The present effect may be compared to that which would be felt, if we should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them simply in a dramatic view, we claim the right to suggest their dramatic force and pertinency. This effect, we might remark, is particularly and most truthfully regarded in the Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan. That monody would be shorn of its interest, if it were inserted anywhere else. The Psalms are more impersonal and more strictly religious than that, and hence their universal application; only we say, we can easily conceive that the revival of them in the order of their history, and in all the purity of their native pathos, would render them more attractive. In connection with what we would further observe of the Psalms of David, let us again call attention to the ancient chorus,--how it was a species of melodrama, how it sang its parts, and comprised distinct vocalists and musicians, who pursued the piece in alternate rejoinder. What we would observe is, that many of the Psalms were written for the chorus, and, so to speak, were performed by it. There are some of them which it is impossible to understand without attention to this dramatic method of rehearsal. Psalm cxviii., for instance, includes several speakers. Psalm xxiv. was composed on the occasion of the transfer of the ark to the tabernacle on Mount Zion. And David, we read, and all the house of Israel, brought up the ark with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet. In the midst of the congregated nation, supported by a varied instrumental accompaniment, with the smoke of the well-fed altar surging into the skies, the chorus took up the song which had been prepared to their hand,--one group calling out, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?"--the other pealing their answer, "He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." Meanwhile, they dance before the Lord,--that is, we suppose, preserving with their feet the unities of the music. It was during a melodrama like this, in the midst of its exciting grandeur and all-pervading transport, executed at the Feast of Tabernacles, in the open area of the Temple, when the Jews were wont to pour upon the altar water taken from the pool of Siloam, chanting at the same time the twelfth chapter of Isaiah, and one division of the chorus had just sung the words,-- "With joy we draw water from the wells of salvation,"