Di vision Sect^o^ THE ATLANTIC MONTJLLY DEVOTED TO Literature, Science, Art, and P^/tcs VOLUME L- NUMBER 302 DECEMBER, 1882 CONTENTS TvsoonaTowek. XXX\in,-XI,I. Thomas T..E Ancestral Footstep: Outlines ok . 721 AN English Romance. Nathaniel Ha-M- Hardy ' Art and Wealth. O. B. Frothingham . . 74i thome Studies IN the South. X 75° Lydia Makia Child OiDiPUS. ^g'tes Paton 7^4 gosse's STUDY OF Gray . . . . • Hamlet IN Paris. Theodore Child . . • -766 jLLusfRvrED Books 82.5 839 844 846 The House ok a Merchant Prince. g^^^^,^ .1-,,^ L^dy „£ the Lake. - l.onKleilow's XXHI.-XXV. William Henry Bishop . .776 Evangeline. -Margaret P. Janes" The Artist's Year. An AjTERNOON in Holland. Sarah Orne - Yriarte's Florence. 798 The Contributors' Club Jeu'ett Persian Dualism. EUzaleth Hobins 804 Heroines of Fiction. - Learning to Fly. OrR DARK AGE m Music. 7.A// S. 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'dec 5 1932^' THE ')hl 8HV'\^^ ATLANTIC MONTHLY: a iHaga?ine of literature, Science, art, ant) 10olittcj5. Foi. L. — DECEMBER, 1882. — No. CCCU. y^ TnViH ?>u \\^y^Kr)\N \ K- Vx-t OUR DARK AGE IN MUSIC. The real history of music on this side of the Atlantic is all included in the present century. All that bore the name of music in New England before the year 1800 may be summed up in the various modifications of one monotonous and barren type, the Puritan Psalmody. Its chronicles, quaint as they may be, and full of amusing anecdote, of serio- comic pulpit homilies, and nuts for sat- irists and jokers, are more interesting as exhibiting one phase of the old Pu- ritan life and manners than as having any significant relation to the growth of music as such, or to any progress here in musical taste and culture. The his- tory would make a readable chapter by itself, exciting many a smile of pity rather than contempt ; but it would not show the germs out of which the mu- sical character of New England, such as it now is, has developed. The truth is, our fathers (with exceptions too few and too feeble to hold out) had no belief in music ; no respect for it, except as a part of the ritual of religious service, purely conventional, and, as they conceived, a matter of divine injunction. The liter- al fulfillment of the duty satisfied their consciences ; however bad the music, if they only sang, or tried to sing, it was enough. Of music in the sense of art they could not have the least conception. Yet psalmody, in its best estate, sprang out of the very heart of the Reformation, and Luther was its great apostle. Indeed, the singing of psulms by the whole people in unison bad been characteristic of all reformers and schis- matics from a much earlier time, includ- ing the Arians, the Albigenses, the dis- ciples of Wickliff and John IIuss, the Bohemian brethren, etc. It was the plain-song " of the people, for the peo- ple and by the people," as distinguished from the more scientific, figural, f ugued, contrapuntal, antiphonal music of the Catholic service, in which only trained choirs, and priests, could minister. In the confession of the English Puritans (1571), they say : " Concerning singing of psalms, we allow of the people's joining with one voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing the psalms from one side to the other, with intermingling of organs." History can tell us everything about these old tunes and their various setting, except where the tunes, the mel- odies themselves, first came from. Save in a few instances, no one knows who invented or composed them. Probably they grew and shaped themselves by lit- tle and little, in the course of practice, quite empirically, by unconscious in- stinct, out of a thousand sources : large- ly out of the old traditional ca>ito jTerwo, the Gregorian tones, etc., of the Cath- olic church ; quite as largely out of snatches of free secular melody that floated in the air j while some came from 814 Our Bark Age in Music. [December, the Bohemian Brethren, some were sweets stolen from tlie early opera, and some were of individual invention. Lu- ther is thought to have composed both the melody and harmony, as well as the words, of several of the noblest and most enduring of the German chorals. It must be remembered that the most secular melodies of those days, the mu- sic of the " world's people," whether convivial, amorous, or war-like, had much of the psalm-tune flavor, at any rate, its dullness. Probably many of these tunes came into their present shape by gradual accretion and piecing out, a phrase from this one and a phrase from that, instances of which process are well known. To the Lutheran chorals we must turn for the grandest, sincerest, most inspired, most tender, deep, and heartfelt types of pure religious people's melody. It was Luther's musical character and knowledge, together with his many- sided genius, his zeal, his large human- ity and common sense, that gave signifi- cance and form and pregnancy to the German choral above all other psalmo- dy ; to him and his co-workers the world owes these vital germs out of which the whole great German art of sacred music, in its larger forms of motet, ora- torio, cantata, etc., has been developed. Where these seeds dropped in genial