It would be difficult to conceive a choir practising the new version of 'A solis ortus cardine '-'From east to west, from shore to shore'; but the most extraordinary fate has befallen a rather pretty hymn from the Paris Breviary, ' Divine crescebas Puer.' This was efficiently rendered in the former book by the Rev. J. Chandler, the translation of the fourth verse being not devoid of beauty:

He whom the choirs of angels praise,

Bearing each dread decree,

His earthly parents now obeys

In deep humility.

The compilers, however, espied a fault either in the theology or the accuracy of these words, and with 'immense labour' evolved the following in their place:

He at whose word swift angels fly,

His dread commands to bear,
Obeys in deep humility

A simple carpenter.

Comment is surely superfluous.

It were a thankless task to collect further instances of the lack of lyric inspiration, of clumsy diction, and of failures in rhyme and rhythm in what may be called the 'classical side' of the new book. We can only note with sorrow that in her excursions through these pages Piety seems to have discarded her 'handmaid' Poetry, and to have enlisted in her stead that clerkly retainer Scholarship, and we may be thankful that a certain number of translations have been left untouched by the hand of the reviser.

It is harder to discuss the original compositions included in the new book, as the power of hymns over the mind of man is largely influenced by association. There are hymns which we repeated as children, and whose words became dear to us almost before we grasped their meaning; hymns which, sung by the village choir, brought to our childish faith visions of a happy land not far removed from the pleasant meadows which we crossed on our way to church; hymns which in the perplexities of youth whispered their messages of hope, of warning, of encouragement; hymns which ever remain to us as echoes of the gladness of the wedding-day or the mournful shadows of the tomb. There are the triumphant strains with which we greeted Christmas and Easter, and the solemn requiem with which we watched by Calvary.

As we glance through the new book and compare it with the volume so familiar to thousands during the past forty years, the thought cannot but arise that the changes have been made by men who have lost touch to a great extent with human sentiment, or who, in their anxiety to enforce Church doctrines, have forgotten the old couplet:

A verse may find him who a sermon flies,

And turn delight into a sacrifice.

How else can we explain the omission of 'O Paradise! O Paradise!' whose loss is lamented by numbers of men and women who seem to have clung to it as 'the Lord's song in a strange land?' What induced the excision of 'Now, beloved Lord, Thy soul resigning'? and of Heber's hymn, instinct with poetry, 'When through the torn sail the wild tempest is streaming'? Almost stranger than the omissions are the curious changes made in hymns added and retained. The compilers have wisely included for the first time Heber's beautiful 'There was joy in heaven'; but why alter the closing lines? "The sheep that went astray' is more dramatic and more true to Scripture than The soul that went astray,' and the whole quatrain, as the author wrote it, is more consonant with the preceding verses. There is seldom an excuse for changing original words-certainly not those of a true poet like Bishop Heber.

6

'Outside a city wall,' for Mrs. Alexander's Without a city wall,' in 'There is a green hill,' is another unpardonable alteration.

The crowning sin in the new edition is, however, the reversion to the original 'Hark how all the welkin rings,' which has been the occasion of so remarkable a burst of indignation. Consecrated by the usage of over a hundred years, Hark! the herald-angels' had surely become a heritage in the Christian Church with which no man should have lightly interfered. It may be noted that this is the opening line of the hymn in the Methodist Hymn-book, and we need hardly be more Wesleyan than the Wesleyans. The defences put forward for the change are remarkable. One of the compilers is reported to have said that 'herald-angels' was incorrect, as one angel was the herald and the others only joined in afterwards. If this purist had ever heard a proclamation by several heralds he might have discovered that one generally makes the announcement and his companions blow trumpets or otherwise express concurrence. But such an argument is akin to that of the Middle Ages concerning the number of angels who could dance on the point of a needle.

One or two hymns, such as 'Crossing the bar' and 'Alone Thou trodd'st the winepress,' are welcome additions, but it is impossible to contend that the average of the newcomers is high, and this is the more to be regretted when there are so many fine hymns which have never found a place in the collection. To mention only two or three, there are Dean Milman's 'Bound upon the accursed tree' and 'Brother, thou art gone before us,' Addison's 'The spacious firmament on high,' and a spirited hymn by Charles Wesley:

Christ the Lord is risen to-day,

Sons of men and angels say.

The revised volume is supposed to be especially strong in mission hymns; presumably it was too much to expect that room should be found for 'There were ninety and nine' and 'Jesus of Nazareth

passeth by.' Both these are in Sankey's collection; the former is included in Church Hymns and other hymnals.

Since two or three hymns for time of war find place in the new Ancient and Modern, what a grand addition would be Rudyard Kipling's 'Hymn before Action'! The verse Ah, Mary pierced with sorrow' must needs be omitted, but how true to the spirit of the Christian Warrior are the lines

From panic, pride, and terror,

Revenge that knows no rein,

Light haste and lawless error,
Protect us yet again.

Cloak Thou our undeserving,

Make firm the shuddering breath,

In silence and unswerving

To taste Thy lesser death!

It is stated in the preface to Hymns Ancient and Modern that in 1892 negotiations took place between the compilers and Convocation, probably with a view to giving some kind of imprimatur to a volume founded on this collection. It is remarkable that, alone among the principal Reformed Churches of the Empire, the Church of England has no sort of authorised hymnal. In this it somewhat resembles the Roman Church in this country, whose collections of English hymns are used (chiefly at Benediction) at the discretion of individual clergy.

