was included a plaintive hymn entitled "Come to Me." For many years it was best known in connection with chant music, but in later years it is found in numerous American hymnals in a large variety of excellent long-metre settings. In most collections. the hymn is reduced to four stanzas, but as it suffers by such an abridgment, I give the original text:

With tearful eyes I look around;
Life seems a dark and stormy sea;
Yet 'midst the gloom I hear a sound,
A heavenly whisper, "Come to Me!"

It tells me of a place of rest,

It tells me where my soul may flee:
Oh, to the weary, faint, oppressed,

How sweet the bidding, "Come to Me!"

When the poor heart with anguish learns,
That earthly props resigned must be,
And from each broken cistern turns,

It hears the accents, "Come to Me!"

When against sin I strive in vain,
And cannot from its yoke get free,
Sinking beneath the heavy chain,

The words arrest me, "Come to Me!"

When nature shudders, loath to part
From all I love, enjoy, and see;
When a faint chill steals o'er my heart,

A sweet voice utters, "Come to Me!

"Come, for all else must fail and die;
Earth is no resting-place for thee;
Heavenward direct thy weeping eye;
I am thy portion: Come to Me!"

Oh, voice of mercy! voice of love!
In conflict, grief, and agony,
Support me, cheer me from above!

And gently whisper, "Come to Me!"

Nearly all of Miss Elliott's hymns were written for those whose lives were shadowed by sorrow or suffering. Her lines entitled "In Affliction" are of unusual beauty and tenderness. They form a hymn of spiritual clinging to Jesus amid "the weakness, fatigue, arid deserts, and rough storms" of this present life. The hymn is worthy of a careful study, and I am glad to believe that my readers will be pleased to become acquainted with the original

stanzas:

O Holy Saviour, Friend unseen!
The faint, the weak on Thee may lean;
Help me, throughout life's varying scene,
By faith to cling to Thee.

Blest with communion so divine,
Take what Thou wilt, shall I repine,
When, as the branches to the vine,
My soul may cling to Thee?

Far from my home, fatigued, opprest,
Here have I found a place of rest,
An exile still, yet not unblest

While I can cling to Thee!

Without a murmur I dismiss
My former dreams of earthly bliss ;
My joy, my recompense be this

Each hour to cling to Thee.

What though the world deceitful prove,
And earthly friends and joys remove?
With patient, uncomplaining love,
Still would I cling to Thee!

Oft when I seem to tread alone

Some barren waste with thorns o'ergrown,

A voice of love, in gentlest tone,

Whispers, "Still cling to me!"

Though faith and hope awhile be tried,
I ask not, need not, aught beside :
How safe, how calm, how satisfied,
The souls that cling to Thee!

They fear not life's rough storms to brave,
Since Thou art near, and strong to save;
Nor shudder e'en at death's dark wave;
Because they cling to Thee!

Blest is my lot, whate'er befall:

What can disturb me, who appall,

While as my Strength, my Rock, my All,
Saviour! I cling to Thee?

This version of the hymn was published in Miss Elliott's "Hours of Sorrow" in 1836. In form slightly different as to the first stanza it appeared in 1834, a few months after the death of her father, and it is thought this event suggested the hymn. Like all her other compositions, it is sweet and devotional in spirit, and charming in hymnic grace.

The lover of church poetry will be impressed with the fact that it is rare indeed that one hand, however divinely gifted, has been able to strike four such "far-thrilling chords" as are heard in those four hymns by Charlotte Elliott.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY

MRS

RS. SIGOURNEY, who, "Blackwood's Magazine" once said, is rightly called "the American Hemans," and whom "The American Church Review" declared to be one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century, is not largely represented in our hymnals. She wrote several hymns which were far better known fifty years ago in both America and Great Britain than they are to-day.

Mrs. Sigourney (née Huntley) was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in 1791. Like Mrs. Barbauld she had extraordinary precocity, and could read with fluency when only three years old; and her career as a writer of verse began at eight. In 1819 she was married to Charles Sigourney, a merchant of Hartford, who died in 1854. During the fifty years of her literary career Mrs. Sigourney wrote fifty-six distinct works, and made more than two thousand