Necessarily--except in ultra-conservative localities like Scotland--the exclusive use of the Psalms (metrical or unmetrical) gave way to religious lyrics inspired by occasion. Clement Marot and Theodore Beza wrote hymns to the music of various composers, and Caesar Malan composed both hymns and their melodies. By the beginning of the 18th century the triumph of the hymn-tune and the hymnal for lay voices was established for all time. * * * * * In the following pages no pretence is made of selecting _all_ the best and most-used hymns, but the purpose has been to notice as many as possible of the standard pieces--and a few others which seem to add or re-shape a useful thought or introduce a new strain. To present each hymn _with its tune_ appeared the natural and most satisfactory way, as in most cases it is impossible to dissociate the two. The melody is the psychological coefficient of the metrical text. Without it the verse of a seraph would be smothered praise. Like a flower and its fragrance, hymn and tune are one creature, and stand for a whole value and a full effect. With this normal combination a _complete_ descriptive list of the hymns and tunes would be a historic dictionary. Such a book may one day be made, but the present volume is an attempt to the same end within easier limits. CHAPTER I. HYMNS OF PRAISE AND WORSHIP. "TE DEUM LAUDAMUS." This famous church confession in song was composed A.D. 387 by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, probably both words and music. Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur Tibi omnes angeli, tibi coeli et universae potestates, Tibi cherubim et seraphim inaccessibili voce proclamant Sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. In the whole hymn there are thirty lines. The saying that the early Roman hymns were echoes of Christian Greece, as the Greek hymns were echoes of Jerusalem, is probably true, but they were only echoes. In A.D. 252, St. Cyprian, writing his consolatory epistle[2] during the plague in Carthage, when hundreds were dying every day, says, "Ah, perfect and perpetual bliss! [in heaven.] There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the fellowship of the prophets rejoicing; there is the innumerable multitude of martyrs crowned." Which would suggest that lines or fragments of what afterwards crystalized into the formula of the "Te Deum" were already familiar in the Christian church. But it is generally believed that the tongue of Ambrose gave the anthem its final form. [Footnote 2: [Greek: Peri tou thnetou], "On the Mortality."]