Part of an Article on the Plymouth Collection, in the N. Y. | They are the jewels which the Church has Independent. HYMNS. worn; the pearls, the diamonds and precious stones, formed into amulets more potent famous charms of wizard or magician. And against sorrow and sadness than the most he who knows the way that hymns flowed, knows where the blood of piety ran, and can trace its veins and arteries to the very heart. THE work required to compile a large collection of hymns no one will ever know until he has had it to perform. And the longer a man labors, the less satisfied is he apt to be with the results. If we had known, at the No other composition is like an experibeginning, the task which we imposed upon mental hymn. It is not a mere poetic imourselves in attempting the Plymouth Collec- pulse. It is not a thought, a fancy, a feeling tion, we should have been far less eager than threaded upon words. It is the voice of we were. The first year or two of our work experience speaking from the soul a few words we felt only the glow and pleasure of dis- that condense and often represent a whole covery and acquisition. But when, by our life. It is the life, too, not of the natural very working, we were educated into clearer feelings growing wild, but of regenerated conceptions of what a hymn should be, and feeling, inspired by God to a heavenly destiny, what a hymn-book, the work to be done and making its way through troubles and augmented before us, and our own accom- hindrances, through joys and victories, dark plishment grew insignificant. And, often, or light, sad or serene, yet always struggling but for the joy given us by such company of forward. Forty years the heart may have hymns, but for their communion and sweet been in battle, and one verse shall express the voices, that at times rose up about us as if fruit of the whole. One great hope may the sainted dead had come back again, and come to fruit only at the end of many years, were voicing the truth of heaven in our ears, and as the ripening of a hundred experiences. we would have relinquished the endeavor. As there be flowers that drink up the dews The ground to be gone over in searching of spring and summer, and feed English hymnology is immense. all the upon The old rains, and only just before the winter comes collections, the partial contributions of single burst forth into bloom, so is it with some of authors, the modern effusions, which have the noblest blossoms of the soul. The bolt been numerous, need to be narrowly exam- that prostrated Saul gave him the exceeding ined. The work is complicated by the almost brightness of Christ; and so some hymns wanton liberty which compilers have taken could never have been written but for a with hymns; so that, with the exception of heart-stroke that well-nigh crushed out the a few artistically perfect hymns, which even life. It is cleft in two by bereavement, and hymn compilers dare not mutilate, it may out of the rift comes forth, as by resurrection, almost be said that there are as many versions the form and voice that shall never die out of hymns as there have been collections. One of the world. Angels sat at the grave's is liable, at every step, to be betrayed into mouth; and so hymns are the angels that diluted forms of hymns instead of that in rise up out of our griefs, and darkness, and which they were conceived. dismay. it be carved The discovery of a statue, a vase, or even Thus born, a hymn is one of those silent of a cameo, inspires art-critics and collectors ministers which God sends to those who are with enthusiastic industry, to search whether to be heirs of salvation. It enters into the a copy or an original, of what age, and tender imagination of childhood, and casts by what artist. But I think that a heart- down upon the chambers of its thought a hymn, sprung from the soul's deepest life, holy radiance which shall never quite depart. and which is, as it were, the words of the It goes with the Christian, singing to him all heart in those hours of transfiguration in the way, as if it were the airy voice of some which it beholds God and heavenly angels, is guardian spirit. When darkness of trouble, nobler by far than any old simulacrum, or settling fast, is shutting out every star, a ring, or heathen head, however ex- hymn bursts through and brings light like a quisite in lines and feature! To trace back a torch. It abides by our side in sickness. It hymn to its source, to return upon the path goes forth with us in joy to syllable that joy. along which it has trodden on its mission of And thus, after a time, we clothe a hymn mercy through generations, to witness its with the memories and associations of our changes, its obscurations and reappearances, own life. It is garlanded with flowers which is a work of the truest religious enthusiasm, grew in our hearts. Born of the experience and far surpasses in importance the tracing of one mind, it becomes the unconscious of the ideas