lightened every labor, and even took away from disappointment the power to vex him. Thus his soul was expanded into more colossal dimensions, his being, as it were, spread out and extended. There was more of existence in a day of his life than there would be in centuries of some men's living. His influence, his voluntary influence to do good, being thus extended, he lived with a sort of ubiquity, wherever that influence was felt,-happy in the consciousness of living to good purpose. And for all this he was none the less happy-he was far more happy-in his family, and in all the relations of private and personal friendship. The way to en joy home with the highest zest, the way to have the fireside bright with the most quiet, heartfelt happiness, is to be active even to weariness, and to come home for refreshment and repose. The way to give new vigor and delight to all the pulses of domestic love and private friendship, is to enlarge the soul and prove it kindred to higher orders of existence by the culture of large and generous affections." THE NEW YORK P ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1899. A HYMN AND ITS AUTHOR AUGUSTUS L. HILLHOUSE. From the Advance Sheets of the "New Englander" for August, 1860. SEVERAL of the more recent hymn-books contain a hymn which they refer to "Hillhouse" as its author. The reference is in one sense correct; and yet, as understood by readers generally, and by most of the compilers copying one from another in succession, it is erroneous. The entire hymn was first published in the Christian Spectator, at New Haven, April, 1822. It is as follows: "1. Trembling before thine awful throne, Contend!-0! smile and heal the strife. "2. The Saviour smiles! upon my soul "3. Earth has a joy unknown in heaven- "4. Ye saw of old, on chaos rise The beauteous pillars of the skies: 5. Bright heralds of th' Eternal Will, "6. Loud is the song-the heavenly plain "7. But I amid your quires shall shine, And all your knowledge shall be mine: A secret chord that mine will bear." A portion of this exquisite hymn (including only the first three stanzas) was copied by Dr. Nettleton into his Village Hymns, in 1824. The hymn, as a whole, remained unknown (save to those who happened to remember the original publication) till it was inserted entire in the Supplement to Dwight's Psalms and Hymns, which was published at New Haven, in 1833, and which was used for a few years in some of the Connecticut Churches. In 1845 it was inserted, with the omission of the sixth stanza, in the book of Psalms and Hymns prepared and set forth by the General Association of Connecticut. Since that time it has found a place in the Plymouth Collection, in the Congregational Hymn Book, and in the Sabbath Hymn Book. In the first of these it is given entire. In the second, two stanzas, the fourth and fifth, are omitted. In the last, we find the fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas of the original cut down and patched into one, after this fashion : "4. Ye know where morn exulting springs, And evening folds her drooping wings, The complete hymn, in its original form, is unsurpassed in the English or any other language. Perhaps it is as near per fection as an uninspired composition can be. The thought, the feeling, the imagery, the diction, and the versification are all exquisite. It is not easy to say why or how such a hymn was omitted both by the Old School Presbyterian compilers, and by Dr. Beman, whose work has become the book of the New School Assembly. Who was the author of that hymn? "Hillhouse," said Nettleton, when he inserted three stanzas of it in his Village Hymns. At that time, the poet Hillhouse, whose name is now classical in American literature, had published Percy's Masque, and the Judgment; but neither of the poems bore his name, and probably it did not occur to Nettleton that the author of the hymn needed to be distinguished from the author of Percy's Masque, more than from the well known patriot and statesman, the Commissioner of the Connecticut School Fund. Nine years later, when "Hillhouse, the poet," was almost as well known in literature as his venerable father had been in politics, the compiler of the Supplement to Dwight's Selection referred this hymn distinctly to "A. L. Hillhouse." The compilers of the Connecticut Psalms and Hymns knew well enough who was the author of that hymn; but accidentally, in their index of first lines, they referred to him only by his family name, "Hillhouse." Mr. Beecher, in making his Plymouth Collection, copied the hymn from the Supplement to Dwight, and probably knew that "A. L. Hillhouse" was not "the poet Hillhouse;" but, like the Connecticut compilers, he did not mark the distinction. The compiler of the Congregational Hymn Book knew that he found the hymn in the Connecticut book and in the Plymouth Collection, and that in both it was referred to Hillhouse; and, very naturally, he inferred that he knew who the author was. Consequently, in his "index of authors," he informed his readers that this hymn was written not merely by some person bearing that family name, but by James A. Hillhouse, who was born in 1790, and died in 1841. In like manner the compilers of the Sabbath Hymn Book have been betrayed into the same inference. Their first edition gives the names of authors in the index of first lines, and ascribes the hymn, "Trembling before thine awful throne," to Hillhouse; but a more recent and cheap edition gives, like the Congregational Hynın book, an "index of authors," in which their Hillhouse is testified to be none other than the James Abraham Hillhouse, whose period of life extended from 1790 to 1841. A definite answer, then, to the question, "Who was the author of that hymn?" is needed in some quarters. One of the most distinguished names in the history of Connecticut, is that of James Hillhouse, of New Haven, who was a member of the Second Congress under the present Constitution, and who, after having served twenty years in Congress, (six years a Representative, and fourteen years a Senator,) served his native State still more efficiently for fifteen years in the ardu ous trust of Commissioner of the School Fund. He was the father of two eminently gifted sons. James Abraham was the elder of the two; and he, as the author of IIadad, the Judgment, Percy's Masque, and other poems, is widely known. and is commonly called "the poet Hillhouse." The other, Augustus Lucas, about two years younger, was not at all inferior to his brother in any element of genius. Constitutionally gentle, affectionate, sensitive, full of imagination, he was the idol of his sisters, and the joy and hope of the domestic circle in his father's house. His natural love of knowledge, and of philosophic and poetic thought, was developed and cultivated by the discipline of education and guided by the elevating influence of evangelical religion. All who knew him would have predicted for him a bright career of usefulness. But while he was a student in Yale College, (where he was graduated in the class of 1810,) he had already begun to suffer under some of the infirmities which beset the lives of studious men, and especially of those who are born with the characteristic temperament of genius. Thus the depressing effects of chronic dyspepsia on the nervous system were wrought into the habits of his mind, before his character had attained its manly strength. In the hope that a change of scene and of climate, and the excitement of foreign travel, might overcome his growing tendency to depression of spirits and shyness of manners, his father consented to his going abroad. He went |