Two publications, which appeared almost simultaneously in 1827--Bishop Heber's _Hymns_, with a few added by Dean Milman, and John Keble's _Christian Year_ (not a hymn-book, but one from which several admirable hymns have been taken, and the well-spring of many streams of thought and feeling by which good hymns have since been produced)--introduced a new epoch, breaking down the barrier as to hymnody which had till then existed between the different theological schools of the Church of England. In this movement Richard Mant, bishop of Down, was also one of the first to co-operate. It soon received a great additional impulse from the increased attention which, about the same time, began to be paid to ancient hymnody, and from the publication in 1833 of Bunsen's _Gesangbuch_. Among its earliest fruits was the _Lyra apostolica_, containing hymns, sonnets and other devotional poems, most of them originally contributed by some of the leading authors of the _Tracts for the Times_ to the _British Magazine_; the finest of which is the pathetic "Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom," by Cardinal Newman--well known, and universally admired. From that time hymns and hymn-writers rapidly multiplied in the Church of England, and in Scotland also. Nearly 600 authors whose publications were later than 1827 are enumerated in Sedgwick's catalogue of 1863, and about half a million hymns are now in existence. Works, critical and historical, upon the subject of hymns, have also multiplied; and collections for church use have become innumerable--several of the various religious denominations, and many of the leading ecclesiastical and religious societies, having issued hymn-books of their own, in addition to those compiled for particular dioceses, churches and chapels, and to books (like _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, published 1861, supplemented 1889, revised edition, 1905) which have become popular without any sanction from authority. To mention all the authors of good hymns since the commencement of this new epoch would be impossible; but probably no names could be chosen more fairly representative of its characteristic merits, and perhaps also of some of its defects, than those of Josiah Conder and James Edmeston among English Nonconformists; Henry Francis Lyte and Charlotte Elliott among evangelicals in the Church of England; John Mason Neale and Christopher Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln, among English churchmen of the higher school; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Edward H. Plumptre, Frances Ridley Havergal; and in Scotland, Dr Horatius Bonar, Dr Norman Macleod and Dr George Matheson. American hymn-writers belong to the same schools, and have been affected by the same influences. Some of them have enjoyed a just reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those best known are John Greenleaf Whittier, Bishop Doane, Dr W. A. Muhlenberg and Thomas Hastings; and it is difficult to praise too highly such works as the Christmas hymn, "It