veritablement
notre mere." In an English manual, first printed in 1688, and
then called "The Prince of Wales's Manual," the lines are thus
rendered--

Shew us a Mother's care,
To Him convey our prayer,
Who for our sake put on
The title of thy Son.

I rejoice to see an indication of a feeling of impropriety in
the sentiment in its plain, obvious meaning; still the change is
inadmissible. She is addressed above, in the second line, as the
mother of God; Jesus is immediately mentioned, in the very next
line, and through the entire stanza, as her Son; and the prayer
is, that through her that Being who endured to be her Son would
hear the prayers of the worshippers.

Since I first prepared this note for the press, I have found a
proof, that the obvious grammatical and logical meaning, "show
thyself to be His mother," is the sense in which it was received
and interpreted before the Reformation. In a work dedicated to
the "Youth of England studious of good morals," and entitled
"Expositio Sequentiarum," the only interpretation given to this
passage is thus expressed: "Show thyself to be a MOTHER, namely
BY APPEASING THY SON, and let thy Son take our prayers through
thee, who (namely, the Son born of the Virgin Mary,) for us
miserable sinners endured to be thy Son." "Monstra te esse
MATREM (sc.) placando TILIUM TUUM, et filius tuus sumat precem,
id est, deprecationes nostras per te qui (sc.) filius natus ex
Virgine Maria pro nobis (sc.) miseris peccatoribus tulit, id
est, sustinuit esse tuus filius." It must be observed, that this
work was expressly written for the purpose of explaining these
parts of the ritual according to the use of Sarum. It was
printed by the famous W. de Worde, at the sign of the Sun in
Fleet-street, 1508. The passage occurs in p. 33. b. This is by
no means the only book of the kind. I have before me one printed
at Basil, in 1504, and another at Cologne the same year. They
are evidently all drawn from some common source, but are not
reprints all of the same work, for there are in each some
variations. The Cologne edition tells us, that it was the
reprint of a familiar commentary long ago (jamdudum) published
on the hymns. All these join in construing the passage so as to
represent the prayer to the Virgin to be, that she would show