A powerful hymn of national righteousness, taken from Lowell’s poem called “The Present Crisis,” 1845, the crisis being the war with Mexico which the author held to be unjust and would only result in enlarging the area of slavery. To make the meter of the poem regular enough to be sung, some alteration was inevitable. James Russell Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1838 and was admitted to the bar two years later. He succeeded Longfellow as Professor of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard, in 1855. From 1857 to 1862 he edited the _Atlantic Monthly_ and the nine years following that he was editor of the _North American Review_. In 1877 he was appointed minister to Spain, and in 1881, to England, remaining at the latter post four years. He wrote various volumes of poetry and was a prominent anti-slavery writer both in verse and prose. _MUSIC._ TON-Y-BOTEL, also known as “Ebenezer,” is a “solemn tune, of very simple structure, being formed, throughout, of imitations of the first bar.” A letter from the copyright owners, W. Gwenlyn Evans and Son, Caernarvon, Wales, written by A. Vaughan Evans, throws interesting light on this tune and the origin of the fictitious story which gave rise to the name TON-Y-BOTEL. It reads, in part: ... We have pleasure in granting permission to use the tune Ebenezer (Ton-Y-Botel) free of charge in the Mennonite Hymn Book.... It is an original Welsh composition by T. J. Williams ... and was part of a Memorial Anthem ‘_Goleu yn y Glyn_’ (Light in the Vale) in memory of a friend of the composer....