ALARD. WILLIAM 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. The father, hardly escaping from the Low Countries with his life, 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; so much so that one of its later members published a Decas Alardorum Scriptis Clarorum, Hamburg, 1721, from which my information is derived. 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. LIII. DE ANGELO CUSTODE. UM me tenent fallacia CUM Mundi fugacis gaudia, Cœlo vigil mihi datus Sed quando lacrimis mea Proinde abeste, gaudia Ne, lætus in malo, Angelis Sed his, nefas lugens meum, LIII. Excubiarum Piarum Centuria 2da, Lips. 1628, p. 304. R LIV. ACCESSURI AD SACRAM COMMUNIONEM ORATIO AD JESUM SERVATOREM. SIT ignis atque lux mihi Reo tui perceptio, Jesu beate, corporis, Ut ignis hic cremet mei Affectuum rubos cremet; Ut ista lux suâ face Illuminet mei, prece Te semper ut piâ colat. LIV. 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. LV. S. Ambrosii Opp. Paris, 1836, p. 200.-There can be no doubt that many so called Ambrosian hymns are not by St Ambrose; out of which it has come to pass, that some, in an opposite extreme, have affirmed that we possess none which can certainly be affirmed to be his. Yet, to speak not of others, this is lifted above all doubt, Augustine, the cotemporary of Ambrose, and himself for some time a resident at Milan, distinctly ascribing it to him, Retract. i. 21; cf. his Confess. ix. 12, in proof of his familiarity with the hymns of St Ambrose. Moreover, the hymn is but the metrical arrangement of thoughts which he has elsewhere (Hexaëm. xxiv. 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 mostitiam trepidus nauta deponit; omnisque crebro vespertinis flatibus excitata tempestas et procella mitescit ;...hoc postremo canente ipsa Ecclesiæ Petra culpam suam diluit-with much more, in which the very turns of expression used in the hymn recur. Nocturna lux viantibus, A nocte noctem segregans. Hoc excitatus lucifer Solvit polum caligine; Hoc omnis erronum cohors Hoc nauta vires colligit, Surgamus ergo strenue, 10 15 7, 8. Clichtoveus: Nocturna lux est viantibus quantum ad munus et officium, quod noctu iter agentibus nocturnas significat horas, perinde atque interdiu viam carpentibus lux solis eas insinuat conspicantibus solem...A nocte noctem segregare memoratur, quoniam priorem noctis partem a posteriore suo cantu dirimit ac disseparat, quasi noctis discretor. 11. erronum] A preferable reading to errorum, which might so easily have supplanted it, but which it, the rarer word, would scarcely have supplanted. In the hymn of Prudentius we read: Ferunt vagantes dæmones, Lætos tenebris noctium, Gallo canente exterritos Sparsim timere et cedere. 15. petra Ecclesiæ] That St Invisa nam vicinitas Noctis fugat satellites. Ambrose was very far from believing in a Church built upon a man, that therefore here he can mean no such thing, is plain from other words of his (De Incarn. Dom. 5): Fides ergo est Ecclesiæ fundamentum: non enim de carne Petri, sed de fide dictum est, quia portæ mortis ei non prævalebunt. 17. Surgamus ergo] The cock crowing had for the early |