Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/816

794 times must have had a fashion of drawing largely upon their imagination, or else some elements of human nature must have changed since then, for they all remarked the influence of music upon the manners of a people. If the crude musical system they were acquainted with, with its primitive instruments, was capable of such effects as they claimed, an interesting proposition is suggested for some student to elaborate—namely, are the people of the present less sensitive and less open to the influence of music—though having an incomparably superior system—than the ancients? This remains for some speculative and subtle mind to determine. Lyres, cithares, and incidental stringed instruments of that order have meanwhile become obsolete, while the dulcimer has no place in art. The harp has, however, come down to us through the centuries in an enlarged and vastly improved form as the most honored and most historic of all musical instruments. It is not so important, indeed, as the piano and parlor organ, and consequently could not have been treated in our previous articles with consistency, although it was a precursor, in its primitive forms, of the piano-forte and entitled to mention.

The harp in its present form is capable of fine artistic effects, and is in most respects far different from the rude instrument of that species known in remote centuries. There are many kinds of harps produced, namely, the Welsh harp, which contains three rows of strings; the double harp, having two rows; the single-action pedal instrument and the double-action pedal harp, with one set—the latter being the most successful and artistic instrument of all. In fact, the single-and double-action pedal harps are generally used in musical circles to the exclusion of the two former.