soil, now stately forests wave, far-echo- ing leafy avenues of song, through whose responsive, swaying branches sing the winds of heaven in never-ending har- mony and fugue. In these small germs lay all the mighty art of Bach and Han- del, and their followers, in embryo, wailing for its time. That was the Ger- man choral. But our New England psalm-book, — what has developed out of that ? Nothing but endless mechan- ical copies and multiplications of itself, continual breeding in and in, a ringing of idle changes on the same old hum- drum meaningless material ; books made to sell, which never would have been so multitudinous, strewing the shelves and upper lofts of music stores and sing- ing galleries " thick as the leaves of Vallambrosa," if they had had any soul of art or music in them, or were much better than dead leaves, fit for a general bonfire. Naturally enough, it was not long be- fore the people's music of the Reforma- tion began to flow in two quite opposite directions : one tending to a positive, a genial, a human and expressive charac- ter, with Luther for its type and mas- ter spirit, leading up to art ; the other, typified by Calvin, negative, ascetic, stern, devoid of beauty and afraid of it, frowning on music as a free and genial spirit. Calvin, it is true, (unlike Zwin- glius, who in the early days of the same church had included vocal music as well as organs in his proscription of idola- tries), shrewdly saw the advantage of congregational singing in keeping the fire alive in public worship. He had proper melodies prepared (how far orig- inal, or from what sources borrowed, we know not) for Marot's Psalms by Franc and other eminent musicians of the day. These were printed at Strasburg in 1545, and were afterwards appended to Calvin's catechism and ordered to be sung in the Reformed church. This Calvinistic psalmody spread into Hol- land, and thence found its way across the ocean to our barren shores. While Luther, Walther, Sachs, Senfl, and many more were shaping and developing the old German and Bohemian chorals (clothed with perennial charm a centu- ry later in the wonderful harmony of Bach), the Psalms were rendered into French verse by Clement Marot and Theodore Beza, and were harmonized in parts, with the melod}' given to the tenor, in 1561 by Louis Bourgeois; in 1562 by Claude Goudimel, who had lived in Rome and had the honor of counting Palestrina among his pupils ; and in 1565 by '•■ that great master of harmony," Claude Le Jeune. Bour- 1882.] Our Dark Age in Music. 815 geois had followed Calvin to Geneva in 1541, and there became cantor in a church, but quarreled with the presby- tery, who would not let him introduce a harmonized arrangement of the Psalms in public worship. The singing coun- tenanced by Calvin was without instru- ment, without harmony, a droning forth by the whole congregation, in untutored, dry, distressing unison, or caricature of that, of the " French tunes," so called, thougli some of them were German or Bohemian, no doubt. These (a portion of them) were the psalm-tunes that came over with the Pilgrim Fathers, and were first sung December 9, 1620, perhaps on Plymouth Rock (?), — the naked mel- odies, as they were badly printed in an edition of Ainsworth's version of the psalms, published in Amsterdam in 1612. A few of these tunes made their way to England, and may be found in Ra- venscroft and other English psalters. Some of them became known iu Ger- many, and gained a place in German choral-books. Seven or eight of them afterwards had the distinguished honor of being harmonized, as they never have been before or since, and, we may say, immortalized, by John Sebastian Bach, and may be seen in the collec- tions of his chorals. The greatest of these, 371 Vierstimmige ChoralgesJinge, has been well called " one of those fon- tal works which are the cause or the in- spiration of all that come after them." But if one would find the fullest treas- ury of choral melodies, we would refer him to Conrad Kocher's Zionsharfe (Stuttgart, 1855), containing 1137 cho- rals of the German Reformed church, the 150 psalms of the French Reformed church, 359 psalm and hymn-tunes of the English and American church, and 316 of the best melodies of the Romish church. But we anticipate. We must first glance at our own mother country, and see how the leaven of the Reformation was affecting the parochial music there. Somewhat in a kindred spirit with the German choral, or plain-song, more so in respect of dignity and grandeur than of deep and inward sweetness, were the English, Scotch, and Welsh tunes to which the Psalms were sung during the reigns of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and Charles I. That was a time when Eng- land flourished in tlie foreground of artistic, learned, contrapuntal, vigorous music ; the day of her great cathedral composers, building upon Paiestrina, and her fresh, ingenious school of mad- rigal writers. England had her Eliza- bethan age in music no less than in lit- erature. Amid so much that is dull, conventional, and monotonous in Eng- lish music, the names of Taliis and Bird, of Morley, Gibbons, Wilbye, Weelkes and many others form a brill- iant