Should this be true, the long-contested difficulty, and that train of endless disputes, which has existed among the learned and scientific world so long, will instantly vanish. Should we suppose an ancient flute-player used an improper tone or semi-tone, or had he transgressed the mode or key in which he was playing, he committed an error in harmony; yet his melody might have been perfect, with respect to the laws of rhythm or metre; we should say of a modern musician, under similar circumstances, that he played wrong notes, or was out of tune, yet kept his _time_. Whoever made such a distinction would be allowed to possess a good ear for music, though the moderns would be inclined to call it an ear for melody or intonation. By the rules of musical conversation, we should be justified when we call an instrument out of tune inharmonious, although the intervals were nearly right. By _harmonica_, the Greeks implied nothing more than that proportion of sound to sound, which mathematicians call _ratio_, or which would be understood in general musical conversation, by an agreeable succession of musical notes;--as ancient harmony consisted of the succession of simple sounds, so does modern harmony consist of the succession of chords. Whether the _diatonic_ scale be the effect of nature, or produced by art, has occasioned disputation between many; but without losing time or space, we are, we think, authorised, from general opinion, to observe, that compositions formed on it, and on the plan recommended by a lute organist, would produce sensations odiously disgusting to any musical ear. The diatonic is the most simple genera in music, consisting of tones and major semi-tones; in the scale of which genus the smallest interval is a conjoint degree, which changes its name and place, that is, passing from one to another; a prominent air in this species of modern music is “God save the Queen,” entirely diatonic, without modulation, by the intervention of a single flat or sharp.