THE TUNE.
Those who question why Dr. Hastings' interest in Moore's poem did not cause him to make a tune for it, must conclude that it came to him with its permanent melody ready made, and that the tune satisfied him.
The “German Air” to which Moore tells us he wrote the words, probably took his fancy, if it did not induce his mood. Whether Samuel Webbe's tune now wedded to the hymn is an arrangement of the old air or wholly his own is immaterial. One can scarcely conceive a happier yoking of counterparts. Try singing “Come ye Disconsolate” to “Rescue the Perishing,” for example, and we shall feel the impertinence of divorcing a hymn that has found its musical affinity.