The enjoyment of the evening is at high pressure. The dancers are swinging, surging, spinning through the Spanish dance. Everybody who can find a partner and a place on the floor—there are many who cannot find the latter—is dancing. It is a gay, a brilliant scene. All is going as merrily as a whole chime of marriage-bells when a deep and solemn peal from the church close by breaks in over the music, the laughter and the dancing. It is midnight! It is the Noche Buena, and the bell summons the faithful to the midnight mass. The effect is electric. The last twirl of the waltz is suspended, half executed. The dancers stop as suddenly as if they were puppets moved and stilled by the cunning of some wire-pulling hand. A general rush is made for the church: in a moment the ball-room is empty. The church is filled as instantaneously, and the wildly gay dancers of a moment ago are now kneeling, hushed and down-bent, in devotional attitudes.
The scene is impressive: the bright ball-toilettes contrasted in a "dim religious light," the sudden change of place and mood, from gay to grave, from ball-room to sanctuary, strikes a stranger's eye with thrilling effect. At the conclusion of the service the dancers return to the ball-room, to change from grave to gay, and dance ad libitum till daylight.
J.T.
ENGLISH BIBLE TRANSLATIONS.
The first complete translation of the Bible into our language was made about the year 1380 by John de Wycliffe, or Wickliffe. There are several manuscript copies of it in the Bodleian and other European libraries. This great work unlocked the Scriptures to the multitude, or, as one of his antagonists, bewailing such an enterprise, worded it, "the gospel pearl was cast abroad and trodden under foot." Long before the appearance of this translation various versions of portions of the Bible had appeared, specimens of which, of every century from the reign of Alfred to Chaucer's time, are preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere. Sir Thomas More says: "The Holy Byble was longe before Wycliffis daies by virtuose and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read." This statement is further corroborated by Foxe, the martyrologist, who remarks: "If histories be well examined, we shall find both before and after the Conquest, as well before John Wickliffe was borne as since, the whole body of the Scriptures by sundry men translated into this our country tongue." Wycliffe's Bible was first printed at Oxford in 1850, previous to which the New Testament appeared in 1721 and was reprinted in 1810.
In 1526, William Tyndale completed and published in English his translation of the New Testament. He also translated and printed the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah, and was preparing them for publication when he was put to death in Flanders, being strangled and burnt for heresy. Tyndale's translation, with his latest revisions (1534), was republished in the English Hexapla in 1841. A copy of his translation of the Pentateuch which had belonged to Bishop Heber was sold in 1854 for $795. Four years later another copy sold for within twenty dollars of that amount.
The first English translation of the entire Bible was made by Miles Coverdale, who afterward became bishop of Exeter, and was printed in folio in the year 1535. In 1538 a second edition of Coverdale's Bible was printed at Paris, but the Inquisition interfered and committed the whole edition of twenty-five hundred copies to the flames. No perfect copy of Coverdale's version is known to exist, but one lacking the original title-page and first leaf was sold in 1854 for $1725. Another, at the Perkins' sale, in June, 1873, brought $2000.
Two years after the appearance of the first edition of Coverdale's Bible, John Rogers, the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign, published his version of the Scriptures. He made some emendations, but the text is chiefly that of Tyndale and Coverdale. It was printed by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1537, and the title runs: "The Byble, which is all the holy Scripture: in which are contayned the Olde and Newe Testament truely and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew." For safety, Rogers assumed the name of Matthew, whence it is known as Matthew's Bible. Seven hundred and fifty dollars have been paid for a copy.
The third version of the Bible, known as Taverner's, was published in 1539. Richard Taverner was a learned man who published many translations during the sixteenth century. Horne says of his translation, "This is neither a bare revisal of Cranmer's Bible nor a new version, but a kind of intermediate work, being a correction of what is called 'Matthew's Bible.'"
The first edition of Cranmer's Bible, the printing of which was begun in Paris in 1538 and completed in London in 1540—the Inquisition having interposed by imprisoning the printers and burning the greater part of the impression—is excessively rare. Cranmer's Bible—or the Great Bible, as it was called—is Tyndale's, Coverdale's and Rogers's translations most carefully revised throughout. This was the first sound and authorized English version; and as soon as it was perfected a proclamation was issued ordering it to be provided for every parish church, under a penalty of forty shillings a month. A second edition of Cranmer's Bible appeared in 1560, a copy of which brought, at a recent sale in England, the sum of $610.