f song. Old "Truro" by Dr. Burney appears among their tunes, Mason's
"Ernan," "Lowell" and "Shawmut," I.B. Woodbury's "Nearer Home" (to Phebe
Cary's hymn), and even George Hews' gently-flowing "Holley." Most of
these tunes retain their own hymns, but in Welsh translation. To find
our Daniel Read's old "Windham" there is no surprise. The minor mode--a
song-instinct of the Welsh, if not of the whole Celtic family of
nations, is their rural inheritance. It is in the wind of their
mountains and the semitones of their streams; and their nature can make
it a gladness as the Anglo-Saxon cannot. So far from being a gloomy
people, their capacity for joy in spiritual life is phenomenal. In
psalmody their emotions mount on wings, and they find ecstacy in solemn
sounds.

"A temporary excitement" is the verdict of skepticism on the Reformation
wave that for a twelvemonth swept over Wales with its ringing symphonies
of hymn and tune. But such excitements are the May-blossom seasons of
God's eternal husbandry. They pass because human vigor cannot last at
flood-tide, but in spiritual economy they will always have their place,
"If the blossoms had not come and gone there would be no fruit."

CHAPTER XII.

FIELD HYMNS.

Hymns of the hortatory and persuasive tone are sufficiently numerous to
make an "embarrassment of riches" in a compiler's hands. Not a few songs
of invitation and awakening are either quoted or mentioned in the
chapter on "Old Revival Hymns," and many appear among those in the last
chapter, (on the _Hymns of Wales_;) but the _working_ songs of Christian
hymnology deserve a special space _as_ such.

"COME HITHER ALL YE WEARY SOULS,"

Sung to "Federal St.," is one of the older soul-winning calls from the
great hymn-treasury of Dr. Watts; and another note of the same sacred
bard,--

Life is the time to serve the Lord,

--is always coupled with the venerable tune of "Wells."[44] Aged
Christians are still remembered who were wont to repeat or sing with
quavering voices the second stanza,--

The living know that they must die,
But all the dead forgotten lie;
Their memory and their sense are gone,
Alike unknowing and unknown.

And likewise from the fourth stanza,--

There are no acts of pardon passed
In the cold grave to which we haste.

[Footnote 44: One of Israel Holroyd's tunes. He was born in England,
about 1690, and was both a composer and publisher of psalmody. H