of which are in a far less degree open to general criticism. The man who would pronounce the Saracen's Head, or the Red Lion, on the sign of a neighbouring public-house, equal to one of the master-pieces of Raphael or Rubens in the National Gallery, or who would declare, that he preferred some ungrammatical piece of poetry in an obscure print, to a sonnet of Milton, or a hymn of Cowper, would meet but with few to endorse his opinion or applaud his judgment; but how often do we find some vapid production, destitute alike of musical ideas and musical grammar, preferred to the rich harmonies, and pleasing and expressive melodies of really great composers."

Every credit is due to Mr. Hullah and his coadjutors for their attempts to diffuse a general taste for music; but the inadequacy of such attempts, unassisted by a systematic plan of education, is seen from the fact, that, however for the time a momentary excitement may have been raised in any locality, it has too often died away with the discontinuance of the classes.

One of the most hopeful signs for the next generation is, that Music is now made in some schools a part of education. This is, however, chiefly the case where Tractarian principles obtain, and is directed rather to the revival of the Chant than the Psalm Tune. Still the effort is in itself good, and worthy of imitation in other schools. Is it because music is so much patronised by that class of theologians, that so many of an opposite class treat the art with contempt, and set their faces against any effort at improvement? If so, it is high time for our clerical brethren to take a lesson or two from the first music teacher at hand as to the real character and capacity of the art.

To consider the music merely as an appendage to the service, -as something to fill up time, and afford a moment for breathing to the clergyman, who seeks nothing, and therefore finds nothing, of edification in it-when it has been the joy and solace of thousands in all ages of the Church, and is the expression of the raptures of heaven-to hold such an unworthy estimate of its use as a portion of the public service, is surely, in a sense, to dishonour Him whose gift it is, to defraud our congregations of a rich and blessed privilege, which is a sort of antepast of the world to come.

There is a great evil in some of our churches, discerned and deprecated by many clergymen, who are themselves not musically intelligent, and that is, the indecorous style in which the organ is often played. And this evil is the more manifest from the custom in some places of introducing interludes between the verses of a Hymn or Psalm. This custom appears to us to be neither necessary nor desirable. It is not necessary; for there is no great fatigue in singing four or five verses consecutively; and it is not desirable, as it affords scope for an undevotional organist to give exhibitions of his musical skill, without regard to the true object of a spiritual worship. It is an humbling sight to see a whole congregation standing up during one of these interludes, as though engaged in an act of devotion, while, in fact, they are the mere reluctant martyrs of the organist's conceit and absurdity.

The interludes introduced in the Moravian Psalmody, of which specimens are given at the close of this volume, are not between the verses, but lines. It is a practice that obtains in the German churches. The design is to lead the mind easily from the concluding chord of the one line to the opening one of the next. In the hands of a devout organist of good taste, such interludes may not be objected to; but, if otherwise, they are open to the evils alluded to above. In fact, it is a question whether the true character of a Tune is not better preserved by the omission of all such appendages or interludes. The lines of a good Tune are not as so many beads on a string, each isolated and apart, but all ranged in subserviency to one general plan. To break in, therefore, upon the idea, at the close of each line, by strains often wholly extraneous, is so strange a custom that it is difficult to find a parallel in any other art or science, except in certain kinds of song writing, where between each line is introduced some burden of pure nonsense.-If, however, interludes between the lines are admitted, it is essential that they should be of a becoming character; and, as a guide, the examples given at the close of the Tune-Book are very good. They are natural, short, and free from meretricious ornament.

As a collection of sound ecclesiastical harmonies, suited to further edification and inspire devout feeling, the "Moravian Tune-Book" may be well recommended for the study especially of those who are in any way associated with "the service of song in the house of the Lord.”

