PREFACE
OF THE AMERICAN EDITOR.
An apology can scarcely be necessary for the following attempt towards supplying the want, so long and deeply felt in the Catholic community, of a suitable collection of Hymns and Psalms, for the purposes of general devotion.
While adequate translations have opened wholly, or in great part, to the other languages of modern Europe, the entire range of the finest sacred poetry that ever flowed from uninspired pens, in the pages of the Roman Breviary and Missal; and even while the value of those compositions for the purposes of private devotion has been strikingly attested by more than one attempt to embody them into the collections of other denominations,—they have been known to our own tongue by a few scattered versions, made at various periods, without any unity