improvements were introduced. The notes were increased from four to seven, and the psalmody was noted by the following six sign-letters: C, D, E, F, G, and A, -C being singularly enough used for two notes, viz., the first and seventh. Those letters were at first written over the syllables to which they were to be sung, but, subsequently, were written on parallel lines, higher or lower, according to the sound.

He established and endowed a singing school, for the training of the young, which continued to flourish for three hundred years after his death. From him we have the Gregorian Chants, "which," as a writer in the Quarterly has beautifully said, "rise up from the vast profound of the past, like solemn heralds of a dawning world of sound-pure, solemn, and expressionless—like those awful heads of angels and archangels we discover sometimes, in rude fresco, beneath the richer colouring and suppler forms of a later day. 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." In these we have the preparatory exercises and solid foundations for the music of a later period.

About the year A.D. 1022, Guido D'Arezzo, a Benedictine monk, added the seventh letter, B-some, however, using H instead of B-thus each note had now its own sign mark. He is also said to have originated the appellation Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, these syllables oc

curring, and corresponding to the scale, in that ancient Latin hymn, the air of which has been attributed to Saint John, or at least is said to have been sung by him. The music rises a note with each of the syllables indicated, thus forming the common scale.

Ur queant laxis, RESonare fibris,
Mira gestorum, Famula tuorum,
SoLvi polluti, Labii reatum.

SANCTI JOHANNIS.

For euphony and ease in singing, the first syllable was changed by the Italians into Do, though till very lately the primitive Ut was retained by the French; and instead of B, Si was introduced. D'Arezzo also substituted dots or marks for letters on and between the lines of the stave, the number of which have since been modified to five. He only retained transformations of three letters to place at the beginning of an interval, marking or fixing the value of the notes which followed, thus constituting the signature clef or key.

The introduction of harmony, however simple, with the use of keyed instruments, now called attention to the regulation of the time or the length of each note, in order to keep the singers together. D'Arezzo invented and named at least these three notes, the long, the breve, and the semibreve; and Franco of Cologne shortly afterwards reduced notation, or the relative value of notes, into a systematic form, which, with certain modifications, is virtually that still employed.

St. Austin established a school at Canterbury; and, near the close of the ninth century, Alfred the Great founded a music-professorship at Oxford. In the middle ages, music formed one of the four branches of a learned

education, belonging to the quadrivium-Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music.

It will be remembered that Alfred, an accomplished performer on the harp, entered the Danish camp, disguised as a minstrel, and obtained such information as enabled him to regain his crown. The only English stanza preserved from before the conquest, and attributed to Canute, relates to music, and is as follows:

"Merry sungen the Muneches binnen Ely

The Cnut Ching reuther by;

Roweth Cnites noer the land,

And here we thes Muneches sang."1

The Chanson de Roland, full of military fire, is historically interesting, from its having been sung by the soldiers of the Conqueror when advancing at Hastings. The most ancient English song, with music, that has yet been met with, is one written, on the battle of Agincourt, as late as the year A.D. 1415.

The discovery of Richard Coeur de Lion by his minstrel, Blondel de Nesle, in the "Tour Tenebreuse" of the Castle of Dierstein (?) on the banks of the Danube, where he had been thrown by the treachery of Duke Leopold of Austria while returning from the Holy Land, is a well known incident. So is the romantic recovery during the same reign of the young heiress of D'Evereux Earl of Salisbury, from Normandy, by a knight of the Talbot family; and also the tragical story of Chatelain de Coucy

1 Thus modernized by Campbell:

VOL. II.

"Merry sang the Monks in Ely

When Canute king was sailing by;
Row ye Knights near the land,
And let us hear the Monks' song."

C

and the Lady of Fayel. History and song abound in such instances.

Dante and Boccaccio frequently allude to music. The pages of Chaucer everywhere attest its sweet power and universality, both during his own, and in the preceding age. He represents his Squire as singing, or fluting, all the day; his mendicant friars, monks, and nuns are also vocalists, and, amongst instruments, he mentions the fiddle, psaltery, harp, lute, citern, rote (or hurdy-gurdy), and the organ. The accomplished James I. of Scotland was even more eminently distinguished as a musician and composer than as a poet. His beautiful airs having been received with enthusiasm in Italy, gave an impulse, and exerted a lasting influence-which has been acknowledged by the Italians themselves on the subsequent music of that country. Those simple melodies such as Waly, waly, up the bank," "Ay wakin', O," "Be constant ay," and "Will ye gang to the ewe-buchts, Marion?" can be traced to this age, and possibly are royal compositions. The oldest Scottish airs have been thought by some to exhibit traces of an Eastern origin, and to have been handed down from a remote antiquity; but human nature being everywhere much the same, and all early art-efforts bearing a considerable family resemblance to each other, it becomes difficult, in the absence of positive proof, to hazard an opinion as to what has been derived, and what is purely indigenous.

To the period between James IV. and V. and on to the end of the reign of Queen Mary, belong many tragic ballads and songs, such as, "Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie, bonnie Bride," "Hero and Leander," "The Flowers of the Forest," "Ballow, my boy," "The bonnie Earle of

Murray," and "Queen Mary's Lament." The modulation to the seventh of the key frequently introduced in old Scottish songs has a fine pathetic effect.1 Tassoni, an Italian writer of the period, speaking of the music of King James the First, who introduced such intervals, said that it "was plaintive and melancholy, and different from all other music.” 2

Of the period from Queen Mary to the Restoration are the songs, "Through the lane muir I followed my Willie," "Ettrick banks," "I'll never leave thee," "The broom of Cowdenknowes," "Where Helen lies," "Through the wood, Laddie," and "Muirland Willie."

From the Restoration to the Union we have, amongst many beautiful songs, An thou wert mine ain thing," "Mary Scott, the flower of Yarrow," "My dearie an' thou die," "Allan Water," "The Highland laddie," "The lass of Patie's mill," "The Yellow-haired Laddie," and "Lochaber no more."

Later still, we have "The Birks of Ivermay," "The Banks of Forth," "Roslin Castle," and "The Braes of Ballendine"-the last two composed by Oswald; also several exquisite songs composed or adapted by R. A. Smith to the words of Tannahill. We have only named a few of the many songs of Scotland, as illustrative of national melody, no country in the world being so rich in that department of music. The natural simplicity and genius herein occasionally displayed, is in some respects unsurpassed by any efforts of art-even the very

1 Rather a passing modulation to the fourth, which is accomplished by flattening the seventh.

2 "Il trova da se stesso, una nuova musica, lamentevole e mesta, differente da tutte l'altre."