* * * * * "Have we not heard the Bridegroom is so sweet? O let us in that we may kiss his feet!" "No, No--! too late! ye cannot enter now!" The words are found in "Queen Guinevere," a canto of the "Idyls of the King." "OH, GALILEE, SWEET GALILEE." This is the chorus of a charming poem of three stanzas that shaped itself in the mind of Mr. Robert Morris while sitting over the ruins on the traditional site of Capernaum by the Lake of Genneseret. Each cooing dove, each sighing bough, That makes the eve so blest to me, Has something far diviner now, It bears me back to Galilee. CHORUS Oh, Galilee, sweet Galilee, Where Jesus loved so much to be; Oh, Galilee, blue Galilee, Come sing thy song again to me. Robert Morris, LL.D., born Aug. 31, 1818, was a scholar, and an expert in certain scientific subjects, and wrote works on numismatics and the "Poetry of Free Masonry." Commissioned to Palestine in 1868 on historic and archaeological service for the United Order, he explored the scenes of ancient Jewish and Christian life and event in the Holy Land, and being a religious man, followed the Saviour's earthly footsteps with a reverent zeal that left its inspiration with him while he lived. He died in the year 1888, but his Christian ballad secured him a lasting place in every devout memory. _THE TUNE._ The author wrote out his hymn in 1874 and sent it to his friend, the musician, Mr. Horatio R. Palmer,[21] and the latter learned it by heart, and carried it with him in his musings "till it floated out in the melody you know," (to use his own words.) [Footnote 21: See page 311.] CHAPTER VII. OLD REVIVAL HYMNS. The sober churches of the "Old Thirteen" states and of their successors far into the nineteenth century, sustained evening prayer-meetings more or less commonly, but necessity made them in most cases "cottage meetings" appointed on Sunday and here and there in the scattered homes of country parishes. Their intent was the same as that of "revival meetings," since so called, though the method--and the music--were different. The results in winning sinners, so far as they owed anything to the hymns and hymn-tunes, were apt to be a new generation of Christian recruits as sombre as the singing. "Lebanon" set forth the appalling shortness of human life; "Windham" gave its depressing story of the great majority of mankind on the "broad road," and other minor tunes proclaimed God's sovereignty and eternal decrees; or if a psalm had His love in it, it was likely to be sung in a similar melancholy key. Even in his gladness the good minister, Thomas Baldwin, of the Second Baptist Church, at Boston, North End, returning from Newport, N.H., where he had happily harmonized a discordant church, could not escape the strait-lace of a C minor for his thankful hymn-- From whence doth this union arise, That hatred is conquered by love.