By those who have investigated the matter, this chanting is believed to have been not what we call singing, but nearly allied to our recitative; (far simpler indeed, if we may judge from the fact that the early Greek lyre, which had but _four_ strings, was played in _unison_ with the voice, which was therefore confined to four notes;) and as such, much less remote from common speech than our own singing is. For recitative, or musical recitation, is in all respects intermediate between speech and song. Its average effects are not so _loud_ as those of song. Its tones are less sonorous in _timbre_ than those of song. Commonly it diverges to a smaller extent from the middle notes--uses notes neither so high nor so low in _pitch_. The _intervals_ habitual to it are neither so wide nor so varied. Its _rate of variation_ is not so rapid. And at the same time that its primary _rhythm_ is less decided, it has none of that secondary rhythm produced by recurrence of the same or parallel musical phrases, which is one of the marked characteristics of song. Thus, then, we may not only infer, from the evidence furnished by existing barbarous tribes, that the vocal music of pre-historic times was emotional speech very slightly exalted; but we see that the earliest vocal music of which we have any account, differed much less from emotional speech than does the vocal music of our days. That recitative--beyond which, by the way, the Chinese and Hindoos seem never to have advanced--grew naturally out of the modulations and cadences of strong feeling, we have indeed still current evidence. There are even now to be met with occasions on which strong feeling vents itself in this form. Whoever has been present when a meeting of Quakers was addressed by one of their preachers (whose practice it is to speak only under the influence of religious emotion), must have been struck by the quite unusual tones, like those of a subdued chant, in which the address was made. It is clear, too, that the intoning used in some churches, is representative of this same mental state; and has been adopted on account of the instinctively felt congruity between it and the contrition, supplication, or reverence verbally expressed. * * * * *