must have been known to the ancient Greeks from the perfection of their organs, and happier disposition, as compared with ours to receive the principles of music. Why then deny them that which teaches individuals, ignorant of the rudiments of harmony, but possessing a good ear, to sing a third above, or a sixth below a given subject, sung or performed by instruments? A chorus of forty voices, singing in octaves, accompanied by instruments playing in unison with the voices, could not always have been considered grateful or satisfactory either to the mind or ear. Fugues, a species of artful music, considered by some the perfection of modern music, and other compositions of the present day, which, rather than as the efforts of men inspired by genius to invent melodic phrases, one would be induced to believe, from their similarity, were cast in one common mould, would have been rejected by the ancient Greeks, because, in all their works, they copied nature. As their compositions were characterised by a moderate use of dissonances, we may conclude that all subordinate parts were intended intimately to support the principal design or melody. The voices employed in the chorusses of the ancients were tempered one with another, forming that happy assemblage of sweet sounds at all times insuring perfect expression. Inconcinnous intervals or dissonances, being an embellishment of nature whereby she gives beauty to the concinnous ones, or consonances, they must always have been employed, since, without such means, in the composition of melody or harmony, no continuity of design could have been produced. The Greeks therefore employing such intervals as seventh and fourth considered them as dissonances, requiring, as in modern theory, ultimately to ascend or descend one degree, to complete the melody or harmony, without knowing the cause, or troubling themselves with reasonings upon such progressions of sounds by mathematical deductions, which, in musical matters, are not exactly to be depended upon.

It will undoubtedly appear extraordinary that, during the number of centuries the Greeks flourished, they should not have discovered a more simple method of notation than the one explained in the description of their musical chords. These names, being found too troublesome for general use, were succeeded by letters of the alphabet, some turning upwards, and others side-ways, some cut in halves, &c., thus:

years hard study to know the musical characters and to play a tolerable accompaniment upon the lyre. The Romans followed this plan up to the time of Boethius, who made a great reduction, employing instead, fifteen Latin letters. Pope St. Gregory in his turn reduced them to eight, viz. ABCDEFGH, the letter H expressing, as at present in Germany, the sound B natural, as B that of B flat.

The music of the ancients being governed entirely by the rhythmical structure of their words, or of the long and short syllables composing them, thus: - u. The Greeks were perhaps unacquainted with the art of using signs to express both variety and duration of sound. To suit, therefore, the precise nature of these long and short syllables, we are obliged, in our translations of the ancient specimens of music, to change the time alternately into Binary and Ternary measure. Nevertheless the hymn to Calliope is susceptible of being expressed according to the rules of modern rhythm. It is one of the most beautiful compositions in the school for which it was composed, and might with advantage he studied by the pupil in the present day.

The more extended phraseology, in certain parts of this arrangement, reminds us strongly of the nature of some of Beethoven's movements in three-eight time. But, associating the sounds with the word, it must be confessed that the system of changing the time, to suit the rhythmi cal structure of the word, adds to, rather than lessens, the beauty of the hymn. Indeed the oftener it is heard in the original form, the more it will be found to resist the attention of the hearer. The sevenths, marked thus †, are worthy the genius of Mozart; the asterisks denote the cæsuras.

Much was expected, upon this and various other subjects, from the manuscript of Philode mus presented to his majesty George IV. by the king of Naples, discovered among the ashes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, but unfortunately destroyed in the process of unrolling. From the contents, however, of a few fragments preserved, it is considered to have been merely a dissertation upon music after the manner of Boethius. Whether future excavations will bring to light other manuscripts of the ancients, buried for the last 1900 years, is a matter of great importance to the science we treat upon, since, without them, or others from different sources, little can be known for certain as to the degree of perfection to which the Greeks and Romans brought their music.

But if the Greeks were deficient in the art of notation, more particularly of instrumental music, it must be allowed that their meloparia com prised every thing that could be desired with respect to the invention of melody in its appl cation to poetry. Of the extraordinary effects upon the minds and passions of men unaccustomed to sounds produced from musical instruments, particularly when accompanying sentiments of the noblest description, and sung by the wisest philosophers, poets, and musicians of the first order, some of them may be too easily imagined to be doubted.

