to do but to review the material which
the revival of music in the last fifty years has given us in the way of
hymns.

This last group divides naturally into two main heads; first the
restoration of old hymns of all kinds, with their plain, severer manner,
in reaction against the abused graces; and secondly the appearance of a
vast quantity of new hymns.

Concerning the restoration of the old hymns, we cannot be too grateful to
those who pointed the right way, and, according to their knowledge and
the opportunities of the taste of their day, did the best that they
could. But, as our remarks under the heads of Plain-song and Reformation
hymns will show, this knowledge, taste, and opportunity were
insufficient, and all their work requires to be done afresh.

We are therefore left to the examination of the modern hymns. In place of
this somewhat invidious task, I propose to make a few remarks on the
general question of the introduction of modern harmony into
ecclesiastical music, with reference of course to hymns only. It cannot
escape the attention of any one that the modern church music has for one
chief differentiation the profuse employment of pathetic chords, the
effect of which is often disastrous to the feelings.

Comparing a modern hymn-tune in this style with some fine setting of an
old tune in the diatonic ecclesiastical manner, one might attribute the
superiority of the old music entirely to its harmonic system; but I think
this would be wrong.

It is a characteristic of all early art to be _impersonal_[19]. As long
as an art is growing, artists are engaged in rivalry to develop the new
inventions in a scientific manner, and individual personality is not
called out. With the exhaustion of the means in the attainment of
perfection a new stage is reached, in which individual expression is
prominent, and seems to take the place of the scientific impersonal
interest which aimed at nothing but beauty: so that the chief distinction
between early and late art is that the former is impersonal, the latter
personal.

Turning now to the subject of ecclesiastical music, and comparing thus
Palestrina with Beethoven or Mozart, is it not at once apparent that
Palestrina has this distinct advantage, namely, that he seems not to
interfere at all with, or add anything to, the sacred words? His early
musical art is impersonal, what the musicians call 'pure music'; and if
he is setting the phrases of the Liturgy or Holy Scr