ADVERTISEMENT.

THE present Vesper Book contains the order for Vespers complete for the entire year, including all the new Offices and the Ferial Vespers hitherto unaccompanied with an English translation. And while it presents the general reader, and especially religious congregations, with the Office of Vespers for the year in their unmutilated integrity, it has also been arranged upon a plan which, it is hoped, will, by the increased facilities that it offers, tempt congregations to join their voices with those of the choir.

According to immemorial ritual usage, the Musical mode of the antiphon, determines the tone to which the Psalm that succeeds should be sung. Throughout this Vesper Book the musical mode of the antiphon has been given, and of the two references which follow after the Psalm, the first is to the Psalm, with the Latin and English in double columns;-the second to the Psalm pointed for chanting to the Psalm tone, corresponding to the mode of the antiphon. Thus, for example; in the first antiphon of First Sunday in Advent

Ant. (VIII. MODE.) In illa die, &c. Ant. In that day, &c. Ps. Dixit Dominus, p. 2.

(M. 24.)

The figure VIII. signifies that the music for the antiphon is in the VIII. Gregorian mode, which requires the eighth Psalm tone for the Psalm that follows. The first reference (p. 2) shews where the Psalm is to be found, with Latin and English in parallel columns, for those who do not wish to sing. The

second (M. 24), is to an Appendix, separable from the Vesper Book, in which every Psalm will be found, pointed to the proper Music (M.) to which it should be sung, for the use of choirs, and those who wish to take part with them.

Where the choir observe the musical order of the Ritual as to the Psalm tones, and adopt the mode of pointing as given in the Vesper Psalter, even though they should not sing the antiphons, it will become easy for families and individuals with the ritual order before them, as contained in the present book, to practise during the week the Vesper Psalms of the following Sunday or Feast, to the same tones, and in precisely the same manner, as they will be sung on the day itself by the choir; and thus, by the acceptance of a fixed and uniform system, which the Church has herself provided, numbers in every congregation, who at present are strangers to the pleasure of joining their voices to those of the choir, from the absence of any system by means of which they can prepare themselves in concert with the choir, will find this great difficulty removed out of their way.

The Vesper Book is indebted to Edward Caswall, M.A., for the English metrical version of the Hymns; and for the music of the Antiphons and Hymns, singers are referred to the "Vesperale Romanum," Malines, 1848. It may also be added, that the directions in the Proper of Saints as to the First and Second Vespers, only hold good so far as the Feasts in question are not superseded by movable Feasts, which are entitled to take precedence.

J. L.

St. Osmund's, Salisbury,

Feast of St. James, Apostle, July 25, 1850.