ilfully outrageous than the
body. Plutarch, in his essays, has a familiar illustration, which he
borrows from some philosopher more ancient than himself:--"Should the
body sue the mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be
found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to its
landlord." The sage of Cheronaea did not foresee the hint of Descartes
and the discovery of Camus, that by medicine we may alleviate or remove
the diseases of the mind; a practice which indeed has not yet been
pursued by physicians, though the moralists have been often struck by
the close analogies of the MIND with the BODY! A work by the learned Dom
Pernetty, _La connoissance de l'homme moral par celle de l'homme
physique_, we are told is more fortunate in its title than its
execution; probably it is one of the many attempts to develope this
imperfect and obscured truth, which hereafter may become more obvious,
and be universally comprehended.

PSALM-SINGING.

The history of Psalm-singing is a portion of the history of the
Reformation,--of that great religious revolution which separated for
ever, into two unequal divisions, the establishment of Christianity. It
has not, perhaps, been remarked that psalm-singing, or metrical psalms,
degenerated into those scandalous compositions which, under the abused
title of _hymns_, are now used by some sects.[300] These are evidently
the last disorders of that system of psalm-singing which made some
religious persons early oppose its practice. Even Sternhold and Hopkins,
our first psalm-inditers, says honest Fuller, "found their work
afterwards met with some frowns in the faces of great clergymen." To
this day these opinions are not adjusted. Archbishop Secker observes,
that though the first Christians (from this passage in James v. 13, "Is
any merry? let him sing psalms!") made singing a constant part of their
worship, and the whole congregation joined in it; yet afterwards the
singers by profession, who had been _prudently appointed to lead and
direct them_, by degrees USURPED the whole performance. But at the
Reformation _the people were restored to their_ RIGHTS! This
revolutionary style is singular: one might infer by the expression of
_the people being restored to their rights_, that a mixed assembly
roaring out confused tunes, nasal, guttural, and sibilant, was a more
orderly government of psalmody than when the executive power was
consigned to the voices of thos