galaxy. Many of these did not disdain to harmonize the homely psalm- tune. We must refer to Dr. Burney's stately History of Music, and to Haw- kins, for even a sketch of the successive settings and collections that appeared, down to the dark period with which we have to deal. Suffice it to say that metrical psalmodj', as practiced in the English parochial churches, had its be- ginning, or at least became general, about the time of Edward VI. The first English version of the Psalms of David, in a most unpoetic, rough, and gnarly kind of verse, was made by Thomas Sternhold — whom an English writer calls " our Marot witliout his genius" — and John Hopkins (1549 and 1556). It was " imprinted at London by John Day," in 1562, " with apt notes to sing them withal," and again, with harmony, in 1563. Several metrical psalters with music were afterwards published in Scotland and in England. Some of the tunes are found appended to some old editions of the Bible. In 1579 were published "The Psalmes of David in English meter, with notes of foure partes set unto them by Giulielmo Damon, to the use of the godly Chris- 816 Our Dark Age in Music. [December, tians, for recreating themselves, iiistede of fond aud uuseemely ballades." Cosyns (1585) published sixty psalms, in six parts, in plain counterpoint, to the mel- odies which Day had printed before. Then came the " The Whole Book of Psalmes, with their wonted tunes as they are song in churches, composed into foure parts, by nine sondiy authors. Imprinted at London, by T. Est " (or Este), " 1594." Among the nine ap- pear the names of Dowland, Blancks, Farmer, Allison, Kirby, etc. This gives the melody or plain-song to the tenor, after the old Roman fashion, the added parts being cantus, alius, and bass. The counterpoint is simple, note against note, the harmony excellent. In 1594 there was a collection, by John Mundy, of songs and psalms in three, four, and five parts ; in 1599 another collection by Richard Allison. Thomas Este seems to have anticipated Ravenscroft in the practice of naming tunes from certain places. Finally appeared, in 1621, reprinted in 163.J, the most complete and alto- gether most important collection of the kind which England had yet known, Thomas Ravenscroft's " Whole Booke of Psalmes : with the Hymnes Evan- gelical, and Songs Spiritvall, composed into 4 parts by sundry Authors, to such severall Tunes, as have beene and are usually sung in England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Italy, France, and the Nether-lands : never as yet before in one volume published." Probably, ex- cept in Germany, no higher type of liarmonized psalmody has appeared be- fore or since. Hawkins tells us that it became the manual of psalm-singcrs throughout the kingdom ; and, in the multitude of illiterate compilations that sprang up on all sides to choke it o£E, he calls him " a happy man, in many places, who is master of a genuine copy of Ravenscroft's Psalms." Every psalm of the Old Version, besides the Hymns Evangelical, etc., is here printed in full, with a fit tune, in many instances the same tune being wedded to several psalms. The number of distinct tunes is ninety-eight, of which forty are given as " tunes of later date," bearing names like Windsor, York, Low Dutch, etc the rest being the old or " proper " tunes. The list of authors (arrangers, harmonizers) includes, besides Ravens- croft himself (who was made Bachelor of Music at Cambridge at the early age of fourteen), such names asTallis, Dow- land, Morley, John Milton (father of the great poet), Allison, Bennet, and others, twenty-four in all. The melody, or plain-song, is given to the tenor voice, probably intended to be sung en masse by the congregation. Nearly all the psalms are in common measure, and the tunes are without rhythmical divisions, or bars, except between the lines, and are written very simply in notes of al- most uniform length. The bass may also be counted as a people's part ; while, for the select and cultivated voices of higher range, the more varied, arti- ficial, contrapuntal parts of cnntus (so- prano) aud medius (or countertenor, for boys) are superimposed. This is sim- ply the old church way of composing in Italy, France, Germany, clothing the massive plain-song with the freer play of parts accompanying. Tlie harmony is chaste, correct, and noble, and the melodic progression of the four parts severally is such as to put to shame the work of our multifarious modern manu- facturers of psalmody, although it in- volves now and then consecutive fifths and octaves, not without example in the highest mastery of Bach himself, but which strike the critical eye more than they offend the ear. Doubtless such a setting of the psalms was too good for the many, and, in those days of half- musical and ignorant parish clerks, who " deaconed out " the lines to feeble groups of voices, it is hardly conceiva- ble that this harmony could have been widely accepted, or have continued long 1882.] Our Dark Age in Music. 