Twelve years spent in revision seem hardly to have rendered Hymns Ancient and Modern more fitted in popular estimation for official recognition, and the dignitaries of our Church may shrink from the almost impossible task of deciding what hymnal is best suited to the varying requirements of their flocks in both hemispheres. They will certainly be disinclined to comply with such demands as that of the Editor of the Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern, who wishes for a book containing, first, all the ancient and medieval hymns of the Universal Church; and secondly, selected modern hymns, but only those which have issued from a Churchman's heart and head.' It is not quite clear whether Wesley's would be excluded under this rule, but it is certain that 'Nearer, my God, to Thee,' written by a Baptist, and 'There's a friend for little children,' by a Plymouth Brother, would be ostracised.

These questions, however, may be safely left to the discretion of our spiritual Fathers. In conclusion we would ask,-What is a true hymn? Is it not the voice of man's heart speaking to the Eternal Spirit in adoration, in supplication, in humble faith, expressed in words the most simple, yet the most dignified, the most musical, and the most truthful which the mind of man can conceive and the spirit which is in man inspire?

VOL. LVI-No. 334

M. E. JERSEY. 3 Q

THE CENSUS OF INDIA

THE Counting of the 294,361,056 human beings who live under conditions of every possible variety, climatic, ethnic, and economic, upon 1,766,597 square miles of the surface of the globe, extending from the Persian frontier to the Chinese march, from the passes of eternal snow, which look down upon our troops on their march towards Lhasa to the burning jungles of Burma and Malabar, is indeed an operation which can only be described as stupendous. The thing was done, however, for the third time, on the 1st of March 1901 by Mr. H. H. Risley, C.I.E., and his assistants, and in a fashion more complete and comprehensive than upon the two former occasions, for in the present census new ground, such as the Beluchistan Agency and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is included. The convict isles were entrusted to the very competent hands of Sir Richard Temple-the second-whose aid is specially acknowledged by Mr. Risley, and Mr. Gait, to the latter of whom, after the official promotion of the former, it fell to write most of the report but lately received in England. In this volume is condensed and abstracted information collected at a cost of only 173,000l. by 9800 charge superintendents, 122,000 supervisors, and no fewer than 1,325,000 enumerators.

Mr. Risley points out, as any fair-minded man might of many of our successes in India, but as few do, that the Indian census is preeminently the work of the Indian people, and that if they withheld their unpaid services the undertaking would be financially impracticable. As a fact, they entered, with painstaking zeal and complete trust in their administrators, into an operation they might, and in some cases still do, regard with suspicion. Mr. Burn, of the formerly North-West, but now United, Provinces, relates how the zeal of one volunteer enumerator impelled him to turn his official instructions into verses, the acquisition of which by heart on the part of his colleagues should, he urged, have been made obligatory. Not otherwise after all did a learned Fellow of the Linnæan Society try to induce a class of boys, of whom I was one, to learn the beggarly elements of botany by putting into rhyme the characteristics of the chief natural orders and the polygamous pursuits of the plants! Another conscientious and accurate enumerator propounded the case of a deaf

and dumb lunatic wandering alone in the moonlight of the fateful night, yet bound by the order of the Sirkar (Government) to fill up sixteen columns of a schedule! A proof of the universal trust now prevailing that no one will, so far as lies within the power of the British Government to prevent it, be allowed to suffer from actual want of food, is found in the fact that the wildest tribe in India, the Bheels, submitted for the first time to enumeration. They were impressed with the argument that no food might be available in the next famine for those who were not counted-in short, that the Sirkar would not know for how many guests to prepare.

A separate slip, like that used in the Bavarian census of 1891, with the necessary modifications and additions, was for the first time introduced with very happy results by Mr. Risley, the colour, shape, and size differing in order to indicate the religion, sex, civil condition, and so on, of the individual to whom it related. The Brahmin gentleman, who very capably conducted the census of the State of Mysore, further had printed on the slips he issued pictorial busts indicative of the information required in each case. A widower, for instance, to the credit of the class, was represented with his head bare, and without his caste mark, both signs of extreme grief and deep mourning. Of the twenty-three Superintendents of Census in Provinces and States, five were Indian gentlemen, and the reports submitted by those in charge in Cochin, Mysore, and Travancore, three of the most beautiful and well-administered States, are deservedly singled out for commendation by Mr. Risley.

No part of India is more interesting from an administrative or historical point of view than the 678,393 square miles, or 38 per cent. of the whole, still under native government, more or less independent according to the more or less scrupulous adherence by the local Government, or Resident concerned, to the treaty obligations existing in each particular case. Native India, though over a third of the area, supports less than a quarter of the population. Of the provinces, the largest, Bengal, is bigger than Sweden, and has a population of 78,500,000. Of the native States, the most extensive, Hyderabad, is greater in size than Great Britain, and has a population exceeding 11,000,000. Yet, the average population of the whole Empire is but 167 per square mile, ranging from eleven in Beluchistan to 1828 in the crowded coast country of Cochin. Density of population is all a matter of irrigation and rainfall; but whether it be dense or sparse, no less than nine-tenths of the whole dwell in villages, though the town population has risen by 7.3 per cent. since last census; while the total population is but 24 greater, this net advance being made up of an increase of 4.8 in British, and a decrease of 5'4 in native, India. It is satisfactory to learn that the rise in the urban population is due, not to the drift of famine and plague subjects to the towns, but to the growth of cotton and jute mills, railway works,