The music of the ancient Romans being confined principally to declamation and dancing, or rather saltation, they added nothing to the principles of Grecian music, but merely translated the Greek authors upon the subject; and, as the principles of their declamation were expressed by accentuation, accents were adopted for its notation. Thus, when words were set to music, the Romans as well as the Greeks had only to conform to the quantity, and to place an accent upon each syllable. These accents, therefore, determined the degree of acuteness as well as that of the duration of sounds employed in the singing or recitation of their verses. Nevertheless the actor had the privilege of declaiming more or less slowly; since Cicero, writing to Atticus, observes that, relaxing in the time of his declamation, he obliged the person who accompanied him to relax also in the time of the sounds of his flute. Kircher pretends to have preserved many compositions of Horace and Sappho, and to have given a key to the translation of them, but neither the one nor the other are much to be relied upon. Of the genuineness of the melody, Jam satis terris,' however, we are assured by many learned writers in matters of polite literature and antiquity.

The most ancient instrument upon record is the Chinese hiscen, or hinen, in form of an egg pierced with five holes, without reckoning the embouchure: three at the bottom and two at the top. Vere Amiot traces this instrument 3000 years before the Christian era, i. e. before the reign of Koang-ty. Other ancient instruments are, the testudo, having the base made of the shell of a tortoise, and the sides occasionally of bull's horns, the origin of the lute, see plate IV. fig. 3. The nebel, an ancient Hebrew instrument strong with gut, supposed by Luther to be the psalter of twelve or more strings, plate IV. fig. 4; the Hebrew harp, and the triangular lyre taken from a monument in the city of Medicis.

The tripod or Pythagorean lyre, representing the sounds of the three modes in which the Greek nome called trimeres was sung, contained the complete scales, viz. the Dorian, the Phrygian, and the Lydian. The performer played upon his instrument seated, turning it, according to

Hypocritical

the mode required, with his foot, playing wita the fingers of his left hand, and with a plectrum in the right. The plectrum was made of metal or other hard substances, as a dog's tooth, a jaw bone, or the horn of a goat. To these lyres succeeded others of the same species, but more sonorous from their forms, see plate IV. figs. 5, 6, the latter being taken from a Sarcophagus, now in the British Museum.

The chelys, which may be considered as the origin of the guitar, is represented at fig. 7.

The ancient lyre preserved in the British Museum clearly indicates, by its windlass, the manner in which the strings of this ancient instrument were tightened and slackened; the lyre, fig. &, shows that short as well as long strings were used to ensure more effectually the various degrees of the octave. The levers attached to the lyre with a plectrum could have been used for no other purpose than to wind the strings round the windlass.

These instruments were played with the points of the fingers, the word psallere signifying to touch with the extremity of the fingers; hence the psalterion, an instrument of thirty strings tuned in octaves, resembling the natural voices of men and boys blended together, termed magadizing. The kinner, upon which David played before Saul, in the shape of the Greek delta, is accurately exhibited by Kircher after a specimen in the Vatican.

To these succeeded others provided with scrolls and necks, as the Egyptian dichord to tighten or slacken the strings. The violin, supposed of modern invention, appears to have been common even in the time of Caligula, and was played with a bow, mounted with horse hair. The neghinoth of the Hebrews, mounted with three strings only, has also been supposed of the same species. The form of the violin appears upon some medals of Nero, and in Argolis's account of the ancient games of the circus, mounted with four strings and a bridge to elevate them for the bow. In the paintings of Philostratus, Orpheus is represented holding a bow in the right hand, and a violin in the left. The appearance of this instrument upon ancient marbles is of rare occurrence, probably from its less picturesque form as compared with the lyre.

Although the little figure of Apollo playing upon a kind of violin with something like a bow, and supposed by Addison and others to be an antique, may have been disproved by Winkelman, it does not follow that the violin should have been unknown to the ancients; on the contrary the nature of the hurdy-gurdy, the sambuca er barbiton of the ancient Greeks, sufficiently attests the previous adoption of the violin or some such instrument: the bow was drawn by the hand across the string long before the friction of a wheel was fixed upon for that purpose. The ancient violin differed from the modern one only in the neck, which was much shorter. The flute, by having been ascribed to Apollo, Pallas, Mercury, and Pan, sufficiently vindicates its own antiquity. Hyagnis, 1500 years before Christ, is named as the first performer of celebrity. Athenæus gives to Numidias the invention of the flute of one tube; to Silenus that of several tubes; to Marsyas the flute with a reed. Phrygian flutes, as the monaulos of Egypt, were curved and intonated with a reed, as the modern hautboy, see fig. 9, plate IV. The ancients kept their reeds in boxes called glossocomeia, reed or tongue boxes. There is another species of Egyptian flute, taken from a dancing figure found at Eschmin. The avena, made of an oaten straw, was blown at the top. The aolamus pastoralis was composed of reeds united together; to this a horn was sometimes attached, as in fig. 10, in the shape of a lituus. The fistula Panis was usually composed of reeds tied together. Foster, in his voyage round the world, found an instrument of this kind in the Friendly Islands. The Chinese have a similar one called the Ching. See CHING. Various ancient flutes may be seen in Dr. Burney's great work on music. Fragments of flutes formed of bones have been also discovered in the ashes of Herculaneum, and preserved in the Vatican.