817 in use. The assignment of the melody to the tenor would be enough, without other obvious reasons, to account for the short life of such a compilation in the churches. But to the cultivated taste in music the book must have been most welcome, and was probably long cher- ished, for these things happened just on the turning-point of the decline of the Elizabethan era, when the queen herself played upon the " virginals," when the madrigals were written, and when Eng- lish gentlemen could take a part in sing- ing them at sight. This brings us back to our dark pe- riod. The Pilgrim Fathers, as we have seen, were innocent of all acquaintance with such psalmody as that of Ravens- croft. They were of the Calvinistic school of singing, as well as of doctrine ; without skill in music, they sang, most of them by rote, merely the tunes, with- out any harmony, from Ainsworth's Psalter, which they brought with them from Holland. Ten years later (1630) Winthrop and his colony of Puritans, not Separatists, still acknowledging the tie that bound them to the English mother church, came better fitted out in this respect. They are supposed to have brought Raven scroft's book along with them, although we are at a loss to find documentary evidence of the fact. But, as they came here just in the pe- riod of Ravenscroft, as they had edu- cated men among them, university men, they must have had some little skill in music in its plainer vocal forms, — enough, at least, to sing from notes. An original copy of Ravenscroft, pre- served in the library of the Massachu- setts Historical Society, has the auto- graph of Governor John Endicott upon its fly-leaf. It is known that one of the first acts of the fathers was to institute a college, and that its curriculum from the first included systematic musical instruction. Perhaps, in the burning of its library in 1764, some copies of Ravenscroft, or other documents which VOL. L. — NO. 302. 52 would have served our purpose, vanished into thin air. At all events it would be hard to answer the question. What set- ting of the Psalms, if not Raven scroft's, could have been sung in the planting of the first church in the new Boston ? For they must have been familiar with it in the old St. Botolph's. Moreover, the Bay Psalm Book, or New England version (first jjriuted at Cambridge in 1640, again in 1647, and revised in 1650), to which the Ainsworth version very slowly and reluctantly gave way, in its appended " admonition to the reader," gives direction for singing the psalms to the tunes " collected out of our chief musicians, by Thomas Ravens- croft," etc. If Winthrop's people did bring this with them, and if there was musical skill enough, even in a small nucleus of them, to sing from it in parts, then we had represented here, for a brief period, the two diverging tendencies of the great flood of choral song which fired the heart of the people in the days of the Reformation, and of which we called Luther and Calvin the respective types, — the one a genial music, containing in itself a germ, the other an ascetic, mere- ly ritualistic droning and shouting out of tunes, ignoring harmony, and putting away all instruments as an abomination. The latter came with the Pilgrims, and utterly prevailed in all New England churches very soon ; the former for a brief period may have had some foot- hold in the first church of Winthrop's followers. But how very brief I That might have proved the germ of a true musical development, if the whole phys- ical and moral atmosphere, if the Puri- tan character and spirit of the settlers, if their stern outward necessities and preoccupations, and their yet sterner theology only could have favored ! But such seed could not germinate in such a soil. The fathers had no time to study music. Rough realities of actual life, and anxious problems of the life to come, claimed all their thought. They 818 Our Dark Age in Music. [December, had other seed to plant in rougber soil ; they had to fight o£E the Indians, deal with heretics, go to daily funerals with solemn length of ceremony, and no end of " gloves and scarfs and rings," as Sewall in his Diary records ; and at the same time keep up a chronic struggle with the mother country for their char- ter and their liberties. What little knowledge they may have possessed in music was soon lost among their im- mediate descendants, whose meat and drink was stern theology and Bible ex- egesis. During nearly all the remain- der of that century " the air was black with sermons." Music, as such, wore the strait jacket, and was shut up in the dark. It was only in obedience to scriptural injunction, " ordinances," that the people tried to sing their psalms, no other music being for a mo- ment tolerated. Instruments were an abomination. Cotton Mather argued that, " as there is not a word in the New Testament authorizing the use of such aids to devotion, the Holy Ghost does, in effect, declare, ' I will not hear the melody of thy organs.' " Secular music had to hide itself out of hearing, and might not even peep aloud. The ceremonial and martial drum and trum- pet, for trainings, proclamations, and processions, were the nearest approach to anything like street music, and prob- ably, in point of art, the patriotic fish- horn of our boys would beat that trum- peting on its own ground. Later, of course, with the arrival of the provin- cial