Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/18

 as ourselves. This may be true in some measure as regards the art of organ building, but it must not be forgotten that in early times there lived men famous in this craft—men who devoted their lives and genius to its improvement, and whose names ought surely to be handed down, and a place assigned them, in the roll of those who have honourably contributed to the advancement of the art they professed.

The works of the mediæval organ builders which once resounded in our abbeys and cloisters—those monuments of Gothic art now fast mouldering into dust—have, it is true, long since passed away; but records of many of those works exist, and such records as can now be recovered from their oblivion, may perhaps furnish useful subjects of reflection to the present generation.

The early history of the organ, I need scarcely tell you, is involved in great obscurity, and the more we attempt to investigate the facts that have come down