EVERY DAY IN THE WEEK, AND THE FESTIVALS AND SAINTS'
DAYS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.

WITH A

SELECTION OF HYMNS, ANTHEMS, AND
SACRED POETRY,

160530.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty-one,

BY EDWARD DUNIGAN & BROTHER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

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

of purpose, of which it may with entire truth be said, that they were, with few exceptions, wholly inadequate in point of style, almost always inelegant, and quite frequently so rude as to border on the grotesque.

The first systematic and successful attempt to remedy a defect so remarkable, was the Lyra Catholica of Edward Caswall, M. A.; one of the zealous and accomplished men whom the present religious movement in England is continually bringing into the fold of Christ. His version (Collection, published in London, 1849) comprises all the hymns of the Roman Breviary, all the hymns and sequences of the Missal, with a selection from the Breviaries of Paris and Cluny, and from the Italian Raccolta delle Indulgenze. Of these pieces, every one is newly translated by Mr. Caswall, and probably more than half of them appear in English for the first time, from his hand.

As a whole, his version combines, in a very high degree, elegance, vigor, and poetical fire of thought and diction, with the still more important requisites of fidelity to the lofty religious spirit of his originals, and a most exact transfusion of their Catholic faith, fervent piety, and doctrinal integrity. It is not too