I cannot understand why they did not sing the psalms of David just as they were printed in the English Bible; it would certainly be quite as practicable as to sing this latter selection. President Dunster's improving hand and brain evolved this rendition:-- "Likewise the heavens he down-bow'd and he descended: also there Was at his feet a gloomy cloud and he on cherubs rode apace. Yea on the wings of wind he flew he darkness made his secret place His covert round about him drew." Though the grotesque wording and droll errors of these old psalm-books can, after the lapse of centuries, be pointed out and must be smiled at, there is after all something so pathetic in the thought of those good, scholarly old New England saints, hampered by poverty, in dread of attack of Indians, burdened with hard work, harassed by "eighty-two pestilent heresies," still laboring faithfully and diligently in their strange new home at their unsuited work,--something so pathetic, so grand, so truly Christian, that when I point out any of the absurdities or failures in their work, I dread lest the shades of Cotton, of Sewall, of Mather, of Eliot, brand me as of old, "in capitall letters," as "AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCES," or worse still, with that mysterious, that dread name, "A WANTON GOSPELLER." The second edition of the "New England Psalm-Book" was published in 1647; the one copy known to exist has sold for four hundred and thirty-five dollars. The third edition was the one revised by President Dunster and Mr. Lyon, and was printed in 1650. In 1691 the unfortunate book was again "pollished" by a committee of ministers, who thus altered the last two stanzas of the Song of Deborah and Barak:-- 28. Out of a window Sisera His mother look'd and said The lattess through in coming why So long's chariot staid? His chariot-wheels why tarry they? Her ladies wise reply'd 29. Yea to herself the answer made, 30. Have they not speed? she cry'd. 31. The prey to each a maid or twain Divided have not they? To Sisera have they not shar'd A divers-colour'd prey? Of divers-colour'd needle-work Wrought curious on each side Of various colours meet for necks Of those who spoils divide? Rev. Elias Nason wittily says of "The Bay Psalm-Book," "Welde, Eliot, and Mather mounted the restive steed Pegasus, Hebrew psalter in hand, and trotted in warm haste over the rough roads of Shemitic roots and metrical psalmody. Other divines rode behind, and after cutting and slashing, mending and patching, twisting and turning, finally produced what must ever remain the most unique specimen of poetical tinkering in our literature."