Rev. Martin Madan wrote no hymns; his only claim to immortality rests on his emendations of the hymns of greater men. But he well deserves to be remembered for some of his happy improvements of important hymns. His revision of Watts’ hymn “He dies! the Heavenly Lover dies!” has already been referred to. Madan very fortunately changed Charles Wesley’s “Hark how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of Kings,” into the much more poetical lines: “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King.’” _Minor Felicitous Changes._ No small improvement in our hymns consists of the change of individual phrases because of misplaced accents, unfortunate consonantal combinations, inept metaphors, and phrases that are secular in spirit and associations. In Cowper’s “Jesus, where’er thy people meet,” the second line had the word “inhabitest,” difficult to sing; it was changed to “Dost dwell with those.” In Bishop Ken’s “Evening Hymn” some bad cases of wrong accents have been corrected. “Under thy own almighty wings” now is “Beneath the shadow of thy wings,” and “Triumphing rise at the last day” is become “Rise glorious at the judgment day.” Isaac Watts’ theory that hymns should eschew poetic grace was carried too far—into euphonic slovenliness. In “Welcome, sweet day of rest” he wrote “One day amidst the place,” ignoring the fact that “amidst” is not singable. “One day in such a place” is much more suave. In “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” he wrote in the first line of stanza three “let sins and sorrows grow”; the excessive sibilation has been removed by using singular nouns. In Charles Wesley’s very useful hymn, “Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim,” “The praises of Jesus” is substituted for “Our Jesus’ praises,” distributing the hissing s’s more musically. The second and third stanzas are wisely omitted; few congregations could sing, with the solemnity the rest of the hymn calls for, such lines as “When devils engage, the billows arise, And horribly rage and threaten the skies.” Charles Wesley in his hymn, “Jesus, let thy pitying eye,” had a very realistic vision of the crucifixion and wrote “My Saviour _gasped_, ‘Forgive!’” which for singing purposes was well emended to “prayed.” How did it escape the eagle eye of his brother John? Or did the influence of the Moravians, who were fond of these physical touches in writing of the crucifixion, affect both the Wesleys? The “Protestant Te Deum,” “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” has fared well—or ill, according to the point of view—at the hands of “hymn-tinkers.” Revisers have omitted “Let highborn seraphs tune the lyre And, as they tune it, fall Before His face who tunes their choir, And crown him Lord of all.” They have transformed the stanza, “Let every tribe and every tongue That bound creation’s call Now shout in universal song The crowned Lord of all,” into the nobler stanza,