The minstrels’ gallery of Exeter cathedral dates from the fourteenth century. The front is divided into twelve niches, each of which contains a winged figure or an angel playing on an instrument of music. There is a cast also of this famous sculpture at South Kensington. The instruments are so much dilapidated that some of them cannot be clearly recognized; but, as far as may be ascertained, they appear to be as follows:--1. The _cittern_. 2. The _bagpipe_. 3. The _clarion_, a small trumpet having a shrill sound. 4. The _rebec_. 5. The _psaltery_. 6. The _syrinx_. 7. The _sackbut_. 8. The _regals_. 9. The _gittern_, a small guitar strung with catgut. 10. The _shalm_. 11. The _timbrel_; resembling our present tambourine, with a double row of gingles. 12. _Cymbals._ Most of these instruments have been already noticed in the preceding pages. The _shalm_, or _shawm_, was a pipe with a reed in the mouth-hole. The _wait_ was an English wind instrument of the same construction. If it differed in any respect from the _shalm_, the difference consisted probably in the size only. The _wait_ obtained its name from being used principally by watchmen, or _waights_, to proclaim the time of night. Such were the poor ancestors of our fine oboe and clarinet. CHAPTER X. POST-MEDIÆVAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. Attention must now be drawn to some instruments which originated during the middle ages, but which attained their highest popularity at a somewhat later period. [Illustration] Among the best known of these was the _virginal_, of which we give an engraving from a specimen of the time of Elizabeth at South Kensington. Another was the _lute_, which about three hundred years ago was almost as popular as is at the present day the pianoforte. Originally it had eight thin catgut strings arranged in four pairs, each pair being tuned in unison; so that its open strings produced four tones; but in the course of time more strings were added. Until the sixteenth century twelve was the largest number or, rather, six pairs. Eleven appear for some centuries to have been the most usual number of strings: these produced six tones, since they were arranged in five pairs and a single string. The latter, called the _chanterelle_, was the highest. According to Thomas Mace, the English lute in common use during the seventeenth century had twenty-four strings, arranged in twelve pairs, of which six pairs ran over the finger-board and the other six by the side of it. This lute was therefore, more properly speaking, a theorbo. The neck of the lute, and also of the theorbo, had frets consisting of catgut strings tightly fastened round it at the proper distances required for ensuring a chromatic succession of intervals. The illustration on the next page represents a lute-player of the sixteenth century. The frets are not indicated in the old engraving from which the illustration has been taken. The order of tones adopted