There is one effect which, in the present arrangement of the canon, is entirely lost to view, and which could be revived only by the synchronizing of the Psalms with their proper epochs. For instance, the eighth Psalm is referable to the youth of David, when he was yet leading a shepherd life. The dramatic form of his history would detach this from its present place, and insert it amid the occasions and in the years to which it belongs. What a scene we should then have! The youthful David, ruddy he was, and, withal, of a beautiful countenance, (marginal reading, fair of eyes,) and goodly to look to; and he was a cunning player on the harp. There is the glow of poetic enthusiasm in his eyes, and the fervor of religious feeling in all his moods; as he tends his flock amid the quietness and beauty of his native hills, he joins to the aspirations of his soul the melodies of music. So the night overtakes him, the labors of the day are past, his meditations withdraw him from the society of men, he is alone with Nature and with God;--at such a moment the spirit of composition and utterance is upon him, and he hymns himself in those lofty and touching stanzas,-- "O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth! When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, What is man that thou art mindful of him, And the son of man that thou carest for him? Yet thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor; Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hand, Thou hast put all things under his feet,-- All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the forest, The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, And whatsoever passes through the deep. O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth!" Again, the fifty-seventh Psalm is assigned, in respect of place, to the cave of En-gedi, into which David fled from the vengeance of Saul. Here, surrounded by lofty rocks, whose promontories screen a wide extent of vale, he breaks forth,-- "Have pity upon me, O God, have pity upon me, For in thee doth my soul seek refuge! Yea, in the shadow of thy wings do I take shelter, Until these calamities be overpast!" Dramatically touched, and disposed according to the natural unities of the subject, these sublime and affecting songs would appear on their motive occasions, and be surrounded by their actual accompaniments.