The pieces are of the most stately kind, in general, and would scarcely realise the modern conception of dance music, but they are beautiful specimens of the art of those days, and cannot but command our admiration. Of the more lively and frivolous dances the one known as Trenchmore was the most popular. "Be we young or old ... we must dance Trenchmore over table, chairs and stools."[10] Selden, in his "Table Talk," "Then all the company dances, lord and groom, lady and kitchen maid, no distinction." The more one comes to learn of life in the England of those days, the more one becomes convinced that, taken as a whole, life was both happy and joyous. No less an authority than Professor Thorold Rogers, after profound research into the social conditions of the Middle Ages, says they show that a state of happiness and content prevailed.[11] Dancing was advised, too, as "a goodly regimen against the fever pestilence." The fact that there is comparatively little of old-time music extant is due to the late invention of music printing and the slow progress of musical notation. "Parthenia" was, as the title page tells, the first music for the virginals ever printed, and yet appeared as late as 1611. From that time, naturally, records of everything written of any importance, exist. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the typical life of the England of old, is shown at its best, and in its most characteristic state of development. Soon afterwards, foreign influence, aided by a foreign Court, added to the depressing element of Puritanism, was to shake to its foundations this character and to mould it into that type which for centuries it retained. The Wars of the Roses had long been over, and economic conditions greatly modified and improved. The genius of the people seemed to burst out as if relieved from intolerable repression. The absence of the unceasing scares and horrors of war gave them the opportunity that had so long been denied. To think that such men as Shakespeare, Bacon, Burleigh, Drake, Raleigh, Tallis, Byrd, and Orlando Gibbons were living at the same time, and may have often passed each other in the streets of London! There can be little doubt that the reign of Queen Elizabeth was the happiest the people had ever experienced, and it may be truly said that the Queen was the very incarnation of the spirit of the age.