It may not be out of place to remark here, that the present scrupulous avoidance of all consecutive fifths, in modern composition of strict school, is simply a reaction from the rude taste of past centuries, which employed them _ad nauseum_; there is no valid reason for their complete ostracism, any more than there was cause for the banishing of all sixths and thirds from the harmony of our ancestors. To Guido is also attributed the invention of the method of the harmonical hand (Guidonian hand, as it has been named after its supposed originator). This consisted of marking certain notes and musical signs on the tips of the fingers, and by this means more readily committing them to memory. As before stated, many of the inventions credited to Guido, are only adaptations. The Sol-faing system was almost an accidental occurrence; yet only genius can derive full profit from accidents. The hymn which gave rise to it (quoted above), is a most prosaic invocation to St. John to save the throats of the singers from hoarseness, in order that they may fittingly sing his praise. A very diplomatic way of requesting it. Musical history in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries is at its darkest; hence little is positively known of the life of Guido. It is certain that he was in great favor at Rome, and that other countries applied to him for his musical services to reorganize their ecclesiastical chanting, and also that his health failing, he returned to his monastery, forgetting and forgiving the ill treatment he had received there, and in its cloisters peacefully ended his days. The date of his decease is not known. Other names appear in this misty epoch in musical history. Franco of Cologne, Walter Odington, an English Monk, Heeronymus von Maehren, etc., wrote works upon the theory of music, while Adam de la Hale (of Arras, France) wrote music in four-part harmony, about the year 1280. But in the midst of this darkness there came a glorious sunburst in the shape of chivalric bands who elevated music to a broader sphere by adding to the ecclesiastical chanting a secular school of composition, both warlike and lyrical. CHAPTER XXIII. THE ANCIENT BARDS.