As a whole, it is improbable, without a far greater variety in our metres, that it could ever be extensively introduced into our public services. But congregations might profit to a great extent from the Collection, and private families still more. Such is the difficulty of securing anything like a concurrence of voices in our public assemblies, that we are sometimes disposed to regard our own as a singularly unmusical nation. But it would be wrong to come to this conclusion till, as we have said, more is attempted in this department at our schools. Some of those sweet songs we hear in the neighbourhood of a nest may be the lessons of the old bird given to his half-fledged offspring. And the elder singing-birds in the family of man must take care that the younger want neither precept nor example, from the parent and teacher, in this noble art. And this volume will be

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of great use to them in this new and honourable vocation. has tuned a lyre, which we hope will be struck in many families. We add the Author's analysis of his own volume, to guide our readers as to what they have to expect :

"Besides the Hymn-Tunes, Chants, and Doxologies, peculiar to the Brethren's Church, and some of the best and most approved specimens of old English Psalmody, this Collection comprises a number of the finest Chorales of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, including the majority of those with which the oratorios of Graun, Bach, and Mendelsohn have made the British public more or less familiar.

"The Introduction contains a variety of information on the subject of congregational Psalmody, its past history, and its true character, with particular reference to its revival and promotion by Luther and his coadjutors, the reformers of the sixteenth century."

BRIEF NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

By

Food for My Flock. Sermons preached in Havant Church. T. Goodwin Hatchard, M.A., Rector of Havant. Hatchard. If the absence of what may be termed “seriousness" in Sermonsof a deep, earnest, "agonizing" spirit-absolutely destroys every other pretension to excellence; there is another quality scarcely less essential to their power, and that is, a spirit of liveliness, vigor, and intenseness. Those who have been led to large enquiries, especially among the poor and the young-a considerable portion in almost every congregation-are shocked to find how little of what is addressed to these classes appears to reach even their ear. And the fact is, that certain properties in the bulk of our hearers seem to be forgotten by too many of their teachers. One, for example, is, that they are unaccustomed to sit still; another, that they are unable, except within the very narrowest limits, to reason; another, that the great bulk of the words derived from the Latin and Greek are a dead letter to them. And moreover this is forgotten-that human nature, especially where spiritual things are concerned, is resolutely drowsy, and needs a strong and frequent shaking to keep it awake. Nor is even this all. Preachers seem often to deal with their hearers as though they were so many mere dry mental existences, on which everything except logic is wasted, and forget that they are creatures, not only of flesh and blood, but of imagination, and affection, and passions: who may be addressed through the eye by pictures and images; through the fancy by parables and resemblances; and through the affections by those lively appeals which touch the deepest chords of our nature. Now we are bound to say of the little volume before us, that whoever else may be guilty of all these mistakes, Mr. Hatchard is not; and that he has given us a set of plain, spirited discourses, which are not unlikely to disturb the repose of the drowsy, and to send home simple truths to the hearts that need them. The Sermons are, besides, Scriptural in their doctrinal views, charitable in temper, unpolemical, rather asserting the truth than contending for it; and we cannot help thinking that especially the congregation to which they were addressed will be both glad to receive and likely to profit from them. We find the Author stating that they have been already heard by his congregation with much interest, and that many have desired their publication. He has done well, in our judgment, to gratify that wish. Nor should we doubt that, in an age when the number of sermons required on a Sunday and in the week seems often to tax the mind a little too hardly, and in some cases to ask for bricks where there is

very little straw, and therefore to foster the spirit of borrowing, the echo from Havant will be heard, like that of the great guns in its neighbourhood, in the surrounding towns and villages; and Mr. Hatchard, from his single pulpit, will preach with much effect to a good many congregations at a distance.

Lives of the Saints: Manual for Confession.
Masters: London.

