no relief would be so merciful as to be delivered from the crude and tasteless performances of the choir, by the breaking out of a whole congregation in one burst of sound, which, if it could not be called music, would at least be a religious act, while the attempts of the choir are neither. We would rather hear from the voices of a whole congregation the same six tunes from year's end to year's end, such as Old Hundred, St. Martin's, the Judgment Hymn, and others of the same class - which by frequent repetition would at length come to be performed in tolerable harmonythan suffer under the executions of a halftrained, or over-trained and theatrical choir. We cannot so unequivocally condemn music performed by a whole congregation as Mr. Eliot does. It is better to our ear as mere music than that of a poor choir- and most of our choirs are poor — it is far more agreeable to the spirit as a religious act. We assent to Mr. Eliot's position at once, if we can listen to a well instructed choir, such for example as the one to which he alludes in his discourse-that of King's Chapel. The effect of such music it is the best we ever heard within a church would, even in a religious point of view, be of a far higher character than we might ever hope to hear from the imperfectly harmonized voices of a multitude, while, as music, no comparison could be instituted. The performances of a choir like this, under the guidance of as correct a taste, almost vie with the other services of the Church, of however high an order they may be, for their power over the worshipper. This leads us to inquire why such music should be so rare ? In this choir there are but four or six voices - none remarkable, if we except the female voice, which is full, and rich, but, above all, expressive - accompanied by a well played organ. Here are materials that may be found we should say in almost every congregation in the city, and with the exception of the organ in almost every congregation in the country. What constitutes its superiority? We think it is mainly the prevalence of a just taste the share that the intellectual and the moral have in the work. Singing is more than singing. If it is not, like preaching, adapted, if it accord not with time, and place, and subject, it might as well be anything else; if there be no feeling for these eternal fitnesses and correspondencies, the best voices and the highest science would fail. In this choir the music is generally simple, sometimes elaborate and learned but always religious. It is always, without fail, church music. It never offends against the sacredness of the place, and the service, by a parade of mere execution. It is never fantastic or flighty. If it is sometimes loud, it is never boisterous. Its power is felt for the

most part, in the quiet, subdued tone which it more commonly takes. It is in a word to its moral qualities, rather than its musical, that it owes its power. In the last it certainly excels; but they would be utterly unavailing without the first. Now it is through an absence of qualities of the first kind that our church music generally fails. We hear good voices, with a proper variety of parts, but there is a want of adaptation of the character of the music to the service; it is too loud and boisterous, or too worldly and theatrical. A little more quietness and sobriety, a little more of a religious character and tone, is all that many of our choirs want to convert them at once into most pleasing and effective instruments in aid of the general objects of the Sabbath and the Church.

A serious obstacle to the existence of these qualities, and, indeed, to the existence of the musical ones also, is to be found, we think, in the perfect mob of performers often admitted into the seats, especially in our country congregations. It must be vastly more difficult to inspire so many with the moral sentiments and expression that should characterize their performances than a less number. Besides, how can from fifteen to fifty sing well together without far more practice than it is possible they should give? How can so many voices be found, moreover, among which there shall not be some of so coarse a texture, or so corrupt a tone and pronunciation, as to injure or destroy the whole effect? One such voice, if perchance a loud one, will spoil a choir. Five or six good voices are enough; to them frequent practice would be quite a possible thing, and we might then look for that unity, precision, and firmness, so essential to good music qualities, which great and long continued practice can alone impart. It is worth observing too in this relation, that professional singers confine themselves to a comparatively small round of tunes, to which is in great part owing the perfection with which they are performed. The catalogue of the Brothers Hermann, the German singers who were here a few years since, whose music possessed such unity, that it seemed like a single voice with many tones, was a very confined

one.

The Tyrolese Minstrels soon exhaust themselves. The whole life of such performers is devoted to a very small number of pieces. Hence alone the wonderful precision of their movement and the perfection of their harmony. Let it be so in our churches, and it should be with more reason and our music would at once improve. Familiarity would give a confidence not to be had otherwise. And why, where a liturgy is heard forever, and the same hymns are read forever, should we apprehend weariness from forever listening to the strains of

Luther, Handel, or Pleyel ? Yet in most of our churches there is a new tune, at least, every Sunday, and a new book once a year.

In the following paragraph of Mr. Eliot's lecture are comprised admirable principles for the guidance of those to whom is committed the management of Church Choirs.

"In answer to the question, what music is proper for the church, I should say, any music which is adapted to aid the sentiments conveyed by the words used in the church. Look through the psalm book, and you will find there a vast variety of feelings expressed, from the most animated and deeply joyful, to the most tender and melancholy,

profound reverence, heartfelt penitence, hope, fear, sympathy, and devotion. Are all these to be heightened or warmed by the somewhat monotonous choral? Surely we can do better than that. We can select music of various character corresponding with that of the words, always taking care that it be of the serious and solemn class, befitting the emotions which belong to the church. Nothing should be admitted of the brisk, fanciful style so much in vogue here half a century ago, when every psalm was a reiterated fugue, falsely so called, and every choir seemed to be scrambling in a confused race. Nor should anything be admitted, which by use has become appropriated to other purposes. None of the popular airs well known at secular concerts, or at theatres, should ever be heard in the church. The association of the music with other words, than those which can be used in church, is formed and cannot be dissevered. Let it alone therefore; it can be spared. But with these reservations, I know not why well adapted music should be excluded from the church. I have, for many years, been in the habit of performing music at my own church, in a great variety of styles, being careful always that it should be serious, appropriate, and not recognised as theatrical, and I am not aware of any ill consequences arising from the practice." pp. 344, 345.

