Unison or Harmony?

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general suitability and excellence of the chorales, but to the fact that set and unvarying tunes are printed to all the hymns used by them; and when an assembly, all whose members sing from early youth, joins in a chorale, the effect is impressive in the extreme. It should not be supposed, however, that this congregational singing is confined to unison in every instance; nor are Protestants the only performers. The German Roman Catholics are just as active as Protestants, having, in the days of the Reformation, adopted Luther's practice, which the Monks found to advance the cause of Protestantism amazingly. A most interesting specimen of this it fell to our lot to witness on one occasion in St. Stephen's cathedral, Vienna. On a Sunday afternoon three priests read vespers at the high altar in the choir; the responses were heartily joined in by a large congregation, the service being in the German vernacular. This done, a few notes were given by a small organ placed over one of the stalls; and immediately all present commenced singing a hymn to a plaintive melody. When about seven verses had been sung, the Litany was said as before; a second hymn was now sung by the people, in like style with the first; and the whole concluded by a sermon delivered with earnest eloquence. Much of all this is undoubtedly due to that imperial reformer of Church abuses, Joseph II.

The

Recurring to the unison question, after due consideration it may be said, that, except in cases where large masses congregate, and give a solemn grandeur to the chorale, singing in harmony of a simple kind is far preferable for general use. taste for harmony, and the ability to take a part,' are natural gifts; and the various kinds of voices of men, women, and children, may be looked on as indications of corresponding endowments and proprieties. Besides, unisonous singing must at times compel low voices to range high, and vice versa, thus contradicting an order of nature. Moreover, music of a very small compass must be used, to obviate, as far as may be, this evident result; and this, in our view, is a very solid objection.

Then, again, in order to insure the singing of God's praise in His house by all the people, what should be done?—We answer, Very much, but only very gradually. Some seem to imagine that general directions such as, 'Sing all, sing all in tune, sing in time' and such like, will answer every purpose. It may do so by accident; but a moderate and easily attained knowledge of music, as an art, is absolutely necessary; and until our nation learns music from early childhood, as the Germans learn it, and as we now learn to read, any general

success cannot be hoped for. In this respect, however, there is great improvement. As a rule, the young everywhere are taught to sing; and if progress be made for a generation at the present rate, this picture may easily be realized. It is possible to have singing classes in every town; * often in villages, and in connexion with places of worship of all denominations. If this were done, and if the numbers who can sing at home, but who never open their lips in churches, would practise, as a matter of duty, in private houses, the music of the sanctuary, another great good might be effected. We should regard it as much their duty to sing as to pray, and no Minister should think this important work unworthy of strenuous exertion and great attention on his part.

The people being presumed capable of reading music, a definite selection should be adopted by every congregation. Some book should be fixed upon, sufficiently comprehensive, and yet so cheap as to be without inconvenience connected with the psalms or hymns there used. This is as necessary in its way as the authorized version of the Scriptures among theologians. It prevents every one having his own translation or composition, besides securing many other obvious advantages. The same principle is recognised in cathedral music. In the case of those standard works which are known and used everywhere, any part may be purchased, and will be found uniform with copies in other places.† If an assembly of the best musicians of the day was called, to make an authorized collection of chorales and chants to be used all over the kingdom by all denominations, a lasting benefit would be conferred on the community. There would then be no setting up of individual opinion, often ill-founded, as to a particular tune or chant being good or bad; no performance of compositions which, being by members of the choir, are for that reason sung lustily and often, whether good, bad, or indifferent. But just as any man who can read may enter a parish church, and, if he has a Prayer-book in his hand, easily join in the service ;-so, if an authorized Church music-book were in use, the same

* See the plentiful harvest from the labours of Hullah, Rev. John Curwen, and others.

Any person can purchase Novello's editions of Services and Anthems either in score or in part. With such a volume, portably bound, he may enter any cathedral in the kingdom, and join in the services. However, he must know how to use his book.

But we despair of any such collection being made, or, if made, adopted in this kingdom. It could not even be forced upon the Established Church, (for the most obsequious Churchmen would still claim the right of pleasing themselves in matters of taste,) and certainly would not be accepted by Dissenters. Besides, there are plenty of excellent collections, any of which, if adopted with the authority of the

person, being musically educated to a very moderate extent, might, wherever he went, join, not only with the spirit, but also with the understanding, in ascribing praise to the Lord God Omnipotent, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

ART. III.-1. The Physical Geography of the Sea. By M. F. MAURY, LL.D., Lieut. U.S.N., Superintendent of the National Observatory, Washington. 8vo. London: T. Nelson and Sons. 1859.

2. The Sea and its Living Wonders. Translated from the Fourth German Edition, and partly re-written by the Author, DR. G. HARTWIG. With numerous Woodcuts and twelve chromoxylographic Plates. By HENRY NOEL HUMPHREYS. 8vo. London: Longmans and Co. 1860.