of mere art. For hymns are the record of many minds. We sang it perhaps exponents of the inmost piety of the Church. the morning that our child died. We sang are crystalline tears, or blossoms of joy, this one on that Sabbath evening when, after holy prayers, or incarnated raptures. ten years, the family were once more all They together. There be hymns that were sung | below, and ten thousand palm-leaves whiswhile the mother lay a-dying; that were pered and kept time above! Other hymns, sung when the child, just converted, was fulfilling the promise of God that his saints filling the family with the joy of Christ new- should mount up with wings as eagles, have born, and laid, not now in a manger, but in borne up the sorrows, the desires, and the a heart. And, thus sprung from a wondrous aspirations of the poor, the oppressed, and life, they lead a life yet more wonderful. the persecuted, of Huguenots, of Covenanters, When they first come to us, they are like the and of Puritans, and winged them to the single strokes of a bell ringing down to us bosom of God. from above; but, at length. a single hymn becomes a whole chime of bells, mingling and discoursing to us the harmonies of a life's Christian experience. And oftentimes, when in the mountain country, far from noise and interruption, we wrought upon these hymns for our vacation tasks, we almost forgot the living world, and were lifted up by noble lyrics as upon mighty wings, and went back to the days when Christ sang with his disciples, when the disciples sang too, as in our churches they have almost ceased to do. O! but for one moment even, to have sat transfixed, and to have listened to the hymn that Christ sang and to the singing! But the olive-trees did not hear his murmured notes more clearly than, rapt in imagination, we have heard them! There, too, are the hymns of St. Ambrose and many others, that rose up like birds in the early centuries, and have come flying and singing all the way down to us. Their wing is untired yet, nor is the voice less sweet now than it was a thousand years ago. Though they sometimes disappeared, they never sank; but, as engineers for destruction send bombs that, rising high up in wide curves, overleap great spaces and drop down in a distant spot, so God, in times of darkness, seems to have caught up these hymns, spanning long periods of time, and letting them fall at distant eras, not for explosion and wounding, but for healing and consolation. In our own time, and in the familiar experiences of daily life, how are hymns mossed over and vine-clad with domestic associations! One hymn hath opened the morning in ten thousand families, and dear children with sweet voices have charmed the evening in a thousand places with the utterance of another. Nor do I know of any steps now left on earth by which one may so soon rise above trouble or weariness as the verses of a hymn and the notes of a tune. And if the angels that Jacob saw sang when they appeared, then I know that the ladder which he beheld was but the scale of divine music let down from heaven to earth. It is impossible that one, in this spirit, and with unfeigned love for his work, should attempt a collection of hymns large enough for the wants of the family, the social meeting, and the public congregation of the church, and representing every phase of personal experience or religious want, without a more thorough conviction of its imperfections than any other one could have. And when to the inherent difficulties of a hymn collection were added the even greater difficulty of combining with them a sufficient body of tunes for congregational uses, difficulties not only of selection and adaptation, but mechanical difficulties in mating and placing, page by page, the materials required, no more, no less; subjecting the whole body of hymns and tunes to the necessities of space measurement, the obstacles were increased a There are crusaders' hymns, that rolled forth their truths upon the oriental air, thousand fold. while a thousand horses' hoofs kept time This prov make "GOOD WINE NEEDS NO BUSH." PRONUNCIATION OF BIBLE NAMES.-The clerk erb has reference to the practice which formerly of a retired parish in North-west Devon, who prevailed of hanging a tuft of ivy at the door had to read the first lesson always, used of a vintner, as we learn from a hash of Shadrac, Meshac, and Abelnego; and "Now a days the good wyne needeth none ivye garland." as the names are twelve times repeated in the Ritson, in a note on the epilogue to Shakspeare's third chapter of Daniel, after getting through As You Like It, speaks of the custom as then them the first time, he called them "the aforeafterwards. - Notes and prevalent in Warwickshire, and as having given said gentlemen " the name to the well-known Bush Inn at Bristol. Queries. From the New York Times, 11 Dec. THE UNDER-STRATA OF NEW YORK. -- night; and they are wild in riot or plunder, when other men sleep. Their hands are