of vibrations-nor looked into Boethius or Thibaldus; but they followed the art with instinct of heart and ear, wooed her with skill of finger and voice, and devoted her to the service of the gentle and fair, who were satisfied with "des mots bien trouvés et des sons bien chantés," and never troubled their heads about any theory of sound. Meagre as is the music of the Troubadours' songs, we feel that they contain the germ of that which the Greeks never sought after, and the convent never suspected. In the specimens Burney gives of the Chanson de Roland and the Complaint of the Chatelain de Courcy, indications both of military fire and lover-like pathos are to be traced; and in a song by Thibaut, king of minstrels and of Navarre, there is a passage upon the words "et pleurs, et plains, et soupirs," which, even at this day, a young lady with long curls would be requested to repeat.

The world was now fairly possessed with the sweet infection. The stream of melody flowed steadily on, to be joined in due time by those mighty tributaries of measure, harmony, invention, modulation, pathos, and grace, which have swelled it to that fulness of tide all civilized Europe now rejoices in.

The Church, meanwhile, true to her conservative system, took no note of the changes in musical feeling that were going on without her walls, till about a hundred years later at the beginning of the fourteenth century-she discovered that a nightingale, not a cuckoo, had been surreptitiously fostered

in her holy nest; to the great scandal of the venerable fathers, who are shocked at the introduction into the service of such rapid notes as the semibreve and the minim, and rather ungraciously compare the effect of an appoggiatura to that of a hiccup! There was nothing, however, to excite their alarm: far from indulging in any wanderings, Music had sown her wild oats, and was now ready to go to school. She had felt what she could do, and like all children of true promise was anxious to strengthen her powers on the basis of correct knowledge. The sense of harmony, or the mingling together of two or more voices, had given rise to the science of counterpoint, or the art of arranging sounds correctly, and this again developed fresh secrets in harmony, till in the stiff, timid, and ingenious fugues of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we feel that the art is going through those careful exercises which alone could give her a solid foundation. Kyries, Sanctuses, and Te Deums now rise up before us like the early pictures of the Virgin and Saints, all breathing a certain purity and austere grace, and all marked with that imperfection which naturally belongs to the ecclesiastical modes or keys of the day and yet an imperfection which gave them a kind of solemn beauty, as if they were too holy to stoop to please. The secular music partook of the same rigidity-invention was held in suspense, whilst principles were being established; any meagre traditional melody serving to arrange in harmony, as any sentence does to decline in grammar, till the

music that kings and nobles "called for," as the old dramatic phrase goes, was such as one wonders how they could possibly take any pleasure in.

Music, having thus become again rather an exercise of study and patience, and this time on the right road, than a test of melodious gifts, was more cultivated as a necessary portion of a gentleman's education than it has ever been since; for though its difficulties were never drier, they were of a kind any head could overcome. There is that too in the nature of correct harmony which suffices to give pleasure to the mind independent of any exertion of invention, as any skilful combination of colours gives delight to the eye independent of all subject. Charles V. studied music, as well as Henry VIII., whose well-known motett "Quam pulcra est" is still occasionally performed at Westminster Abbey, and is not, as Burney says, "too masterly or clear for the production of a royal dilettante." The composers of Queen Elizabeth's time may be considered as the best examples of the use and beauty of the art of counterpoint. Their ideas move easily and naturally within its limits; and as we listen to the sober harmonies, though involved mechanism, of the anthems of that day-presented to us, however, we must remember, with full organ accompaniments and other improvements—our ears are pleased and satisfied, not so much from any real sympathy with this species of composition as from the sense of its being something perfect of its kind. We feel "l'ingrat chef-d'œuvre d'un bon harmoniste," as Rousseau

unjustly calls the fugue, to be the architecture of music. We follow the streams of sound as they meet and cross in stiff regular forms, as we do the ribs of a groined roof, feeling how each gives equal strength and support while separated, and all return again into the firm tonic chord, as into a massive perpendicular shaft.

The instrumental compositions of that day are not so interesting, in some measure, because we hear them performed more strictly in their original forms ; we want the pealing organ" and "full-voiced quire below" to enhance their slender attractions. The pieces for keyed instruments to be found in Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book show only that habit of complication and contrivance acquired in writing for several voices, which was out of place in a different sphere of expression-overloading the old airs which they still chose as themes rather than be at the trouble of inventing new ones, with dry unmeaning intricacies-and cramping the fingers with such a crowd of clumsy difficulties as her maiden Majesty could have had no chance of overcoming unless she had abdicated on purpose. And not even then-according to the account of Signora Margarita, wife of Dr. Pepusch, to whom the Virginal Book belonged:-for she, after her own abdication of the English stage, spent great part of her life in trying to master the first piece in the volume, and failed. Whether the disciples of Liszt and Thalberg, who climb the mountains and plunge the deeps with a hardihood and celerity which old Drs.

Bull and Bird never dreamt of, even in a nightmare, would find these compositions the same pièces de résistance, we know not: but it is more than probable they would; for variety and scope, instead of increasing difficulties, have eased them, and there is no performer who does not know that the navigation of a few close crusty notes is a far greater test of skill than all the voyages to the North and South Poles that can be executed in the open sea of an eight-octaved modern piano.

The Reformation cannot be said in any way to have materially influenced the progress of music, which took the same course in England for about a hundred and fifty years after it as in Italy. The preservation of the Church in England saved us from that total degradation of the art and questionable benefit to religion which some Reformers placed among the chief conditions of their worship. The fashion of singing the Psalms prevailed nowhere more than in France; and at the very time that pious people were objecting to the fantastic and inappropriate style of sacred music which had obtained in our Church, the Council of Trent were protesting against the same in that of Rome, and--but for the interposition of Palestrina's genius-might have cut off one of her chief sources of edifying enthralment.

In truth, the art of contrapuntal harmony had fulfilled its mission; and in those complicated efforts at effect which at this time pressed it beyond its legitimate powers, a struggling sense of invention may be traced. The only way to keep up the