Great God, all just, all wise, Chorus. Great God, all just, all wise, &c. Among the songs received were some which contained a single stanza or two of remarkable merit; and of these, one in the form of an apostrophe to "Our National Ensign" ended with the following noble lines, in which a large and stirring thought is well developed and sustained, and brought to a fine climax, with, however, a slight and easily remedied defect of metaphor in the fifth line. "Flag of two ocean shores! Whose everlasting thunder roars From deep to deep in storm and foam !— Thou sink'st to slumber, yet Thou risest, and shalt share his tomb! Another called "A Hymn for Freedom," opens with the following spirited stanza: "A hymn for Freedom! let it ring Symph. And choral as the grandest lays That made the stars sublime. Raise high the strain from land to land, And all Earth's voices shall prolong The anthem of the free !" This promises well; but the remainder is unequal to it, and falls, as was the case in many other instances, into the making of protests against kings and lords, and assurances of security from despots and tyrants! For us these things belong to a past world, from which we are cut off by a gulf as impassable as that between Lazarus and Dives. It were as well to assure us that we are safe from giants and griffins. These songs are few in number to bring forward as specimens of the best that could be found in nearly twelve hundred. It should, however, be remembered that they are only about half of those that were laid aside for publication. But the lyric merit of several of these is such that the country may accept them with pleasure as patriotic offerings. The tone of all of them, with a single exception, is healthy and manly; and indeed it is remarkable, and an indication of the most favorable kind as to our national character, that among this great mass of verse, written in the always somewhat overweening spirit of patriotism, and a great part of which was produced by some of the most unlettered, uncultured people in the country, there was no appreciable exhibition of any other than a spirit of magnanimity, and of Christian charity. The sins against good taste in a literary point of view were numberless; many of the songs being in this respect only one monstrous crime in four acts, being four stanzas. But of offences against that higher taste which dictates a scrupulous respect for the personality, and a consideration for the feelings of others, whether individuals or nations, there were, to all intents and purposes, none whatever. Arrogant self-assertion did not appear; though firm determination, high hope, and consciousness of grave responsibility were constantly exhibited. Aspirations for the success of Truth and Right were the burden, or the climax, of a very large majority of the songs. To have been the means of eliciting such an unconscious exhibition of national high-mindedness is a sufficient reward to the committee, although their efforts were unsuccessful upon the point to which they were directed. In truth, this manifestation is worth infinitely more than the unwritten ideal national hymn in the hope of eliciting which the committee was appointed. VII. It has been already said that the large majority of the songs received by the committee were the merest common-place, brief effusions of decent dulness, or fantastic folly. But it would have been strange indeed if among the contributions of such a great number of competitors, scattered over the whole country, there were not some traits of originality possessing a certain interest, though it were not exactly of that kind that properly pertains to a national hymn. Not a few of the manuscripts tended much to relieve the tedium of the readings by their revelations of the very peculiar notions entertained by their writers as to the kind of words and music suited to a national hymn, and some of them by the complacent requests which accompanied them. The following composition was one of the earliest opened. A NATIONAL HYMN. All hail our country great, |