The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-22 00:00:00

At dawn, the shepherds tell with meek surprise
How Heavea enwrapped them with its light benign,
And how they sped to feast their wondering eyes
On Mary, Joseph, and the Babe Divine.
But, when the Day hath come, St. Paul shall preach
Of Him in whom tho Father's brightness shone,
And Holy Church the Word Incarnate teach
In the clear accents of the lov'd St. John.
Very beautiful and touching in its evidence of
sensibility is the hymn in commemoration of
" New Year's Eve," sorrowfully contemplative
over—

Holy Childhood's bloom delicious
Blanched by care and sadness now ;
And the miser's scowl suspicious
Where was Boyhood's beaming brow."
Seldom has the pathetic form of an antithesis all
but paradoxical in the emphasis of it been more
felicitously applied than in this instance, where our
author ing'his Hymn on the " Feast of the Epiphany,"
commemorates in the coming of the Kings of the
East—
" The Wise of Earth to lay their Folly at His feet !"
Hardly in a single instance, by the way, have we
been enabled to detect in the equable flow of the
rhythm throughout the various poems making up
this charming collection entitled the " Lyra
Liturgica, one casual line that fails to scan cor-
rectly. One solitary verse alone of this kind can
we here recall to our recollection—namely, at p.
51, the second line of the stanza beginning--
Then on her eye a wondrous vision beamed
A man of meek aspect, a matron mild, lc.
An incidental lapsus, so trivial of itslind, that we
only direct attention to it at all as evidence of our
having examined the contents of the volume with a
searching and almost captious scrutiny. One phrase
there is—so regarding the work, under however
another aspect—that still, even after careful recon-
sideration, appears to us quite inexplicable. It is a
phrase occurring upon p. 59, where, referring to
Satan's temptation of the Messiah, the lyrist
exclaims—
" What though his arts were met and foiled,
And from lhy mailed Soil recoiled."
Surely a slip on the part of the typographer. An
obvious misprint occurs later on (p. 103), where, in
reference to the Crucifixion, our author is made to I
say—.

" Gaul Ills drink, behold Him languish."
While we are thus ungraciously carping over the
microscopic flaws that are alone discernible in these
pages, upon the most searching and even, it might
almost be said, cynical examination of their
- -ccc GIL 11110.1(L/LL LO
the apostrophe addressed to St. Benedict (p.
69), to the effect—
Thy children, doom'd to exile, still
With loyal hearts or work thy will
Or stereotype thy ways.
Where our author is most persuasive, as it appears
to us, is in the eloquent force of his exceeding
tenderness and simplicity : as where, at the open-
ing of his hymn on the " Feast of the Annunciation,"
he cries out in a very enthusiasm of simplicity and
tenderness—

Ye who deem us over-bold
When we chant our Lady's praise—
Judges harsh and critics cold
Of evil life and ardent phrase—
Come with me and con the story
Of her grace and destined glory ;
By its light ye stand reproved ;
_Dare we slight whom God so loved?
As on Ash Wednesday he has an eye and a voice
of reverent appreciation for the profound symbolism
latuit in the " penitential grains," so has he in a
joyous and exultant mood for the " consecrated
boughs" borne aloft processionally on Palm Sun-
day. Poetically referring to the fragrant clouds
surging up from the thurible, he speaks of their
rising in " fleecy ringlets." Alluding to the Apos-
tolic assemblage in between, the Resurrection and
the Ascension, he almost wittily applies the well-
known expression of the Evangelist—
" We, too, are gathered in our Upper Room (Thy Church).',
Like an echo from the heart of our old Eng-
lish Poet, Thomas Southwell, comes the pathetic
close of this solemn and affecting stanza (which
shall be the last of our many excerpts from the pages
of the " Lyra Liturgica")—
Church and her priests despised ;
The Eucharist unprized—
Cooped within walls, and of its honour shorn,
Or borne in breast, not hand
Like something contraband, •
And hid from pious eyes for fear of scorn.
Having said all which, and fully justified our re-
marks, as it appears to us, by the foregoing quota-
tions, we would here recur to the simple but em-
phatic observation with which wo comm enced—
namely, that, according to our view of those two
exquisite works, The Christian Year and the Lyra
Liturgica may be placed side by side upon our
bookshelves. They are the effusions of congenial
spirits—sons of the same alma mater—men whom
that noble University of Oxford will long hold in
proud remembrance—the one wistfully,no doubt, the
othor exultantly! For if the one has long since passed
beyond the pale of the Church Establishment, the other
Oxford, Cambridge, England, yet rejoices to know
is still within the compass of its communion. Yet—.
divergent though their paths have been—there re-
mains unbroken (even it may be said unloosened),
a bond of direct and intimate sympathy between
John Keblc and Frederick Oakeley, between this
Catholic priest.and this Protestant clergyman 1 Just
assuredly as thelike sympathy subsists, unbroken, un-
loosened, between Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman. Of
the latter fact, the Apologia and Eirenicon have
very recently afforded signal and conclusive attesta-
tion. Of the former fact, that is of the
no less intimate sympathy still subsisting between
the natures, between the souls, of such men as the
Rev. J. Keble and the Rev. F. 0 akeley, evidence
equally conclusive and quite as signal in its way,
appears to us to be exquisitely discernible in the
kindred fervour and congenial devotion manifested
by Mr. Keble in the Christian Year and by Father
Oakeley in the Lyra Liturgica—lyrical volumes not
unworthy of being placed on either side of the be-
loved masterpiece of Thomas a Kempis, the immor-
tal De Imitatione.

NAPOLEON 111. AND M. GUSTAVE DORE.—M.
Maine, editor of the Bible Mustrie of M. Gustave Dore,
having solicited an audience with the Emperor, to present
a copy of the work, was informed in reply that his Ma-
jesty would receive him, but in company with the author
of the illustrations. M. Gustave„ Dore therefore went to
the Tuileries at the hour appointed, and was warmly com-
plimented by both the Emperor and Empress, who also
4CCertoa tho work naaviiicently bound,

tho passion of supplication compressed into the
couplet—

0, loving Judge, 0 Saviour just,
Remember that we are but dust !
At intervals, too, his very terseness in this way has
all the force and emphasis of syllogistic reason-
ing. As, where singing of the Patroness of the
Two Advents, he thus enforces her claim to the title
of the Immaculate.--

The grace that from thy chaste Conception flows,
To awe and keen compunction well may move,
So high the Nature that the Incarnate chose ;
So pure the Creature that deserved His love.
By the mere picturesqueness again of a single
aptly chosen phrase, he conjures up a whole picture
in one passing sentence. As where, referring to the
Apparition of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed
Virgin, he speaks of--
Her lowliness and calm submission seen
In shrinking converse with her Angel-Guest,
that one solitary participle, presenting to view a
very vignette glimpse of Jalabert's lovely vision of
the Annunciation. His homage for Mater Dei
Genetrix he is never weary of articulating. She is to
him, as she is called in the Loretto Litany, the Stella
Matutina.

Shedding over every page and line
(as he himself sings with impassioned emphasis)
A lustre only not divine !
Occasionally in the course of the " Lyra Liturgica"
the rev. song-writer, in reality very ingeniously,
though to all appearance quite casually, explains
some of the esoteric mysteries of the ceremonies set
forth in the Breviary—as where in commemoration of
the triple mass of Christmas Day, he thus indicates
that those three ceremonials are illustrative of the
Nativity under the different aspects of Prophesy,
Narrative, and Dogma—
At midnight's hour prophetic mists shall hang
Around the glories of Messiah's birth,
Which David hinted ere the welkin rang
With the glad notes of holy angel mirth.