the ears of that age, as we know from still preserved examples. The idea
having once been given, the composing of airs productive of fugal
harmony would naturally grow up; as in some way it _did_ grow up out of
this alternate choir-singing. And from the fugue to concerted music of
two, three, four, and more parts, the transition was easy. Without
pointing out in detail the increasing complexity that resulted from
introducing notes of various lengths, from the multiplication of keys,
from the use of accidentals, from varieties of time, and so forth, it
needs but to contrast music as it is, with music as it was, to see how
immense is the increase of heterogeneity. We see this if, looking at
music in its _ensemble_, we enumerate its many different genera and
species--if we consider the divisions into vocal, instrumental, and
mixed; and their subdivisions into music for different voices and
different instruments--if we observe the many forms of sacred music,
from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet, anthem, etc., up to
the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of secular music, from
the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental solo up to the
symphony.

Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any one sample of aboriginal
music with a sample of modern music--even an ordinary song for the
piano; which we find to be relatively highly heterogeneous, not only in
respect of the varieties in the pitch and in the length of the notes,
the number of different notes sounding at the same instant in company
with the voice, and the variations of strength with which they are
sounded and sung, but in respect of the changes of key, the changes of
time, the changes of _timbre_ of the voice, and the many other
modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous
dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless
orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in
heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one
should have been the ancestor of the other.

Were they needed, many further illustrations might be cited. Going back
to the early time when the deeds of the god-king, chanted and
mimetically represented in dances round his altar, were further narrated
in picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces, and so
constituted a rude literature, we might trace the development of
Literature through phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, it
presents