use. Others affirm that the number ought to be large, and that 1,000 is not too many. We believe that one of the Orthodox collections has upwards of 1,500. Now, it is said that a large number of hymns cannot be adapted to worship in our churches without many changes. The false doctrine must be pressed out from them. There must not be idolatry in any form, must not be worship of Jesus more than of Mary, or of saints and martyrs. Our Unitarian brethren in England are vigorously disputing this point, and Dr. Beard sees superstition in the forms of apostrophe which Mr. Martineau allows. How can we get 500 or 1,000 hymns on the various themes of Christian experience and instruction, which shall not contradict our cherished opinions, unless we largely modify their phrase? Shall we refute, in the praises of the sanctuary, the creed of the altar or the arguments of the pulpit? Those who think a few hymns enough, find this an evidence in their behalf, that many hymns involve many changes. Yet we believe that, in the scanty collections, the proportion of altered hymns will be found to be larger than in the redundant collections. It is in the indispensable hymns that doctrinal errors seem most to be taught or implied. We believe that a large collection, which gives ample room for choice, is better than the choicest small collection. Though there are only a few hymns, perhaps not more than a hundred, which ministers use very often, yet the largest collection does not supply all that are wished for occasional use. There are some subjects for which, even in the largest collection, no appropriate hymn has been provided. With the best hymn-book, that Saturday evening duty to which ministers are inevitably summoned, at home and abroad, is perplexing, vexatious, and often desperate. The subjects which rarely come up in the sanctuary are superfluously cared for in the book of songs, while the standard topics are often most sparingly provided. The same book which gives us four hymns for the "death of a pastor" (an event, in these days of ministerial change, of comparatively rare occurrence) sets only one hymn to the theme of Patience," a very frequent topic of pulpit discourse, in times like these. There will be a dozen hymns for Sunday schools in the Church collection, where none are needed, and

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only one hymn for "Conscience," where many are needed. No collection was ever large enough for the wants of a ten years' ministry. In the fourteen years that we have used the Cheshire collection, we find that we have given out in public worship more than 800 of the 908 hymns. Too many are always better than too few. The best hymn-book would perhaps be one constructed in two parts (something on the plan of the Boston Public Library); one part containing only the standard hymns, to the number of one or two hundred, which everybody likes, which everybody seeks, and the genuine text of which is fully settled; the other part containing hymns for occasional use of every variety of theme, concerning which there may be difference of taste and opinion. This arrangement would save to ministers infinite trouble, and in no way hinder the symmetry of the volume. All our industry in hymn-book making has not yet produced any model collection, or any which has been accepted and retained even by a majority of our churches. Criticisim has always failed, as our fault-finding in this paper will probably fail, to reduce or lighten this toil of Sisyphus.

ART. IV. - AFTER ICEBERGS WITH A PAINTER.

After Icebergs with a Painter: a Summer Voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland. By REV. LOUIS L. NOBLE, Author of the "Life of Cole," "Poems," etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1861.

MR. CHURCH is fortunate in his friends. A few years ago we had in Boston "The Heart of the Andes," with a descriptive pamphlet by Theodore Winthrop, a companion of those South American travels which had resulted in the picture; now comes "The North" in its chill splendor, accompanied by a book from the artist's friend and fellow-voyager, the Rev. Louis L. Noble, another Ruskin in enthusiasm and feeling for beauty.

"After Icebergs" is less a description of Church's work

than complementary to it; and as necessary to its full enjoyment, as sunlight to an iceberg. It gives that human element the lack of which is felt by many who most cordially admire "The North." The sunshine which streamed over "The Heart of the Andes" fell on a wayside cross where human figures were resting; there were paths worn by human feet, vines clambered and clung, the river dashed almost audibly over the rocks, and the trill of bird-songs almost reached us from amid high boughs. In the "Niagara," Nature herself is impersonated as a great, wild, passionate, yearning soul, that plunges on headlong to escape constraint; and the conquest is achieved, and the rainbow-hued aureole descends in recognition of her valor. But "The North" is an utter, chill solitude; no forces are here save gravitation, cold, color, light. Uncaring, the ice-mountain wheels down to its doom; unresisting, it dissolves and disintegrates, resigning its beauty with an indifference as chill and stolid as its substance. The very ocean is passive, the waves goad themselves into no rage of resistance as among rocks, but eddy and slip along the icy shallows as if all feeling were chilled out of them.