governors, and with the English church (King's Chapel) and its organ- ist, a few bow instruments, violins, and more especially the " bass viol," or vio- loncello, were imported and enjoyed suh rosd, as was the " ball " given at the house of Master Enstone, the first or- ganist, which good Judge Sewall pre- vailed upon the governor not to attend. The judge indeed once mentions in his Diary a party " marching throw the streets with viols and drums, playing and beating by turns ; " and once he alludes to " my wive's virginals." Other than these, the whole three volumes of that famous Diary of a man, who was a leader in Israel's psalm-singing, con- tain no mention of any instruments of music, except, of course, the aforesaid drums and trumpets. (" Peace was pro- claimed by eight or ten drums, and two trumpets.") Once he records the be- ing " serenaded in the night by three musicians ; " but he was too far gone in sleep to listen, and does not tell us what the trio was composed of. In 1673 "there were no musicians by trade in the colony." The very name musician was one of reproach. For the New England Puritan the only alterna- tive in music lay between psalmody and vulgar ballad-singing, common fiddling, and dancing jigs. This " minstrelsy," which, dating back to the old Danish bards and scalds, had kept the soul of song alive for centuries in England, had sunk so low in her great age of music that, in the thirty-ninth year of Eliz- abeth, a statute was passed, by which " minstrels, wandering abroad," were in- cluded among " rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars," — " tramps " is now the word, — and were punishable as such. Cromwell (1656) renewed the ordinance, — though Cromwell in a bet- ter sense loved music, — including " fid- lers " in the minstrel category. Rit- son, rejoicing in their downfall, quotes with great glee the following lines from a satirical ballad ascribed to Dr. John Bull, one of the learned Elizabethan musicians : — " When Jesus went to Jairus' house (Whose daughter was about to die,) He turned the Minstrels out of doors, Among the rascal company : " Beggars they are with one consent, — And rogues, by act of Parliament." This prohibitory statute was always available in terrorem throughout the colonies. 1882.] Our Darh Age in Music. 819 In a single generation, what little art or skill the founders had was all forgot- ten. Of Eavenscroft a few of the tunes, but not the harmony, remained, and these were written, eight or ten of them, in the psalm-books and Bible, and sung, of course, in unison, the mere melody, continually shifting and uncertain, for at least a hundred years. Mere melody soon runs to waste, and soaks into the sand of vulgar rote ; it requires the sav- ing power of harmony, not poor, me- chanical, mere make-shift harmony, but harmony inspired by a creative genius, like Sebastian Bach, developed with fine instinct out of the very heart of the melody, to make the tunes perennial and evermore unhackneyed. Such run- ning to waste was fated in the false con- ditions of church music here. The few old tunes that were sung by rote, as the hymns were " lined " or " deaconed " out, inevitably became mixed, and al- tered, and perverted. It even went so far that each person sang the lines to whatever tune came most handy for him- self, swerving from the tune set by the leader into one quite different, which re- sulted in the most ludicrous and mad- dening jai'gon. Sewall, in his Diary, makes repeated mention of seven tunes, no more. These are Windsor, Litch- field, Oxford, York, St. David's, "West- minster, and Low Dutch. These names (all but one) are from Ravenscroft, as probably the tunes were. Once he says : "I set Windsor tune, and the people, at the second going over, run into Oxford, do what I could." Again, " In the morning I set York tune, and, in the second going over, the gallery carried it irresistibly to St. David's, which dis- couraged me very much." Once, " We sung all the ordinary tuenes." About the beginning of the eighteenth century the lowest depth was reached. Few congregations could sing more than four or five tunes, and even these the Rev. Thomas Walter relates, " had become so mutilated, tortured, and twisted, that the psalm-singing had become a mere disorderly noise, left to the mercy of every unskillful throat to chop and alter, twist and change, according to their odd fancy, sounding like five hundred differ- ent tunes roared out at the same time, and so little in time that they were often one or two words apart ; so hideous as to be bad beyond expression, and so drawling that we sometimes had to pause twice on one word to take breath ; and the decline had been so gradual that the very confusion and discord seemed to have become grateful to their ears, while melody, sung in time and tune, was offensive ; and when it was heard that tunes were sung by note, they ar- gued that the new way, as it was called, was an unknown tongue, not melodious as the old, made disturbance in churches, was needless, a contrivance of the de- signing to get money, required too much time, and made the young disorderly ; the old way good enough." Many church- members were