such a glorious moor . The extent of Mousehold was to me the mystery of infinity ; I never could reach the end of it ; I did not know that it had an end ; and beyond it ?—imagination never
conceived the beyond of Mousehold . And there it is , cut up , hedged in , ' cabbined , cribbed , confined ; ' Kit ' s castle taken prisoner like Rob Roy , and guarded by a detachment of sentinel fir trees , and all the greatness and the glory of the scene made as paltry as the parchment which legalized the enclosure , banished the fairies , broke the spell , and turned the telescope the wrong end towards the object . I am not addicted to lamentations over the past , but at these changes I sigh forth a dolorous sic transit , and indeed I am myself made sick by such a transit . True , there is some compensation . Poor old Mousehold ' s wounded sides are picturesque in their scars and gashes ; and though the enclosures , like the private boxes of a theatre , have almost left no room for standing , miscalled standing room , ' yet as you pace the narrow ridge towards Thorpe you have glimpses of new created villas , full of prettiness for the living , and of that lovely resting place , the Rosary , for the dead . These for the residents ; and for them conjointly with ' all people that on earth do dwell' within a practicable travelling distance , there is the Festival . It is but triennial ; would that it were perennial .
Do not expect , reader , either a history of , or a critique upon , that which was held in the present year . I threaten you with no such infliction . You have probably had enough of both in the newspapers . I only mean to make a few reflections , according to my own Utilitarian notions of things . Previously , however , it may be mentioned that the best account , both historical and critical , which the writer has met with of the Norwich
Festival is in the Spectator newspaper for the 21 st September . It may there be seen how that St . Andrew ' s Hall , in which the Festival was held , is 134 feet long , 70 feet wide , and 63 feet high ; how that the band consisted of 375 persons , 25 G vocalists , and 119 instrumentalists ; how that the band and the Hall made the most of one another ' s ample capabilities ; with many facts and opinions thereunto appertaining .
It is a noble pile ^ this quondam church of St . Andrew ; stately gothic , with no fritter or fillagree about it ; no ceiling to hide ( he massy timbers of its roof , and no niches or projections to break its length , save only the two rows of clustered pillars ; the portraits of civic worthies which hang around the walls were mostly hidden by the temporary galleries which ran round three sides ; and the only conspicuous ornament , a very simple one , was over the orchestra ( which occupied the west end of the hall , ) the cross of St . Andrew formed by two colossal lances with which the sons of
Untitled Article
752 Reflections on the Norwich Musical Festival .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 752, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/20/
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