The extent of this article forbids a notice of the topographical and archæological researches, measurements, and plans of Dr. Tobler, which will hereafter be a leading authority in this department. The principal value of the works above noticed lies in the materials they furnish for an authentic geography of Palestine. Dr. Robinson's Researches, it is well understood, are but preliminary to the preparation of a Biblical Geography. We presume that these three volumes will be used as books of reference, to substantiate what the Geography will assume with regard to disputed localities. It is devoutly to be wished that the life and health of Dr. Robinson may be spared to complete this cherished object of years of toil.* Meantime it is encouraging to notice that even maps for popular use exhibit traces of the recent investigations of scholars in Palestine. Colton's New Atlas, Chambers's Parlor Atlas, and Bagster's Chronological Atlas, all follow Robinson in the site of Cana, though they retain the old errors with respect to Emmaus and other places. Kiepert's new maps of course exhibit the latest and most accurate results of geographical science. His Neuer Handatlas, however, contains no separate map of Palestine. This country appears on a reduced scale in the map of Klein-Asien, Syrien, und Armenien. This Atlas, which is a beautiful specimen of improved cartography, will consist of ten Lieferungen, each containing four Blättern. Only three numbers, with twelve maps, have yet been published. Dr. Barclay's map of Jerusalem, made from personal surveys during a long residence in that city, is reliable and complete, and is worthy of a far better dress than that in which it appears. Palestine is no longer a terra incognita; yet "there remains much land to be possessed." The names of Robinson, Smith, Thomson, Calhoun, Lynch, are an assurance that American scholarship and enterprise will not be wanting in the further exploration of the land. What is now most needed is a * Keil, in his recent Commentary on the Book of Joshua, makes free use of the geographical data furnished by Ritter and Robinson. This Commentary is itself a contribution to Biblical geography in its relations to history. thorough scientific survey of the whole country, with special reference to its agricultural capabilities, and an exploration of the trans-Jordanic regions for localities and remains, with a view also to commercial openings toward the East. While we write, there lie upon our table the Charter of the "Euphrates Valley Railway," and the project of the "European and Indian Junction Telegraph Company." The railway is to run via Seleucia and Aleppo; but a "Syrian Desert" Road has been projected, with branches from Damascus, via Sidon to Beirut, and via Jerusalem to Joppa! Possibly our learned friend Rabbi Raphall is right in his reading of Isaiah xliii. 19, as applicable to the proposed Syrian Desert Railroad: "Behold I bring you something new, and even now shall it spring forth. Will you not recognize it? I will cause a road to be made through the wilderness, and rivers to flow through the desert." Possibly there is to be a restoration of the Jews to the soil of their fathers, — a point upon which we have been sceptical; and now that all nations are turning their eyes to Suez and Syria as the future routes of the China and India trade, and are there concentrating the resources of science and commerce for the world's highway, it may be that with this "fulness of the Gentiles" Israel shall be gathered to the land of their fathers. * Essay read before the American Geographical Society, in New York. ART. IV.-1. Thesaurus Hymnologicus, sive Hymnorum, Canticorum, Sequentiarum circa Annum MD. usitatarum Collectio amplissima. Carmina collegit, Apparatu critico ornavit, Veterum Interpretum Notas selectas suasque adjecit HERM. ADALBERT. DANIEL, Ph. Dr. Tomus Primus: Hymnos continens. Tomus Secundus: Sequentia; Cantica; Antiphona. Tomus Tertius: Delectus Carminum Ecclesiæ Græcæ, curante REINHOLDO VORMBAUM; Carmina Syriaca Ecclesiæ, curante LUDOVICO SPLIETH, Ph. Dr., etc. Tomus Quartus: Supplementa ad Tomum Primum continens. Halis et Lipsiæ. 1841-1855. 2. Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, aus Handschriften herausgegeben und erklärt von F. G. MONE, Director des Archivs zu Karlsruhe. Erster Band: Lieder an Gott und die Engel. Zweiter Band: Marienlieder. Dritter Band: Heiligenlieder. Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder'sche Verlagshandlung. 1854-55. 3. Gesänge Christlicher Vorzeit. Auswahl des Vorzüglichsten, aus dem Griechischen und Lateinischen übersetzt von C. FORTLAGE, Doctor der Philosophie. Berlin: G. Reimer. 1844. 