tion, we are grieved at this present attempt, which sacrifices excellence to eccentricity. We are tempted to ask, Who will use this book? Certainly not the poor, for experience teaches us that they love simple and homely, but not puerile or affected phraseology; not the Dissenters, for although their hymns are for the most part emotional, they possess also a gravity to which 'The People's Hymnal' is a stranger; not the educated, for their taste will be offended at every page: to some portion of the residuum, whatever that may be, the book must turn for its patrons.

'The Year of Praise' is as great a contrast to 'The People's Hymnal' as can be conceived; but we cannot say that its merits justify its existence, or render its general adoption probable. Intended primarily for use in Canterbury Cathedral, it appears to aim at nothing higher than that decorous absence of enthusiasm which is the too common characteristic of cathedral worship. Although the book fails to commend itself to us, we are bound to notice the large measure of care and study which have evidently been bestowed on its compilation. No fewer than four indices are given, in the first of which references to Scripture and the subjects treated are supplied with a minuteness too great, we fear, to be appreciated by the majority of persons who may meet with the book; while in the others we have the fullest information about the authors of the hymns, and of the tunes to which the hymns are set. To every Sunday are allotted four hymns, of which the first, 'chosen with a view to the principal subject of the day,' is to be always used at Canterbury as the Introit; the others have more or less reference to the teaching of the services or the season. This arrangement has been tried in some of the earlier hymnals; and, as far as our experience goes, has not been successful. It cramps one's choice unduly, and leaves daily services unprovided for. The better plan is to select a sufficient number for each season of the Church's year, and then to give plenty of general hymns which may be used at other times.

When we consider the great variety of tastes, and even of spiritual wants among those who will use a hymn-book which has a large circulation, it is an absolute necessity that such a book should be the work of many minds. The Year of Praise is too much the work of one: out of 326 hymns, fiftyfive are by the Dean of Canterbury himself! We by no means say that the Dean cannot write a good hymn; indeed, we can point to several of his which are worthy of a very high place, although we do not think his later efforts will bear comparison with his earlier compositions. The well-known baptismal hymn, In token that thou shalt not fear,' is excellent, and was

written as long ago as 1832; the hymn for the harvest, 'Come ye thankful people, come,' which is in every collection, was written in 1845; we could hardly have believed that the same writer, in the same year, had composed the following hymn for Advent Sunday (No. 1 in 'The Year of Praise'), which is as poor as anything in Tate and Brady :

It were an easy but unpleasant task to show that many of Dean Alford's own hymns are utterly unsuited for use in church such a hymn as 'All the night and nothing taken' (No. 167), embodying, as it does, most naturally, the thoughts of many a dispirited priest, can never be appropriated by an intelligent congregation.

We cannot understand the principle on which the hymns of other authors have been selected for this work, but we regret to find that, for some reason not apparent to us, many wellknown hymns are excluded; neither are their places adequately supplied, for, although the total number in the book exceeds that of Hymns Ancient and Modern' by something like fifty, there is a sad lack of suitable hymns for the several holy seasons. Thus for Christmas Day and the following Sunday eight hymns are provided, but of these two relate exclusively to the commencement of a new year, and a third might be sung at any other time as fitly as at Christmas. On what grounds 'Adeste Fideles' is excluded we are at a loss to say.

The Lenten hymns suffer in a similar way. In the hour of trial,' from Lyra Anglicana' (No. 99), is very good; but we miss Caswall's favourite translation, 'Glory be to Jesus,' 'In the Lord's atoning grief,' and Xavier's most simple but beautiful 'My God, I love Thee; not because

I hope for heaven thereby.'

Every one who has joined on Good Friday in singing Faber's O come, and mourn with me awhile,' will deem a hymnal incomplete which does not contain it: instead of this, so appropriate and pathetic, we have the almost jubilant We sing the

praise of Him who died.' In like manner for Easter Even we have a poor substitute for Resting from His work to-day.' The Sacramental hymns are few in number, and sadly deficient in dogmatic teaching. The most suggestive Baptismal hymn we know, viz. Dr. Neale's With Christ we share a mystic grave,' is unaccountably absent. In the two hymns for Confirmation we look in vain for any reference to the Divine gift conveyed by the rite; while for the Holy Communion only two hymns, My God, and is Thy table spread,' and 'Bread of heaven, on Thee we feed,' are given: an equally good one, 'O God, unseen yet ever near,' being appropriated to the afternoon of the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity-a singularly unhappy arrangement. No special hymns are provided for the Ember seasons (Dr. Neale's works seem to be imperfectly known to our author, for how else can we account for the omission of

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'Christ is gone up; yet ere He passeth

From earth, in heaven to reign'?),

but the Index refers us to the Ordination hymn, which strikes us as being appropriate only to the Ordination Service itself. For the Burial of the Dead we have three good hymns, but we miss the 'Dies Iræ.'

