In this day we run little risk of ship-wreck through too great an amount of science. Scarlatti and Bach would laugh at the efforts styled 'canon' and 'fugue,' by the aspiring tyros of the present age. Our difficulties arise, not from musical complexity, but from want of suitableness, adaptation, and characterization, together with the ever-increasing feud between choir and congregational singing. In some churches on the Continent of Europe, these two latter modes are happily blended, certain services or portions of services being left to the choir, and the remainder being entrusted to the entire congregation. Of course this arrangement is only practicable where there is a certain variety in the musical portion of the service. Where the singing of hymns (in the ordinary sense of the phrase) is the only musical form used in the worship, such differences would be difficult to establish, and a variety of circumstances must determine which of the two modes, or what combination of them, be selected by the congregation. Even where splendor is studiously avoided, all desire order and decency in the conduct of public worship, and such order is painfully violated where discordant sounds or unsuitable selections of music are permitted to distract attention and disturb devotion. A ragged carpet, faded fringes, or dingy window panes, would speedily find a reformer; and surely the sensitive, defenceless ear has as good a claim to exact order as the more voluntary sense of seeing. Better, indeed, no music, than such as binds the wings of the soul to earth instead of aiding them to fly heavenward.