"He was born at Hanwell, Middlesex, in 1715; was admitted chorister at the Chapel Royal, under Bernard Gates, and when he was able to play the organ was appointed deputy for Pigott, of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and became organist at York Minster in 1734. He succeeded Greene as organist and composer to the Chapel Royal in 1756, and in the same year was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge. He was appointed master of the children of the Chapel Royal in 1757, on the death of Gates. This post he resigned in 1780, and he died in 1783, (February 10,) and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. "He had the reputation of being an excellent trainer of boy's voices, many of his anthems having been written to exhibit the accomplishments of his young pupils. The degree of excellence the boys attained was not won in those days without the infliction of much corporal punishment." Judging from the high pulse and action in the music of "Amsterdam," one would guess the energy of the man who made boy choirs--and made good ones. In the old time the rule was, "Birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing"; and the rule was sometimes enforced with the master's time-stick. A tune entitled "Excelsius," written a hundred years later by John Henry Cornell, so nearly resembles "Amsterdam" as to suggest an intention to amend it. It changes the modal note from G to A, but while it marches at the same pace it lacks the jubilant modulations and the choral glory of the 18th-century piece. SIR JOHN BOWRING. "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." In this hymn we see, sitting humbly at the feet of the great author of our religion, a man who impressed himself perhaps more than any other save Napoleon Bonaparte upon his own generation, and who was the wonder of Europe for his immense attainments and the versatility of his powers. Statesman, philanthropist, biographer, publicist, linguist, historian, financier, naturalist, poet, political economist--there is hardly a branch of knowledge or a field of research from which he did not enrich himself and others, or a human condition that he did not study and influence.