souls.  Conflict rages around, not conducted by Border spear on barren moorland, but by weapons of faith and prayer in the devout German heart;—­a strife earnest as the other, with issues of life and death.  And the resemblance between the books lies in this, that when we open them these past experiences and conditions of life gleam visibly to us far down like submerged cities—­all empty and hollow now, though once filled with life as real as our own—­through transparent waters.

In glancing over these German hymns, one is struck by their adaptation to the seasons and occurrences of ordinary life.  Obviously, too, the writer’s religion was not a Sunday matter only, it had its place in week-days as well.  In these hymns there is little gloom, a healthy human cheerfulness pervades many of them, and this is surely as it ought to be.  These hymns, as I have said, are adapted to the occasions of ordinary life; and this speaks favourably of the piety which produced them.  I do not suppose that we English are less religious than other nations, but we are undemonstrative in this, as in most things.  We have the sincerest horror of over-dressing ourselves in fine sentiments.  We are a little shy of religion.  We give it a day entirely to itself, and make it a stranger to the other six.  We confine it in churches, or in the closet at home, and never think of taking it with us to the street, or into our business, or with us to the festival, or the gathering of friends.  Dr. Arnold used to complain that he could get religious subjects treated in a masterly way, but could not get common subjects treated in a religious spirit.  The Germans have done better; they have melted down the Sunday into the week.  They have hymns embodying confessions of sin, hymns in the near prospect of death:  and they have—­what is more important—­spiritual songs that may be sung by soldiers on the march, by the artisan at the loom, by the peasant following his team, by the mother among her children, and by the maiden sitting at her wheel listening for the step of her lover.  Religion is thus brought in to refine and hallow the sweet necessities and emotions of life, to cheer its weariness, and to exalt its sordidness.  The German life revolves like the village festival with the pastor in the midst—­joy and laughter and merry games do not fear the holy man, for he wears no unkindness in his eye, but his presence checks everything boisterous or unseemly,—­the rude word, the petulant act,—­and when it has run its course, he uplifts his hands and leaves his benediction on his children.

The “Lyra Germanica” contains the utterances of pious German souls in all conditions of life during many centuries.  In it hymns are to be found written not only by poor clergymen, and still poorer precentors, by ribbon-manufacturers and shoemakers, who, amid rude environments, had a touch of celestial melody in their hearts, but by noble ladies and gentlemen, and crowned kings.  The oldest in the collection