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he had neither been wont to look upon his arrangement of the Psalter, exactly in the light of a musical work. (and therefore amenable to musical precedent); nor yet had he ever been so enamoured of those arrangements of the Canticles, &c., commonly called "Services," (which afford the only examples of the use of the word "Sabaoth," in the works of our English Church Composers), as to think, at the moment, of these, as affording any very peculiarly high authority on such a point. In these particulars he owns that he was mistaken. For undoubtedly such an arrangement of the Psalter, as the present, must come under the category of musical works, and must therefore follow the precedent of such works. And since it appears that usage, at least among our English Church Composers, is tolerably uniform in regard to the point in question, he has felt it his duty to conform to that usage in his completed work.

For the suggestion in the "Ecclesiologist,” that led him to adopt this correction in his work, he wishes respectfully to offer his acknowledgments to the writer of the Article in which it was contained.

He does not think it necessary to allude to any further criticisms in that Article, as they have led to no practical result.

It only remains now, for the Editor to express his very deep and sincere regret that he should have to offer to his brethren a work, in which he feels that there are so many faults and imperfections. Many of these must, doubtless, of necessity adhere to a work of this nature; where, in fact, the real question is only how to avoid the greater of two evils. This remark, of course, applies especially to such points as the determination of the number of syllables, which, in certain cases, are to be sung to the mediations or cadences of the Tones. There are, no doubt, many instances in the present Psalter, in which some persons will think that the Editor has allotted too many syllables to a note, and perhaps also many other instances, in which he will be thought, by a

different class of objectors, to have given too many notes to a syllable. If, however, the complainants of both classes, will be so good, in each case, as to ascertain what would be the several alternatives involved in rejecting the arrangement employed in this Psalter, they will probably find those alternatives to be so intolerable, either to the one class or to the other, that they will both at length be only too glad to acquiesce in such a compromise of evils, as that with which the present Editor has found himself obliged to be satisfied.

This remark, however, applies to a portion only of the faults and imperfections of the present work. With regard to the rest, he must solicit the toleration of his brethren; in the hope,-in which he himself most heartily sympathizes,-that this work will soon be superseded by a better and more successful one. If indeed the verdict of his brethren upon the present arrangement of the Psalter, should prove more favourable than his own, and if a second Edition should, consequently, ever be demanded, he may by that time, possibly, be enabled to see his way towards obviating some of its existing defects.

He would also venture to suggest, that, under such a contingency, he trusts he may be able to produce-what certainly the work ought to be, as a work for the people: viz., a cheap Psalter. In the present instance, this was impossible; not only on account of the extreme expensiveness of such a work, in the first attempt; but also because he was unable, without assistance from other quarters, to incur a greater sacrifice than he has already incurred, in publishing the work even at its present price.

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