stained with blood, and their pockets lined Ir any one has watched the testimony in with the gold of the innocent. They are the trial of Baker, now going on, he will be pimps and seducers. The houses of crime most of all surprised at the revelations it send them out to the simple-hearted and unmakes of City-life below the surface. We wary in city and country, to fill the ranks of had all known, of course, that there were the wretched and debauched. Still their own sharpers and rowdies and criminal charac- lives are black with acts of lust and treachters enough among us; still, few had realized ery, wrought on those who trusted them. the existence of such organized and profes- They know the windings of crime in the vasional bands of desperadoes. But they come rious countries; the gambling tricks of Calione after another to the witness-stand, or fornia, the skill of the burglar and thief of they speak of companions, and business, and London, the quick evasion of the Police in scenes, in such a way as to show that down Paris, and the ready use of knife and pistol in the depths of society there is a class where in America. They have the slang language to cheat, to gamble, to bully, to fight, is as of the flash men. They belong to the great much a regular profession as in the upper community of desperadoes, who abound strata to cure, or to plead, or to do honest wherever English is spoken. Of course, as labor. What are they these men that for with all men, there are good qualities among a little while come forth from their haunts them: instances of honor and generosity, and dens, and stand up in full day before and of a courage which wounds and death New York? How do they live? What do do not shake. But, generally speaking, their they do to earn their genteel clothes, their lives are hideous stained with crimes, anicontinual pleasures, and their host of follow-mal, brutal, selfish, and debauched. They ers? What is our lower class made up of? rob, gamble, and cheat; they fight and brawl These men are like the athletes and and murder; they live in the dark; they deprize-fighters and freed slaves who composed bauch and brutify themselves; they trap the the lowest population of Rome in classic unwary, and ruin the pure and innocent; days, whose characters, with their deep lines they are the hired bullies of electioneers, the of villany, yet stand out under the strong claqueurs at primary meetings; they live on touch of Cicero's pen. He warned his coun- plunder and rapine and robbery. trymen of them then, as moralists do of these Such are the men who form the foundation now. And the censors, who lived amid a of society in New York; whose existence is corrupt race, only ceased to warn when these hardly known till a case like this of such desperadoes had overturned society and horrible bloodshed and violence calls them seized the Government itself. These men in out of their holes to the daylight! Yet the New York are the brawlers, fighters, and Police know these men. Every one, -name "pugilists," for we are told by one wit- and history, we doubt not, is familiar to ness that there is a great distinction between the Police records. Their haunts, their busithe two latter. They train themselves to ness, even the dark suspicion of their crimes, batter each other at a few dollars a head; are perfectly open to the guardians of our they lead the rows and brawls at elections public order. Our politicians can tell you and on race-courses; they go armed each by name each leader in the desperate gangs. night with revolvers and knives, and when Thousands and thousands of dollars have the devil of liquor is in them, they commit gone from the pockets of our wealthy partythe murders and the brutal acts of violence leaders to the hands of such desperadoes. which stain our city's Police record. Al- During some years these villains have almost most every one of them is marked by these lived on the gold of rich office-seekers, and of hideous quarrels:his nose broken, or his moral, perhaps religious, merchants, who ear bitten off, or his body marred by the gave blindly to support their candidate. scars of bullet or knife-gash. They are Thank Heaven! that is for the present over. gamblers; they throw the dice, or shuffle If the Know-Nothings do nothing better, the cards, or push the billiard-ball, the whole they will receive the thanks of posterity for night long. They cheat as well as stake, and having at least broken up the system of emlive on the pickings of young gentlemen of ploying foreign and native bullies in our means who fall into their vulturous claws. The gas-light is the day-light for them; rooms hot and reeking with the smell of debauch their natural atmosphere. They take no note of time- -as one witness apologetically explained with regard to his memory of dates-for their day is in the elections. For the last few years, the abandoned characters who live at the bottom of New York seem to have frightfully increased. Poole's