When the process of forming artificial tubes was known, flutes were made of box-wood, ivory, copper, and even gold. The most ancient flute of the Hebrews was the agada, the form shown in plate V., fig. 1. This instrument, being used at ceremonies of a different nature from that in which the lyre was employed, was made also with a view of imitating the various compasses of the human voice, varying in size as shrill or deep sounds were required. Wind instruments possessing deep tones, increasing in size towards the bottom, were termed horns, as the seven mentioned in Joshua, made of a bull or a ram's horn. A species of lituus made of metal is shown plate V. fig. 2, another of the monaulos, derived probably from the Chinese husciend, shown fig. 3, plate V. The cornu venatorium, the origin of the serpent, made of metal, was of nearly the modern form, see plate V. fig. 4. A curious specimen of a horn with two mouth-pieces, as if to be blown by two persons, is seen fig. 5. Bass flutes, or kinds of bassoons, the two latter with one key each, were sometimes employed by the ancients. The singular instrument fig. 6 is supposed to have been a flute. Dr. Burney considers the instrument fig. 7 to have been the clangor tubarum.

used by Alexander the Great. This as well as some other specimens was dug from the ruins of Herculaneum, and is made of ivory, similar in appearance to an organ pipe. The projections or keys, originally termed bombykas, upon these tubes, were movable, to alter their diapason or extent, and by this arrangement their compass was very considerably increased.

From instruments having no such projections, different degrees of sound were produced by the motion of the mouth, as from the trumpet. The suckbut, of the trumpet species, was also found among the ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii, the lower part made of bronze, the upper part and mouth-piece of solid gold. In quality of tone it has not been equalled by any of modern manufacture. This instrument is in the possession of his present majesty. A lituus or octave trumpet was in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks.

At the Olympic games the trumpet-players expressed an excess of joy when they found their exertions had neither rent their cheeks nor burst their blood-vessels: some idea may hence be formed of the noisy and vociferous style of music which then pleased.

On the precise nature of the ancient double flutes, derived from the Egyptians, and of which various specimens. are still in the possession of the curious, authors are by no means agreed. The symphony, a concert resulting from two equal flutes, was composed of unisons, when the fingers of each hand stopped the same holes. From expressions annexed to the titles of some of Terence's comedies, we learn that they were represented to the sound of equal and unequal flutes, right and left. The Andria was accompanied with equal flutes right and left; the Selftormentor with unequal flutes. The performer played upon two flutes at the same time, and placed round his mouth a bandage, that the cheeks might not protrude, and for the better management of the breath. The right flute with two bores produced low sounds, the left had several bores and produced high sounds. Double flutes, the tubes of which were of different lengths, as seen in figs. 7, 8, if intonated together, would produce sounds of different pitch. Some authors consider the larger tube to act as the drone of a bagpipe, others that both tubes were used to represent together the sounds of two different modes EFGABCDE thus:

CDEFGABC producing harmonic combinations of thirds. But, as the subject of the piece performed often required a change of mode, others consider that these tubes were sounded alternately, and that they were joined together, because that was the most expeditious way of accompanying the actor or singer.

The traverse or German flute was known to the ancients. The flute used by Ismenias, a celebrated Theban musician, cost at Corinth three talents, or £581. 5s. The ancients were not less extravagant in gratifying the ministers of their pleasures than ourselves. Amabæus, a harper, was paid an attic talent, or £193. 158. per day for his performances. Roscius had 500 sestertia, or £4036. 9s. 2d. sterling a-year. The beautiful Lamia, who was taken captive by Demetrius, when he vanquished Ptolemy Soter, and