ck mantles, with long hair matted with
blood--their ears also were mangled. These conducted
him to the steps of the pyramid, and he was driven
up amidst a crowd of priests, with drums beating and
trumpets blowing. As he went up he broke an earthen
flute on every step to show that his love, and his
delights were over. And when he reached the top, he was
sacrificed on an altar of jasper, and the signal that
the sacrifice was completed was given to the multitudes
below by the rolling of the great sacrificial drum.[04]

[02] _Kong_. His disciples called him _Fu Tsee_, or "the
master"; Jesuit missionaries Latinized this to Confucius.

[03] The Chinese theatre has been called an unconscious
parody of our old-fashioned Italian opera, and there
are certainly many resemblances. In a Chinese play,
when the situation becomes tragic, or when one of the
characters is seized with some strong emotion, it finds
vent in a kind of aria. The dialogue is generally given
in the most monotonous manner possible--using only
high throat and head tones, occasionally lowering or
raising the voice on a word, to express emotion. This
monotonous, and to European ears, strangely nonchalant,
nasal recitative, is being continually interrupted by
gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant
reed instruments. When one or more of the characters
commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom
in China) he sings--or rather whines--a long chant before
he dies, just as his western operatic colleagues do, as,
for instance, Edgar in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and even,
to come nearer home, Siegfried in "Goetterdaemmerung."

[04] This drum was made of serpents' skins, and the sound of
it was so loud that it could be heard eight miles away.

VI

THE MUSIC OF GREECE

The first name of significance in Greek music is that of
Homer. The hexameters of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" were
quite probably chanted, but the four-stringed lyre which we
associate with the ancient Greek singers was only used for
a few preluding notes--possibly to pitch the voice of the
bard--and not during the chant itself. For whatever melody
this chant possessed, it depended entirely upon the raising
and lowering of the voice according to the accent of the words
and the dramatic feeling of the narrative. For its rhythm
it depende