To us haughty islanders the sea is so much of a home that when foreigners write books upon it, and think it worth their while to publish them in our sea-girt England, our first emotion is one of astonishment at their audacity. On finding, however, that one of them is of that stalwart young nation which inherits our own maritime predilections, and even contests our own maritime supremacy, we are not disinclined to listen to his discoursing; but what can a German tell us about thalassine affairs that we did not know before? Truth to say, nothing: nothing but what he has gathered from other authorities, that were as patent to us as to him. The result of an examination does not belie our anticipations. Between the two books whose titles stand at the head of this article, and which to a considerable extent lead their readers over the same ground, there is just the difference that exists between a man who comes from exploring a new and rich field, loaded with information so fresh, so strange, so important, and so copious, that all our attention is absorbed in the matter, and we forget, like himself, all the arts and graces of delivery, and one who, having got up a very clever lecture for a Philosophical Society, at the cost of many notes taken at libraries and reading-rooms, delivers it, with a very sharp eye to clap-trap, to his admiring audience. The learned Doctor, it is true, dating from Göttingen, assures us, in his preface of six lines, that' for years his daily walks have been upon the beach;'

Minister or other responsible officers of a congregation, would obviate the evil complained of in the text. And it is far more important that the singing should be well regulated within the congregation itself, than adapted to the convenience of an occasional visitor.

but the reader looks in vain for proof of this in any original observation. Is it possible that a naturalist, who loves the ocean as the Swiss mountaineer loves his native Alps,' can have walked daily upon its shore for years, and not have opened up new and unexpected mines of scientific fact in such an inviting field? not have lighted upon scores of delightful discoveries, where all is so boundless, so patent, and yet so little known? Yet where is the result? Where are the opima spolia of these years' daily researches? The four hundred pages are full of interesting matter, indeed; most interesting, most fascinating. The information has been gathered with persevering industry, and selected with praiseworthy care, and presented with sprightliness and grace; and if the work had come with honest front as what it is, a compilation, not a word but of kindly welcome and warm approval should have met it; but the insinuation in the preface, that it is the fruit of individual observation, ought to be exposed.

Nor is the publishers' part in the work altogether bond fide. The chromoxylographic plates,' or, in the vernacular, woodcuts printed in colours, have a flashy style, but several of them are copies from other works; and, of the remainder, many of the natural history details are ludicrously inexact: one or two only are good. But the woodcuts proper, what of them? These number upwards of three hundred, and form a very marked feature of the book. But we had a strong suspicion that they were old friends. We took down from our shelves Swainson's volumes in Lardner's Cyclopædia, Owen's Invertebrata, and Maunder's Treasury of Natural History; and the cuts,-the actual identical cuts,-turned up by scores. The tiny blocks of the last-named work have been re-used with special profusion. Of the three hundred and twenty woodcuts in Dr. Hartwig's work, we doubt if twenty have been engraved expressly for it; we really doubt if there is a single original figure.* Will English readers who have purchased a book so vaunted think that they are honourably treated?

Lieutenant Maury's book, on the other hand, is the production of a master. The grand field of oceanic physics is one in which he has no rival and no second; he is the Humboldt of the sea. His observations come to us loaded with facts; grand facts of his own accumulating, and many of them of his own discovering; while his eminence and zeal in this research constitute him the

So blindly has this employment of old cuts been made, that several have been introduced which have not the slightest relation to the subject of the book; such as scenes from the interior of North America. We might as appropriately have been treated to the latest French fashions.

Vastness in Extension.

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acknowledged and legitimate centre to which the ever augmenting streams of new fact flow. As Linnæus from his chair at Upsal sent forth a host of young, ardent, and enterprising pupils to scour the world for specimens and facts, which he used as raw material for his Systema Natura; so Maury has his scholars in all the navies of the civilized world, who perpetually collect in every sea, and pour at his feet, the observations, out of which he is continually weaving the great web of a Systema Maris. Oh! it is a glorious subject, that mighty sea! When we stand alone on some lofty cliff, some bold headland that juts out into the waste of water which roars and boils in hoarse rage far below, and gaze out to the vanishing horizon on three sides, with no land to break the continuity but the narrow strip beneath our feet, that fades to a blue line behind, an awful sense of its grandeur steals over the mind. But still more is this impression heightened to him who, in the midst of the Atlantic, climbs to the main-topmast cross-trees of some goodly ship at daybreak, and watches the bursting of the sun from out of the sparkling waves. A sense of majestic loneliness in the vast unbroken waste is felt: the deck is so far below that it is reduced to a small area, and its sounds scarcely reach so high; the horizon is immensely expanded; perhaps the winds are hushed, and the boundless waste is sleeping in glittering stillness; not a speck interrupts the glorious circle: a solemn awe pervades the devout gazer's mind, as he recalls the words, 'This great and wide sea!'

We have sometimes pleased our fancy, as we have stood on the beach of one of our south-western bays, with the thought, that, if we could send forth a little bird, with the power of unflagging flight, straight out to seaward, strictly forbidding the pinion to be closed until land was beneath her, we might welcome her again to England, without her course of twenty-five thousand miles having deviated sensibly from her original departure. Right away would she stretch, on something like a S.AW. course, keeping between the meridians of 10° and 30° W., across the line on 20°, away through the South Atlantic, crossing the horrid pole, and then up, up, through the Pacific, leaving New Zealand on the right and Australia on the left,-over that coral sea, where the isles, though they look thickly studded on our maps, are widely enough separated by vast horizons,-over the still more desert North Pacific, in the meridian of 170° W.,across the scattered Aleutian chain,-through Behring's Strait, and over the Arctic pole,-giving as wide a berth to Spitzbergen on the one hand as to Iceland on the other,-till she folded her wings on our own fair land once more,-having performed her weary stretch of ocean almost in a straight line.