THIS work is believed, on strong authority, to proceed from one of the Curates of St. Saviour's, Leeds-the church so pregnant in ultraTractarians, and, ultimately, in perverts to the Church of Rome. The Author is also a recognised disciple of Mr. Aitkin, at one time so conspicuous in that very church, but who has lately disappearedwe know not how or where, but perhaps through the trap-door of one of his pantomimic religious exhibitions-from the public eye. We had no hesitation, in the first instance, in pronouncing that the monstrous union of high-flying Tractarianism with a sort of hyper-Wesleyanism must issue in some extraordinary birth. And here we have the results in the grossest possible specimen of Church of England Popery in the exalting of "Confession" to the rank of a "holy ordinance"-in transforming the minister into the rank of a Priest, and then of a Mediator and Saviour—in perverting the Sacrament of Thanksgiving in the Lord's Supper, into an actual sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. This, and even worse than this, might be expected from the strange amalgamation substituted by Mr. Aitkin for the pure faith of the Reformation. Much delusion, as it appears to us, prevails in some minds as to the power of one or a few right principles or opinions to constitute a true Church or religious system. Mr. Aitkin, for example, held distinctly, and even prominently, the great truth of the necessity of the conversion of our fallen nature by the Spirit of God. Hence multitudes were disposed at once to recognise him as an apostle of the Cross; whereas a closer examination would have led to the conclusion that this opinion was the grain of wheat in the bushel of chaff-that the system was a bundle of contradictions-that if it had a head of gold, it had a body and feet of clay-that a spirit of enthusiasm kept the whole together for a day, but that very soon the discordant parts would separate, and the result would be some such residuum of Popish falsehood and wild absurdity as we find in this volume.

OBITUARY.

THE RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT HARRY INGLIS, BART. AMONG the many distinguished and lamented individuals who have been recently removed from us, there is no one whose loss

will be more widely and deeply felt than that of Sir Robert Harry Inglis. "The righteous has been taken away," and, in this case, there are many "who lay it to heart." Both in his public and private position, he occupied a peculiar place; and he has left a void which it will not be easy to fill up. A variety of circumstances have, we think, contributed to give him this high place in the public mind; and we venture to hope that our readers will not be reluctant to follow us in a brief consideration of at least a part of them.-They may naturally be collected under the heads of Intellectual, Moral, and Social qualifications.

The intellectual powers of Sir Robert Harry Inglis were not of the character which is apt to astonish or to captivate the large masses of society. In the House of Commons he perhaps never made a speech that might be characterized as in a high degree fervid or oratorical. There was rarely much either of strong passion or vivid imagination in his addresses; though his detestation of folly and sin often prompted both arguments and expressions which breathed all the inspiration of true eloquence. But he possessed several qualities which, independently of what may be more properly termed his moral qualities, gave him a very unusual position in that fastidious assembly-extraordinary diligence in collecting the facts of a case-a memory almost as strong as Mr. Macaulay's, or Sir Robert Peel's--a pure, simple, forcible English style-great clearness in the statement of an argumentand perfect candor of opinion, as far as certain overwhelming convictions, which we hesitate to call prejudices, allowed fair play to his logical powers. It will be admitted, even by those who most differed from him in opinion, that his array of facts and arguments was, in a large number of instances, a formidable one to his antagonists. And we ourselves have often, in following out a series of extended debates on the great questions of the day, been surprised to see to what an extent his perhaps almost unnoticed speech has supplied the "materiel de guerre" to subsequent speakers. We might take, as an example of this process, his, we believe, printed speeches on the Catholic Question, and on the Reform Bill. In both of these addresses he failed to carry conviction to the House of Commons; but the Historical and Ecclesiastical reading displayed in the one, and the Constitutional knowledge exhibited in the other, constituted a sort of common stock for others less laborious and accurate, but more dexterous and impassioned, speakers.—These qualities of honesty of purpose, of accurate knowledge of facts, and great simplicity of speech, followed him into private society; and, we may without exaggeration say, made every hour of social intercourse with him a season of refreshment and instruction. Nor should we be wise in underrating such qualities. We remember to have heard one of the most competent judges of the qualifications CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 210.

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