Debes scire, quod perire Preces funde, pectus tunde, 70 ALARD. W ILLIA IAM Alard, born 1572, and descended from a noble family in Belgium, was the son of Francis Alard, a confessor of the Reformed Faith during the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. Hardly escaping from the Low Countries with his life, the father settled in Holstein, at the invitation of Christian the Fourth, king of Denmark. For three or four generations the family, which appears to have established itself there, or in the neighbouring parts of Germany, was distinguished in the walks of theology and classical learning. Besides other works which William composed, he was the author of two small volumes of Latin hymns, which, however forgotten now, appear to have found much favour at the time of their publication: Excubiarum piarum Centuria, Lipsiæ, 1623; and Excubiarum piarum Centuria Secunda, 1628; I believe that there was also a third Century, though it has never come under my eye. Of the first Century four editions were published in the author's lifetime. He died Pastor of Krempe in Holstein in 1645. (See the Decas Alardorum Scriptis Clarorum, Hamburg, 1721.) ALARD. XLVIII. ACCESSURI AD SACRAM COMMUNIONEM ORATIO AD JESUM SERVATOREM. XLVIII. Excub. Piar. Cent., Lips., 1623, p. 336.-The reader acquainted with the Greek Euchologion will recognize this as little more than the versification of a prayer therein. ST AMBROSE. XLIX. HYMNUS AD GALLICANTUM. E TERNE rerum Conditor, Et temporum das tempora, XLIX. S. Ambrosii Opp., Paris, 1836, p. 200.-It has been already observed that there are many so called Ambrosian hymns, which are not by St Ambrose; out of which it has come to pass, that some, running into the opposite extreme, have affirmed that we do not possess any which with any confidence can be affirmed to be his. Yet, to speak not of others, this one is surely lifted above all doubt or suspicion, Augustine, the cotemporary of Ambrose, and himself for some time a resident at Milan, distinctly ascribing it to him, Retract., 1. 1, c. 21. Cf. his Confess., l. 9, c. 12, in proof of his familiarity with the hymns of St Ambrose. Moreover, as has been often observed, the hymn is but the metrical arrangement of thoughts, which he has elsewhere (in his Hexaëmeron, 1. 24, c. 88) expressed in prose: Galli cantus...et dormientem excitat, et sollicitum admonet, et viantem solatur, processum noctis canorâ significatione protestans. Hoc canente latro suas relinquit insidias; hoc ipse lucifer excitatus oritur, cœlumque illuminat; hoc canente mæstitiam trepidus nauta deponit; omnisque crebrò vespertinis flatibus excitata tempestas et procella mitescit; ...hoc postremò canente ipsa Ecclesiæ Petra culpam suam diluit— with a good deal more, in which the very terms of expression used in the hymn recur, |