ords which
probably inspired it. The tone and metre of the hymn were natural to the
young author's inheritance; a memory of her grandfather's home-land
melodies, with which he once crooned "little Mary" to sleep.

Sung as a closing hymn, "My ain countree" sends the worshipper away with
a tender, unworldly thought that lingers.

Mrs. Demarest wrote an additional stanza in 1881 at the request of Mr.
Main.

Some really good gospel hymns and tunes among those omitted in this
chapter will cry out against the choice that passed them by. Others are
of the more ephemeral sort, the phenomena (and the demand) of a
generation. Carols of pious joy with inordinate repetition, choruses
that surprise old lyrics with modern thrills, ballads of ringing sound
and slender verse, are the spray of tuneful emotion that sparkles on
every revival high-tide, but rarely leaves floodmarks that time will not
erase. Religious songs of the demonstrative, not to say sensational,
kind spring impromptu from the conditions of their time--and give place
to others equally spontaneous when the next spiritual wave sweeps by.
Their value lingers in the impulse their novelty gave to the life of
sanctuary worship, and in the Christian characters their emotional power
helped into being.

CHAPTER XIII.

HYMNS, FESTIVAL AND OCCASIONAL.

_CHRISTMAS._

"ADESTE FIDELES."

This hymn is of doubtful authorship, by some assigned to as late a date
as 1680, and by others to the 13th century as one of the Latin poems of
St. Bonaventura, Bishop of Albano, who was born at Bagnarea in Tuscany,
A.D. 1221. He was a learned man, a Franciscan friar, one of the greatest
teachers and writers of his church, and finally a cardinal. Certainly
Roman Catholic in its origin, whoever was its author, it is a Christian
hymn qualified in every way to be sung by the universal church.

Adeste, fideles
Laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem;
Natum videte Regem angelorum.

CHORUS.
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus!
Venite, adoremus Dominum.

This has been translated by Rev. Frederick Oakeley (1808-1880) and by
Rev. Edward Caswall (1814-1878) the version of the former being the one
in more general use. The ancient hymn is much abridged in the hymnals,
and even the translations have been altered and modernized in the three
or four stanzas commonly sung. Caswall's version renders the first line
"Com