Imagine an artist straying alone to this frigid solitude; with a crew of fishermen embarking in an oily craft, and, seasick and forlorn, chasing the soul of cold in its caves! Minds like flints must be struck together to kindle the fine flame of enthusiasm which culminates in works of genius; and when one, with rapture akin to his own, is eager to lead the artist on, to help measure the depth of emerald arch and height of glittering pinnacle, to find a synonyme for the sheen of icy surface and lustre of rounding wave, to cast out nets for beauty and. hold its rainbow-rings in both upraised, delighted hands, while the limner paints, -il changé tout cela.

To the fact of such companionship the book of Mr. Noble amply testifies. He relates that during the summer of 1859 he accompanied Church on an expedition to make studies for a picture of icebergs. They coasted along the shores of Newfoundland, and eventually, chartering a schooner, penetrated as far north as Labrador. Of this little voyage the world has record in two works which it will not soon let die, "The

North," and "After Icebergs"; which will not let each other die, for each illuminates each. The picture selects and fuses together the delicate, changeful splendors of the book, even as with curious art it fuses the scattered sketches from half a score of bergs, engraved among the writer's pages, into the crags and spires of one. And the book tells the whole history and inspiration of the picture.

Here, then, we have our human element. We gaze at the painting with new eyes, now it is seen as a record of gladsome adventure, and haunted everywhere by the personality of poet and artist. We know how they looked up with awe at the toppling crags of opal,- looked out at the still ocean-floor, which was to them as the sea of glass of the Apocalypse. We feel their thrill of horror, as with a crash the berg explodes, and the whole awful mass overturns, dashing spray to the heavens and stirring ocean to its depths. We see them with checked breath watch the flight of shadows and delicate hues, and vainly search the brain for imitative words, and the palette for imitative colors. We see them peer in at the green arch, while rainbows enhalo them, and they smile, childlike, accepting their crown. They have heaped their little bark with the fanciful sculpture of the sea; their drinking-cup and giant elk-horns, carved of ice. to whose compactness and cold the ice of New England is but chilled air. They have quarried boat-loads from blocks of jasper, chrysophrase, and pearl, and as it dissolved drank the President's health and ours "in the transparent vintage of Greenland."

In book as in picture there is an "out-doorness,” an airiness, a fine delight in nature, a zest like that in Mr. King's descriptions of White Mountain scenery: we are not discoursed to, but led on; we sail under the cold green rocking arch of the iceberg; we trace ourselves its fire-edged spires against the sunset sky; our hearts leap up at the ineffable beauty of its shadows and breathing hues; rainbows, cool from the ice, flicker past our brows, and the dark sea circles around us, polishing its purple sheen against the ice.

Who ever thought of looking northward for beauty! It was a wild and original attempt, like Dante's when he would

make a poem of Hell. A region of ice-bound, desolate rocks, inhabited mainly by seals and gluttonous wild fowl, and whose flowers should only be made of frost, its cascades congeal into glaciers;-yet our two poets wonder that they who have time to spare do not leave hackneyed Newport and Saratoga, and choose game, health, and picturesqueness among the stony coasts and ice-cathedrals which awaken their delight.

Very lonely in its grandeur is this northeastern coast of our continent: a forsaken place, says our author, "if that can be called forsaken which never was possessed," — with abrupt stone-worn cliffs, and deep caves hollowed by ocean, and into whose silence the surf beats, rebounds, and reverberates with a sound like the slamming of doors, like the boom. of cannon. Rather than Newport loungers, we could imagine the ghosts of Giotto and Dante exploring such grim solitudes. Even our present voyagers seem as out of place as the flowers they find at Labrador. It is the skeleton, the mummy, of a country. The coast-rocks run miles inland, bare or thinly overspread with brownish moss, and often wholly uninhabited. No smoke from household fires, no beckoning woods, no herds save the seals and their young fattening on the ice-float, and schools of whales at play, that dip and toss like lifeless timber in the clear deeps, and this is summer! At wide intervals are found chapels of the English Church, with a few small houses of fishermen scattered near. The Bishop, a literal "fisher of men," visits these stations, forty in number, in a ship appointed for the purpose. We are reminded of the monks of old, of Xavier, St. Francis of Assisi, and a hundred others who went to rescue Moor and Indian from barbarism, as we read of cultivated men who, for the sake of a few humble souls, have banished themselves for life to this rocky wilderness. Among the missionaries our travellers find hospitality and genial companionship; they fall in with the Bishop, and a young minister who is Wordsworth's nephew; and they discourse of art and letters. "As we are, we see!" Send Gabriel on an errand to the Pit,-lo, he meets Raphael or Uriel on the way, and they take sweet counsel together.

About Newfoundland the shoreward cliffs in places rise per