unresisting by the uniformly directed tide of its harmonies! It is a chaunt but twice varied: one verse being in four parts, and another in five, till both unite in the final swell of nine voices. The written notes are simple and unadorned; but tradition, under the guidance of long experience and of chastened taste has interwoven many turns, dissonances, and resolutions, which no written or published score has expressed. At first, the voices enter in full but peculiar harmony, softly swelling in emphasis on each word, till the middle of the verse, when a gradual separation of each part takes place, preparing for the first close; you hear them, as though weaving among themselves a rich texture of harmonious combination; one seems struggling against the general resolve, and refusing more than a momentary contact with one another, but edging off upon delicious dissonances, till the whole, with a waving successive modulation, meet in full harmony upon a suspended cadence. Then they proceed with the second portion of the verse, upon a different, but even richer accord, till once more they divide with greater beauty than before. The parts seem to become more entangled than ever. Here you trace one winding and creeping, by soft and subdued steps, through the labyrinth of sweet sounds; then another drops, with delicious trickling falls, from the highest compass to the level of the rest; then one seems at length to extricate itself; then another, in imitative successive cadences; they seem as silver threads that gradually unravel themselves, and then wind round the fine deep-toned bass which has scarcely swerved from its steady dignity during all their modulations, and filling up the magnificent diapason, burst into a swelling final cadence, which has no name upon earth.
After verse has thus succeeded to verse, ever deepening the impression once made, without an artifice or an embellishment to mar the singleness of the influence, after the union of the two choirs has
