But the nameless English tune, of uncertain authorship* that accompanies the words in the smaller old manuals, and which delighted Sunday-schools for a generation, is still the favorite in the memory of thousands, and may be the very music first written.
* Harmonized by Hubert P. Main.
“WE SPEAK OF THE REALMS OF THE BLEST.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Mills, wife of the Hon. Thomas Mills, M.P., was born at Stoke Newington, Eng., 1805. She was one of the brief voices that sing one song and die. This hymn was the only note of her minstrelsy, and it has outlived her by more than three-quarters of a century. She wrote it about three weeks before her decease in Finsbury Place, London, April 21, 1839, at the age of twenty-four.
We speak of the land of the blest,
A country so bright and so fair,
And oft are its glories confest,
But what must it be to be there!
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