rld itself. In some form or other, it has
always existed. Ere man learned to give vent to his emotions in
tuneful voice, Nature, animate and inanimate, under the hand of the
Great Master, sang his praises. Of this we learn in the sacred
writings; while all about us, in the songs of birds, the musical
sighing of the winds, the fall of waters, and the many forms of the
music of Nature, we have palpable evidence of its present existence,
and assurances of its most remote antiquity.

It would seem that not long after "God breathed into the nostrils of
man the breath of life, and he became a living soul," he learned to
express the joys and yearnings of his soul in song first, and then
with some sort of musical instrument. And to man it was given,
commencing with the early ages, to develop the simple ejaculations or
melodies of a praise-giving soul into a beautiful, a noble art,
replete at times with harmonic intricacies, and again with melodies
grand in their very simplicity; into a beneficent science, divine from
its inception, which has ever had as votaries many of earth's
greatest minds, and has become a fountain of delight to all mankind.

The history of the music of antiquity--that is, in an art-form--is
nearly, if indeed not quite, enveloped in mystery; and it were futile
to profess to give an historical presentation of an art from its
birth, when documentary evidence of the same is lost.

We may, however, very reasonably suppose of music generally, that it
must have been gradually developed, having had its infancy, childhood,
and youth; and that it grew slowly into present scientific form with
the advance of the centuries.

From all we can gather in regard to the early history of music as a
system, it would appear that it had its infancy in ancient Greece;
although it is supposed by some that the Grecian method was founded
upon that of the still more ancient one of the Egyptians. Dr. Burgh, a
learned musical writer states that, of "the time before Christ, music
was most cultivated and was most progressive in Greece." The verses of
the Greek poet Homer, who was himself a musician, abound in beautiful
allusions to and descriptions of this charming science; while in
mythology are recounted the wonderful musical achievements of the god
Orpheus, who is said to have been so skilled in music that the very
rocks and trees followed in his wake of harmony.

The first artificial music of which the Bible speaks was that whic