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 80 ON MUSIC, & c.

men and women of fashion, whom they may see by daylight any day in the week.

Yet hence the poor are clothed, the mean are fed ; and the philosophy of the ball - room com- pels us to acknowledge , that of the persons thus occupied , very few are capable of employing themselves to better purpose.

ON MUSIC.

THE first traces of music are to be found in Egypt, where musical instruments , capable of much variety and expression , existed , at a time when other nations were in an uncivilized state. The invention of the lyre is ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Mercury of the Egyptians , which is a proof of its antiquity ; but a still greater proof of the existence of musical instruments amongst them at a very early period , is drawn from the figure of an instrument said to be re- presented on an obelisk , erected , as is supposed , by Sesostris , at Heliopolis. This instrument, by means of its neck , was capable with only two strings , if tuned fourths , of furnishing that series of sounds , called by the ancients a heptachord ; and if tuned fifths , of producing an octave.

As Moses was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, it is probable that the Israelites , who interwove music in all their religious ceremo- nies , borrowed much from that people. That the Greeks took their first ideas of music from the Egyptians is clear from this, that they as- cribed the invention of the lyre to Mercury , al- though they made Apollo to be the god of music , and gave him that instrument to play upon. In no country was music so much cultivated as in Greece. The muses, as well as Apollo , Bacchus , and other gods and demi - gods , practised or pro- moted it in some way or other. Their poets are supposed to have been like the Celtic and Ger- man bards, and the Scalds of Iceland and Scan- dinavia , who went about singing their poems in the streets and the palaces of princes.

In this manner did. Orpheus, Homer , Hesiod , Sappho and others , recite their verses ; and , in after times , on the institution of the games , Si- monides , Pindar , and other poets , celebrated in public the exploits of the victors. The instru- ments known in the time of Homer, were the lyre , flute , syrinx , and trumpet. The invention of notation and musical characters is ascribed to Terpander, a poet and musician , who flourished 671 years before Christ. We afterwards find philosophers, as well as poets , among the number of those who admired and cultivated music , theo- retically as well as practically , as Pythogoras , Plato , Aristotle , Aristozenus , Euclid and many others. Pythagoras is celebrated for his discove- ries in this science, namely , for that of musical ratios , and the addition of an eighth string to the lyre. The former of these he is supposed to have derived from the Egyptians. He also ex- plained the theory of sounds, and reduced it to a science. Aristozenus is the most ancient writer on music, of whose works there are any remains. Euclid followed up the idea of Pythagoras ' ratios ,

which he reduced to a mathematical demonstra- tion. To this list of Greek writers, may be added Nichomachus , Gerasenus , Alypius , Gaudentius , Bacchius , senior , Ptolemy the astronomer , and Aristides Quintillian , whose works are still ex- tant. These wrote under the Roman Emperors, many of whom cultivated music , and followed the theory of the Greeks. Among the Roman wri- ters may be reckoned Vitruvius, who in his ar- chitecture touches lightly on this subject ; also Martianus Capella , and Boethius , who wrote in the decline of the empire. After them, some centuries elapsed before the science of music met with any particular attention. Its introduc- tion into the church service prevented it from falling, like other arts , into total neglect. Instru- mental music was introduced into the public ser- vice of the church under Constantine the Great. The practice of chanting the psalms was begun in the western churches, by St. Ambrose , about 350 years after Christ : 300 years after the method of chanting was improved by St. Gregory the Great. It was probably introduced into England by St. Augustine, and greatly improved by St. Dunstan. The use of the organ probably com- menced in the Greek church, where it was call- ed hydraulicon , or the water organ. The first organ known in Europe, was sent as a present to King Pepin , from the Emperor Constantine Compronymus. It came into general use in France, Germany , and England , in the tentli century. Soon after this, music began to be cul- tivated as a science , particularly in Italy , where Guido , a monk of Arezzo , first conceived the idea of counter - point , or the division of music into parts , by points set opposite to each other , and formed the scale afterwards known by the name of the gamut. This was followed by the invention of the time table, and afterwards by regular compositions of music. But the exercise of the art was for a long time confined to sacred music, during which period secular music was followed by itinerant poets and musicians , after the manner of the ancients. Of this description were the troubadours in France, the Welsh bards or harpers in England , and the Scotch minstrels.

INCIPIENT disorders of the teeth are too gene- rally neglected. Every parent should, as an imperative duty , submit his child's mouth to the inspection of a judicious dentist at least twice a year. The amount of trouble and agony suffered from this species of negligence would, doubtless , startle and appal any one who could behold it in the aggregate. Yet what shameful cowards most men are in this respect. Day after day, month after month slips away , after they discover the inroads of decay , before they can muster resolu- tion to set themselves in the dentist's chair ; and too many procrastinate , till driven by intense anguish to the crisis ; and then , instead of the slight operation that would have been originally necessary , are edified with the extraction of two or three , which earlier attention might have preserved.