suspended for persisting in singing by rule. It required much preaching to overcome the prejudice. No wonder that this scandal led to the rise of a small party of " anti-psalmists," who were opposed to any singing, inter- preting the divine exhortation to " make melody in the heart " to mean that we are not to make it with the voice aloud. These were soon brought under disci- pline by the stalwart treatment of the clergy, who ruled all. But in the mean time had come the Revolution of 1688, and the arrival of the Provincial Charter in 1692, work- ing a change in matters social, civil, and religious. Old world luxuries and fash- ions came in, some literature (not theo- logical) and science. Music also burst its bonds, or felt them loosened, and be- gan to sing a little out of its own sim- ple heart. In 1690 the first music was printed in Boston, thirteen tunes in two- part harmony. Thirty years later sev- eral clergymen made efforts to encour- age better singing. The reaction was in 820 Our Dark Age in Music. [December, favor of good music, — at least, technic- ally good, — and scientilically harmo- nized, though still cut short to the Pro- crustes bed of psalmody. But even then, and more or less down to a time within the recollection of some old sing- ers of the present day, however proper- ly composed, the tunes in practice un- derwent a barbarous inversion of the parts (far different from double counter- point), the part for tenor being sung above the alto and soprano ! " Have we not heard it with our ears ? " This barbarism kept in vogue until about 1825 ; and not without much contro- versy were the voices remanded sever- ally to their proper parts, the soaring shrill sopranos and high straining ten- ors — heroines and heroes of the vil- lage choirs and singing-schools — cling- ing bravely to what they had so long regarded as their rightful, proud dis- tinction. But soon, with a Queen's Chapel here in Boston, the organ was to lend sol- emn beauty to the service. With what suspicion that '' box of whistles " had been dreaded and excluded ! How Cot- ton Mather had denounced it ! And good Judge Sewall, after a visit to Ox- ford, Eng., writes : " I am a lover of music to a fault ; " yet he was made uneasy by the music in the church, where "the justling out the institution of singing psalms by the boisterous or- gan " disturbed him as " something that can never be answered to the great Master of religious ceremonies." The first organ in New England was that of- fered by Thomas Brattle to the Brattle Street Church, and there, on principle, declined with thanks, in 1713, and then passed over to the Chapel and accepted, although it is said to have lain seven months in the porch before they ven- tured to unpack it. The next year the wardens wrote to England to invite Mr. Edward Enstone to come over and be the organist, at a salary of thirty pounds per annum, which sum, " with other ad- vantages as to dancing, music, etc." (of course some secular music could be smuggled in with the rest), " we doubt not will be sufficient encouragement." He began his duties by Christmas, 1714. To the Puritan neighbors that Chapel must have been a haunted house. Yet one can easily imagine many a younger spirit creeping within its porch to listen with wonder and delight. It was not long before one young Bostonian, Ed- ward Bromfield (1745), actually built an organ which was thought to surpass any yet heard here from abroad, and was the wonder of the day in all these colo- nies. From that time organs began to creep into the churches, and with them organists, who, of course, did something to enlarge the meagre repertory of a people which did not know music even enough to hate it. If the period from 1G20 to 1690 was, musically, one of total darkness, the second period, to which we have just alluded, that of the provincial gov- ernors, exhibits the first slight signs of a gray penumbra, gradually growing thinner. Now appear more positive tokens of approaching dawn, for we have reached our Revolution of 1775, a period of free thought and inquiry. The struggle for self-government was a gen- eral quickening of the mind, and made men less afraid of new ideas, and arts, and ornaments of life. In music, to be sure, the progress was for a long time confined to psalmody. But now the re- action against " lininQ>-'b Dial JOKER LEVER. 4 < 3-ineh Dial. 1 Day, Time, Alarm. 1 Day, Strike. Gold Gilt Front and Handle. Nickel Frame and Glass Sides. LINCOLN. Height, 27 inches. 8-day Weight. Strikes the hours. Brass Weights. We were the first to introduce these SMALL LEVEU CLOCKS, in nickel cases, which have met with so much favor at home and abroad. They have been extensively imitated If vou will look for one having on the dial " SETH THOMAS," or our trade mark (a square within a circle, inclosing initials S. T. ^^ ), you will get a good time-piece and a durable case. If you must have a cheaper one than ours, all right. About a thousand people per day, on an average, have bought one of ours for several years, and enough are still doing it to keep us busy. Wc prefer to increase our business on a higher grade of goods. 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