h
was sung or played in praise of the Creator,--sacred music. In fact,
this noble quality of the soul was very rarely called into exercise,
save in the worship of the Deity, until many centuries had passed. Of
music before the Christian era, both vocal and instrumental, the books
of the Old Testament often speak. As to its exact character, we are
left to conjecture, being, as before intimated, without materials from
which to form a judgment; but, in some form or other, there was,
during that period, abundance of what was called music.

The first mention of music, either vocal or instrumental, in the
Scriptures, is made in Gen. iv. 21: "Jubal was the father of all such
as handle the harp and organ." Jubal was only seventh in descent from
Adam; and from this passage it is thought by some that he was the
inventor of instrumental music. In the year B.C. 1739, in Gen. xxxi.
27, Laban says to Jacob, "Wherefore didst thou flee away from me, and
didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and
with songs, with tabret and with harp?" This is the first mention in
the Bible of vocal music. King David, who has been called "the sweet
singer of Israel," is said to have been a skilful performer on the
harp. By his magical touch upon its strings at a certain time, he
produced sounds so sweetly soothing as to drive away the "evil spirit"
from Saul.

The poet Byron pays an elevated, glowing tribute to this "monarch
minstrel" in the following lines:--

"The harp the monarch minstrel swept,
The king of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music hallowed while she wept
O'er tones her heart of hearts had given,--
Redoubled be her tears; its chords are riven.

It softened men of iron mould;
It gave them virtues not their own:
No ear so dull, no soul so cold,
That felt not, fired not, to the tone;
Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne.

It told the triumphs of our King;
It wafted glory to our God;
It made our gladdened valleys ring,
The cedars bow, the mountains nod:
Its sound aspired to heaven, and there abode.

Since then, though heard on earth no more,
Devotion, and her daughter Love,
Still bid the bursting spirit soar
To sounds that seem as from above,
In dreams that day's broad light cannot remove."

And here I append from the First of Chronicles, xiii. 8, a description
of the mu