The hymn with its primitive music as chanted in the ancient churches, was known as "The Midnight Mass," and was the processional song of the religious orders on their way to the sanctuaries where they gathered in preparation for the Christmas morning service. The modern tune--or rather the tune in modern use--is the one everywhere familiar as the "Portuguese Hymn." (See page 205.) MILTON'S HYMN TO THE NATIVITY. It was the winter wild While the Heavenly Child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies. Nature in awe of Him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her great Master so to sympathize. * * * * * No war nor battle sound Was heard the world around. The idle spear and shield were high uphung. The hooked chariot stood Unstained with hostile blood, The trumpets spake not to the armed throng, And Kings sat still with awful eye As if they knew their Sovereign Lord was by. This exalted song--the work of a boy of scarcely twenty-one--is a Greek ode in form, of two hundred and sixteen lines in twenty-seven strophes. Some of its figures and fancies are more to the taste of the seventeenth century than to ours, but it is full of poetic and Christian sublimities, and its high periods will be heard in the Christmas hymnody of coming centuries, though it is not the fashion to sing it now. John Milton, son and grandson of John Miltons, was born in Breadstreet, London, Dec. 9, 1608, fitted for the University in St. Paul's school, and studied seven years at Cambridge. His parents intended him for the church, but he chose literature as a profession, travelled and made distinguished friendships in Italy, Switzerland and France, and when little past his majority was before the public as a poet, author of the Ode to the Nativity, of a Masque, and of many songs and elegies. In later years he entered political life under the stress of his Puritan sympathies, and served under Cromwell and his successor as Latin Secretary of State through the time of the Commonwealth. While in public duty he became blind, but in his retirement composed "Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained." Died in 1676. _THE TUNE._ In the old "Carmina Sacra" a noble choral (without name except "No war nor battle sound") well interprets portions of the 4th and 5th stanzas of the great hymn, but replaces the line-- "The idle spear and shield were high uphung." --with the more modern and less figurative-- "No hostile chiefs to furious combat ran." Three stanzas are also added, by the Rev. H.O. Dwight, missionary to Constantinople. The substituted line, which is also, perhaps, the composition of Mr. Dwight, rhymes with-- "His reign of peace upon the earth began," --and as it is not un-Miltonic, few singers have ever known that it was not Milton's own.