A Greek Reader, for the Use of Schools; containing Selections in Prose and Poetry, with English Notes and a Lexicon. Adapted particularly to the Greek Grammar of E. A. SOPHOCLES, A. M. By C. C. FELTON, A. M., Eliot Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University. 1 vol. 8vo. Hartford, 1840.

WHILE the New-York and Boston presses are engaged in a controversy about the old Greek Reader, our Cambridge friends seem to have settled the question for themselves at least, by a course which, if every where pursued in similar cases, we doubt not would prove an effectual damper to such disputes. So far as they are concerned, Professor Anthon and his Boston Re

viewer are to be left to mutual demolition; and the teachers of such youths as are in training for Harvard, will be spared the pains of deciding upon the merits of the rival editions of Jacobs. We learn from the Catalogue of that University for the current year, that Professor Felton's Reader is to be the required text-book for admission there after 1842. The good examples of this sort which have hitherto been set by that institution, have seldom been without effect elsewhere. And we believe this one will be pretty generally followed, when the circumstances which called forth the work under review are known, and the merits of the book fairly inquired into and discussed.

The origin of the new compilation is briefly this. A part of the elementary work of Jacobs has, under various guises, now been used as a text-book in this country, for nearly twenty years. No one, we believe, regrets that it superseded the Græca Minora. The standard of scholarship in our Colleges was raised, by requiring the candidates for admission to pass an examination in the former. But the great objections to it could not escape the eye of the most careless observer. We need barely allude to them here. We may mention the character of the extracts as extremely unfitted to help a boy to an acquaintance with pure, classic Greek. Three fourths of the whole book, we should judge, are selected from authors who flourished long after the golden age of Grecian literature; and a full half, from authors of the second, third, fourth, and even fifth centuries after Christ. The American rifacimentos of Jacobs give us fifty lines from Xenophon, seven from Herodotus, and nothing from Thucydides; yet these are undeniably the standard writers of Greek prose. While Strabo, Arrian, Plutarch, Elian, Diogenes, Laertius, and Strobæus make up the bulk of the volume. One feels the dozen pages of Homer at the end, and the paragraphs from really classic prose writers which here and there occur, as but a poor offset to so much that belongs to the period of the decline of Grecian literature. And it must, we think, have struck our young friends with surprise, to learn on entering College that the authors whom they had been required to study were, in general, but comparatively poor authority for the use of the language they were trying to master. But this, or something of the sort, it was their instructer's duty to tell them, so long as the old Greek Reader was the preparatory text-book.

And there are other, and those not slight, objections to the American Editions of Jacobs. The plan of the whole of the earlier portion is exceptionable; for however wise such detached

sentences may look in their proper connexions, or however amusing such anecdotes might be when told of men whose histories were familiar, the experience of teachers has, we believe, always been, that their pupils prefer to study any other part of the book; and the real state of the case is, that in a manual of two hundred and fifty pages, nearly a hundred are filled up with what boys will not study, nor instructers examine them upon. Add to this, that some dozen editions, hardly any two alike, are before the public; many of them wretchedly printed, and all of them, in some quarter or other, denounced and proscribed; and one will not wonder that a new book of this sort should be asked for by lovers of peace, as well as by the friends of classical education.

Professor Felton seems to have perfectly understood the wants of the case in hand, and in his selections to have met them exactly. The purest and best writers, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Lysias, are the chief sources whence they are drawn. But we are glad to see that no theory in their favor has induced him to slight Lucian, whom we look upon, on the evidence of our own recollections, as the favorite of schoolboys, as well as a delightful companion to men. And we are quite willing that the general principle of the work should be departed from, if our young friends are to have the benefit of his acquaintance. We can see some propriety in assigning such tasks to those who seek an introduction to classic Greek. With all deference to Plutarch, whose writings, and especially the Morals, we prize as one of the richest legacies of antiquity, we beg leave to ask whether the style of the authors above-mentioned is not far preferable? And if so, ought not that to settle for us the question under debate?

The poetical selections are equally judicious. First comes an extract from the Odyssey, which contains the story of Polyphemus; then twelve of the Odes of Anacreon, among which we see with pleasure that gem of the whole poetry of Greece, the Ode on Beauty; Sappho, Simonides, and Callistratus furnish a few exquisite verses; Euripides and Aristophanes represent the tragic and comic drama of Greece; and the beautiful epitaph of Bion by Moschus closes the list. It was "the editor's aim to present an adequate specimen of each important branch of that department of Greek literature. He has therefore extended his plan to the dramatic as well as the epic, lyric, and bucolic poetry; and has taken passages, which include both chorus and dialogue, and which, it is hoped, do not present difficulties incapable of being solved by the intelligent and studious scholar."-Preface, pp. vii, viii.