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viii Preface,
suitable heads, compositions of a kind intermediate between hymns for general use and private meditations; which (although the distinction is better marked in some cases than in others) seem to breathe, upon the whole, the accents of particular, rather than general, consciousness and experience. On this account,thejr are, for the most part, out of place in ordinary hymn-books, and unfit to be sung by public congregations; but their tone is not the les& spiritual and real; and those who know anything of their own wants, and of the power of religion, can scarcely fail to be impressed with their beauty and truth.
The Editor is not sure, whether it may not appear to some to be an objection to this classification, that, by bringing closely together a number of hymns on one subject, a sense of repetition and monotony is created, which might have been avoided by a different method. The repetition, however, which will undoubtedly be met with in the works, not only of different, but even of the same hymn-writers, is of a kind appropriate to such compositions ; and, therefore, it ought not to be withdrawn from observation. All lovers of Art are familiar with the habitual repetition of Holy Families, and other sacred subjects, by the early painters* |
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