murder served to show people first what a numerous and terrible class of worthless men lay hidden here. What should be done? Sometimes, as each day brings out some new evidence of | from offices and arraign unjust judges; put our social corruption, some new connivance honest and faithful policemen into the posts of judges with criminals, sonte fresh act of of many, who are only accomplices of rascals incredible villany in high places, some new and vagabonds; if they would but show their fraud or peculation or robbery among the hands, we should see how little real power governors of society, or some new, astound- these desperate, vicious classes have. Of ing crime among the depraved and ignorant course, in the worst city, the lovers of order, classes, and as one remembers that these the virtuous and good, immensely preponderthings, which usually mark an old decaying ate over the wicked and vile. Society would civilization, belong to our youth, one is fall to pieces, if it were not so. In New ready to say in despair, "Our society is York, we have the advantage of a continual hopelessly rotten." But it is not so. It is importation of vigorous, moral young men true, the vices and extravagances of wealth from New England and the country, who and the crimes of the Old World have cen- soon in their turn become the leaders of tered here, till the city needs from pulpit and business and social life. press a continual censor, who, like Cato, shall thunder against the hollowness and corruption and dishonesty and licentiousness which rule-who shall even cast off innocent pleasures, to show, as did the Puritans, the grand stern obligation of duty and morality. It is true, these villains and rowdies swarm but like vermin, it is in the night. Thus far, they dare not appear in open day. Public opinion is not yet debauched enough to allow them. They are by name and profession the scum and outcasts of the world. The great current of the middle classes is as New England first set it towards morality and religion. We have good schools, libraries, churches inducements to virtue and goodness without number. Corruption has not yet eaten out the heart of the great mass of our people. The national conscience still rejects with loathing, peculation and debauchery and vice. The great evil is the laziness of the good. If our moral community only would arise, take the reins of government and the direction of society into their own hands, even for a little while; oust rogues The rub is, that our better people will not take the trouble to reform our evils. The rowdies and peculators have their own way, because no one cares enough or knows enough about the matter to interfere. The great conservators of society - the preachers and the press-must awaken now to our dangers. The grand principles of duty, the instinct of self-preservation, the sentiment of religion must be appealed to, to guard society from these increasing evils. There must be a sterner, purer morality, applicable to every branch of practical life, and no longer a mere technical abstraction, preached from the desk. The press must fearlessly root out and expose every evil, and, against whatever obloquy, speak always for the just and moral and true. Men of uprightness must not fear to soil their hands in domestic politics, but firmly do their part in cleansing this Augean stable of filth and iniquity. We must lay our hands to this, or the desperadoes will finally overturn and debauch society here, as they did in Rome. Let every lover of public morality and wellbeing take the matter seriously to heart. A SPANISH PLAY-BILL, EXHIBITED AT SEVILLE, | used in the days of our grandfathers, in the 1762. "To the Sovereign of Heaven-to the outer case of the corpulent watch now-a-days Mother of the Eternal World — to the Polar Star seldom seen. I send you the following one, of Spain to the Comforter of all Spain - to which I read many years since;-but, as I did the faithful Protectress of the Spanish Nation-not copy the lines, I cannot vouch for their to the Honour and Glory of the Most Holy Virgin | being strictly accurate: Mary for her benefit, and for the Propagation of her Worship-the company of comedians will this day give a representation of the Comic Piece called "NANINE. "The celebrated Italian will also dance the Fandango, and the Theatre will be respectably illuminated." WATCH-PAPER INSCRIPTION. - Akin to dial inscriptions are inscriptions on watch-papers "Onward perpetually moving, These faithful hands are ever proving How quick the hours fly by; Swift! Swift! the moments fly. From The Saturday Review. OLD FRIENDS WITH NEW FACES. the oxygen escapes back to the air the instant the attention of the barytes is given to anything else; as, for instance, if an acid be inWE desire to bring a simple and important troduced to its society. But the oxygen subject before our readers, and we have there- which returns to the air is now no longer the fore adopted a title