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In the interest of those congregations (a rapidly increasing class) to whom it is a real delight to sing their hymns, we must protest against the manner in which this book limits us to the oldfashioned four or five verses. Who would believe that, in order to shorten Keble's Evening Hymn, the three verses beginning 'If some poor wandering child,' Watch by the sick,' and 'Come near and bless us,' are omitted-verses as full of true poetic feeling and simple Christian teaching as any that were ever written? In like fashion Faber's Sweet Saviour, bless us ere we go,' is limited to three verses, to the sacrifice of those lines which have always seemed to us to represent the 'dignity of labour' in its truest light:

'Labour is sweet, for Thou hast toiled,

And care is light, for Thou hast cared.'

The well-known hymn for those at sea, Eternal Father, strong to save,' does not appear in this book; and we look in vain for Blessed city, heavenly Salem,' and 'Christ is made the sure Foundation,' infinitely superior as they are to those selected for the consecration of a church, although one by Dr. Vaughan (No. 299) is of more than average merit. Keble's Morning Hymn is missing, as well as the charming translation from the Breviary for evensong As now the sun's declining rays.' The Dean's famous Hymn for the Harvest is everywhere admired, but its excellence is not sufficiently great

Even

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to exclude the equally popular 'Lord of the harvest, once again,' which to our mind contains much more directly religious teaching. By some strange fancy, hymns well known to every congregation, such as Brief life is here our portion,' 'O Love Divine, how sweet Thou art,' Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed,' and 'Three in One and One in Three,' are excluded from 'The Year of Praise.'

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In the musical part of his work the Dean has had the assistance of the Precentor and of the Organist of Canterbury Cathedral. The first fact which struck us on glancing over the pages of this book is that many of the tunes are arranged in a higher key than is usual: probably this is not a matter of much moment in a cathedral, where there is no lack of boys with clear and well-trained voices; but we think it will tend to make the book less useful for congregational purposes.

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Some of the arrangements seem to us simply eccentric; e.g. Mr. Dix's hymn As with gladness men of old,' is set to the tune known as Wirtemberg,' here called 'Nassau,' the proper tune' Dix,' which is to us part of the hymn itself, being set to another hymn of four lines instead of six. The Advent hymn 'Lo, He comes,' is strangely enough set to Haydn's Benediction,' which we have ever associated with Alleluia, dulce carmen.' Dean Milman's 'The Angel comes, he comes to reap,' is set to Tallis's 'Ordinal;' and this reminds us that the Ordination Hymn 'Come, Holy Ghost our souls inspire,' is set to an anonymous tune, dug up from the choir-books of Canterbury, in which obscurity it might have been left with advantage. Hymns which we are wont to associate with their special tunes appear here in strange garb, e.g. 'Jesu, the very thought of Thee,' is set to 'Winchester!' Who are these like stars appearing,' to a very inferior tune called 'Munden; ' and 'How sweet the name of Jesu sounds,' to 'Farrant.' It is also provoking to find familiar tunes under strange names. The old S. Theodulph,' the proper hymn for Palm Sunday, is assigned, under the name of Teschner,' to Ascension Day; and S. Peter's,' extended into long metre, is named Weimar;' 'Capetown is transformed into 'Dantzic;' and 'Dundee,' so well known to every church-goer, appears, in another key and slightly altered in the concluding bar, as Norwich.' These may be small matters, but such multiplication of varieties is, to say the least, aggravating and unnecessary.

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And indeed, to end as we began, it is of this multiplication of diversities, for the sake of nothing but diversity, that we complain. Absolute uniformity, whether in hymnody or in any other portion of our Church's Service, we neither expect nor desire to meet with. But it is a wiser policy to aim at uni

formity rather than diversity of practice. We trust the time has now come when, in hymnody at least, Churchmen may rest and be thankful;' when would-be compilers must be convinced that new hymnals, while they add another element to our ecclesiastical confusions, will probably, both in a literary and a commercial sense, be failures.

These two books, coming as they do from very opposite sources, are equally unsuccessful; and while each has endeavoured, as we think with small results, to add to our store of good hymns, each has omitted not a few, which are the property of Christendom, and which, by some charm of their own--either their piety, or their rhythm, or, it may be, some blessed association known only to ourselves-have long since established themselves in our hearts.

[The casual mention of the 'Dies Ira' in the above Paper enables us to oblige Mr. Abrahall by the publication of a MS. paraphrase of that celebrated hymn, in the metre of the original, which he has executed. Students may be glad of the opportunity of comparing it with Dr. Irons' able version. For ourselves, we can only let it stand on its own claims, recording our dissent, not only from the change of the future tense to the present throughout, but also from the very strong colouring given to the line

Qui salvandos salvas gratis' in the eighth stanza.-ED. C. R.]