the subject, these sublime and affecting songs would appear on their
motive occasions, and be surrounded by their actual accompaniments.

The present effect may be compared to that which would be felt, if we
should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original
impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and
the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but
that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time
can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them
simply in a dramatic view, we claim the right to suggest their dramatic
force and pertinency. This effect, we might remark, is particularly and
most truthfully regarded in the Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan.
That monody would be shorn of its interest, if it were inserted anywhere
else. The Psalms are more impersonal and more strictly religious than
that, and hence their universal application; only we say, we can easily
conceive that the revival of them in the order of their history, and in
all the purity of their native pathos, would render them more
attractive.

In connection with what we would further observe of the Psalms of David,
let us again call attention to the ancient chorus,--how it was a species
of melodrama, how it sang its parts, and comprised distinct vocalists
and musicians, who pursued the piece in alternate rejoinder. What we
would observe is, that many of the Psalms were written for the chorus,
and, so to speak, were performed by it. There are some of them which it
is impossible to understand without attention to this dramatic method of
rehearsal. Psalm cxviii., for instance, includes several speakers. Psalm
xxiv. was composed on the occasion of the transfer of the ark to the
tabernacle on Mount Zion. And David, we read, and all the house of
Israel, brought up the ark with shouting and with the sound of the