4. Carmina e Poetis christianis Excerpta ad Usum Scholarum edidit, et permultas Interpretationes, cum Notis Gallicis quæ ad diversa Carminum Genera, vitamque Poetarum pertinent adjecit FELIX CLEMENT. Parisiis, apud Gaume Fratres, Bibliopolas in viâ dictâ Cassette. 1854. 5. Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly Lyrical, selected and arranged for Use; with Notes and Introduction. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, M. A. London: John W. Parker. 1849. 6. De Poesis Latina Rhythmis et Rimis præcipue Monachorum. Libellus conscriptus per CHRIST. THEOPHIL. SCHUCH. Donaueschingæ. 1851. 7. An Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Decline of Rhyming Latin Verse; with many Specimens. By SIR ALEXANDER CROKE, D. C. L. and F. A. S. Oxford: D. A. Talboys. 1828. CHRISTIAN psalmody takes its origin and finds its rudiments in the worship of the Hebrews, and may be said to have passed over from the ritual of the Synagogue to the offices of the Church on the night when the Teacher of Galilee ate the Passover with his disciples, and instituted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Whether the "hymn" which was sung at the conclusion of that solemn feast was one adapted to the new significance of the Passover as a Christian rite, or whether it was the usual paschal hymn, called the Hallel, and composed from the 113th and the five following Psalms; whether it was chanted, or "sung," as the translators of our Received Version have rendered the term in the original, are questions which, since they depend partly on speculation and partly on historical research, have given rise to much learned and not always profitable controversy. We are informed by St. Luke, that the disciples, after the ascension of Christ, returned to Jerusalem, "and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God." That the usual Jewish liturgy was used in these services would seem highly probable; but that the new spirit of Christianity soon released itself from the appointed forms of the temple worship is a fact certified by the earliest annals of the Church. Indeed, in the very opening of the book which records the Acts of the Apostles, we have bequeathed to us the most ancient relic of the Christian liturgical worship, when, in celebration of Peter and John's deliverance from prison, the whole company of the disciples are represented to have lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and recited that sublime hymn which, taking its key-note from the second in the Book of Psalms, begins and ends its strains of supplication and praise in the name of the "holy Child Jesus." As scholars have seen or imagined themselves to see in the purer Greek of St. Peter, as preserved in his Epistles, the traces of that miraculous inspiration which, on the day of Pentecost, imparted to the Apostles the gift of tongues, so with greater reason may this fragment of pious recitative be regarded as the immediate offspring of that divine influence which was then shed upon the Church, quickening and purifying, as with a baptism of fire, "the whole multitude of them that believed," who "were of one heart and of one soul." In undoubted allusion to this gift of poetical improvisation, as one of the "manifestations" of the VOL. LXXXV. - NO. 176. 11 Spirit, St. Paul is found addressing the Corinthian Christians in words like these: "When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation"; and in his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" are enumerated as among the services of the Church. There are not wanting those who profess to find snatches of the early sacred verse deposited in the prose of the New Testament writers. Among such fragments of song supposed to be current in the Apostolic age, and therefore quoted by the writers from " psalms and hymns" which have perished in the lapse of time, may be cited the following from the Epistle to the Ephesians: Εγειρε ὁ καθεύδων Καὶ ἀνάστα ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, And the well-known hexameter line in the Epistle of St. James: Πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον. To this same most ancient Christian poetry is also referred that often-repeated "chorus" of the Apocalypse: Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τὸ ὦ, And the song of Moses: Μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ τὰ ἔργα σου, Ο βασιλεὺς τῶν ἐθνῶν, κ. τ. λ. Though it is quite true, as Quintilian remarks, that metrical feet are often found in prose, and that too without any design on the part of the writer, yet it will be admitted that the excerpts we have quoted (and their number might be greatly multiplied) have in themselves a poetical coloring which favors the hypothesis of their origin in the early Chris tian verse. But whatever may be the reader's judgment upon |