readily expressive of our mild and agreeable element it formerly was. meaning, instead of repelling them by the It tastes strongly like a lobster; it proannouncement of a thesis On the Allotropic duces powerful suffocating sensations when Condition of Matter. By this formidable breathed, rusts metals, and destroys vegetable phrase, chemists designate the different forms colors. The second new face is given to oxyof the same things when they possess unlike gen by exposing it to rude shocks of electriproperties. A body may have been known city, as Professor Andrews, of Belfast, has to you all your life; it may be as familiar as lately been doing. It now acquires the pecuthe air you breathe; you drink it, eat it, or liar and disagreeable smell perceived in workwalk on it, from boyhood to manhood; and ing an electrical machine exactly like the yet some day a chemist enters into his labor- foetid odor acquired by the hand when the atory and transforms the identical object into yellow flowers of the eschscholtzia are pressed something you have never seen before. It is in it. The oxygen in this state, instead of now quite altered in shape, color, taste, and exhibiting its old mild likings for other bodies, properties, although the original composition now shows the most rabid desire to attack remains unchanged. This is the extraordi- them; or, as chemists would say, its affinities nary part of the subject, and the idea must be are much exalted. After all, it is possible fixed in the mind before proceeding. There that the lobster-tasting and badly-smelling is no cooking of the familiar thing, no adul- gas may ultimately prove to be oxygen with teration, no addition or subtraction of any the same face, only a little differently twisted ingredient; but the character of the body by the kind of torture used; but for the becomes masked by the acquisition of new present their characters are distinct. ?he properties- the old friend simply gets a new ordinary ingredient of air is thus know to face by the application of some of those nec-us with three different faces. The ch nists romantic processes which chemists are wont may enjoy it under the two new ch . cters to employ. We intend to show what they we are content to preserve our a uainhave lately been doing in this way, for new tance with the old one. faces are being put on so fast to many of our old friends, that a man may soon lose all the knowledge which he thinks he possesses in regard to any one object in nature. very · Clay is the next object to which we ould direct attention. The basis of clay is alu ina, united with silica or flinty matter. one knows what clay is, and in its pure We will suppose, for instance, that we unmixed state it is highly intractable. Very possess a tolerable acquaintance with the air obstinate it is in our farms, holding water around us. This air, as every one knows, is fast, and requiring thorough drainage to made up of two gases, oxygen and nitrogen, make anything of it. But a Glasgow chemboth of them colorless, tasteless, and easily ist, Mr. Walter Crum, has lately taken it breathed, certainly without unpleasant, and into his head to make the basis of clay, the rather with invigorating, sensations. The alumina, soluble in water like sugar. If nitrogen is a passive sort of body, but the Nature took the fancy to play the necromanoxygen is endowed with a certain range of cer like Mr. Crum, what a mess the world likings, enabling it to make fire burn, keep would be in! Our farms would run away up animal heat, and nourish plants without into the drains, and our brick houses be affecting their colors. With these mild and washed into the sea. The following is the amiable qualities, one would have thought recipe for giving our familiar friend clay his the chemists might have left it alone. But new face: Dissolve clay, or rather pure recently they have tortured it in such a bar-alumina, in vinegar; boil off the latter, and barous fashion that it has been compelled to the former remains; but, instead of being wear two new faces, with two characters intractable to water, it now melts like sugar. corresponding to them; and the new aspects which the element has assumed under the torture have been so startling that the savans themselves had great difficulty in believing they were still in communion with their old friend. One of the methods used in the transformation was to force the oxygen to leave the nitrogen with which it keeps company in air, and to unite with the earth barytes Not much liking this last alliance, Another chemist, Saint Claire Deville, of Paris, has been working at clay also, and has got out of it something worth having, although it is one of the double-faced tribe which we are describing. The general public may not have known, though scientific men did, that there is a metal in alumina ; in fact, alumina consists of this metal, aluminium, and the oxygen of air. Previously to this last discovery, if a savant had been |