l66 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [^786 



them to the last with the hope of hearing from you, but there was no 

 post this week. 



In preparing said offices for the press, it occurred to me that their 

 wanting gospels and epistles made them not harmonize with the rest 

 of our service. Our brethren here were unanimous in advising me to 

 add them ; and I was the more encouraged by Dr. Magaw's saying that 

 it was not thought of in the committee. The passages chosen are 

 Philippians iv. 4-8, with St. John viii. 31-37 ; and St. James i. 16, 

 with St. Matthew v. 43. The lessons, taken by the same advice for the 

 first Thursday in November, are Deuteronomy xxviii. to verse 15, and 

 St. Matthew vii. 7. 



I am sorry that I have been obliged to do these things without wait- 

 ing for your approbation \ but I hope they will still merit it. 



The post is just going, so that I can only write myself. 



Yours, etc., W. White. 



Dr. Smith. 



Rev. Dr. White to Rev. Dr. Smith. 



Philadelphia, January 17, 17S6. 



Dear Sir : I have lost no time in making provision for inserting a 

 few tunes in the prayer book. We have selected some which I send you 

 the names of on an enclosed paper. Mr. Hopkinson* is beginning to 

 copy them for the engraver, and I expect they will be done with 

 sufficient speed. 



It was natural for me, when on this subject with a gentleman of Mr. 

 Hopkinson's taste, to communicate to him our arrangement respect- 

 ing the psalms. He objected, as indeed has almost every one to whom 

 I have mentioned it, to the running the psalms into one another. The 

 issue of the conference with Mr. Hopkinson was his suggesting a plan 

 of which I give you a sketch on an enclosed paper, and which I think 

 on the whole will be the simplest and most elegant. Unless you disap- 

 prove, I will execute it on this plan, although I shall have lost some 

 labor of transcribing; in doing of which, however, I became more and 

 more dissatisfied with the running of psalms into one another; and 

 indeed in this way, I find that many fine passages must be lost, or else 

 such a repetition made as in tlie same psalm would be improper and 

 disgusting. I expect your draft of a preface by next post and am 



Yours, etc., Wm. White. 



Rev. Dr. Smith. 



P. S. — On Mr. Hopkinson's plan, the insertion of the term chapter 

 will be unnecessary. 



* The Hon. Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independ- 

 ence, judge of the Admiralty Court of Pennsylvania, and appointed by Washington 

 judge of the District Court of the United States for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

 See the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. H., page 314. 



