stanzas may be presented-forming Canons and Odes; as, Troparia, Idiomela, Stichera, Stichoi, Contakia, Cathismata, Theotokia, Triodia, Staurotheotokia, Catavasia, — or whatever else. Nine-tenths of the Eastern

Service-book is poetry.

B The Paracletice, or Great Octoechus:

in eight parts.

This contains the Ferial Office for eight weeks. Each week has on Sunday

A Canon of the Trinity.

In the first week, the whole of the Canons are sung to the first Tone: in the second, to the second, and so on. The Greek Tones answer to our Gregorian, thus :

Little Octoechus, contains the Sunday services from the Paracletice: they are often printed separately.

y. The Triodion: the Lent volume, which commences on the Sunday of the Pharisee and Publican (that before Septuagesima) and goes down to Easter. It is so called, because the leading Canons have, during that period, only three Odes.

8. The Pentecostarion,-more properly the Pentecostarion Charmosynon,—the Office for Easter-tide. On a moderate com putation, these volumes together comprise 5,000 closely printed quarto pages, in double columns, of which at least 4,000 are poetry.

The thought that, in conclusion, strikes one is this: the marvellous ignorance in which English ecclesiastical scholars are content to remain of this huge treasure of divinitythe gradual completion of nine centuries at least. I may safely calculate that not one one of twenty who peruse these pages will ever have read a Greek Canon' through; yet

what a glorious mass of theology do these offices present! If the following pages tend in any degree to induce the reader to study these books for himself, my labour could hardly have been spent to a better result.

FIRST EPOCH.

A.D. 360........A.D. 726.

It is not my intention to dwell on the hymn writers of this period, as S. Gregory Nazianzen and S. Sophronius, because their works have not been employed in the Divine office, are merely an imitation of classical writers, and, however occasionally pretty, are not the stuff out of which Churchsong is made. There is but one writer in this epoch who gives spring-promise of the approaching summer, and that is S. Anatolius.

B