One book--perhaps the worst, since it was the most pretentious--was "The Compleat Melody or Harmony of Sion," by William Tansur,--"Ingenious Tans'ur Skilled in Musicks Art." It was a most superficial, pedantic, and bewildering composition. The musical instruction was given in the form of a series of ill-spelled dialogues between a teacher and pupil, interspersed with occasional miserable rhymes. It was ill-expressed at best, and such musical terms as "Rations of Concords," "Trilloes," "Trifdiapasons," "Leaps," "Binding cadences," "Disallowances," "Canons," "Prime Flower of Florid," "Consecutions of Perfects," and "Figurates," make the book exceedingly difficult of comprehension to the average reader, though possibly not to a student of obsolete musical phraseology. A side skirmish on the music field was at this time fought between the treble and the tenor parts. Ravenscroft's Psalms and Walter's book had given the melody, or plain-song, to the tenor. This had, of course, thrown additional difficulties in the way of good singing; but when once the trebles obtained the leading part, after the customary bitter opposition, the improved singing approved the victory. Many objections, too, were made to the introduction of "triple-time" tunes. It gave great offence to the older Puritans, who wished to drawl out all the notes of uniform length; and some persons thought that marking and accenting the measure was a step toward the "Scarlet Woman." The time was called derisively, "a long leg and a short one." These old bigots must have been paralyzed at the new style of psalm-singing which was invented and introduced by a Massachusetts tanner and singing-master named Billings, and which was suggested, doubtless, by the English anthems. It spread through the choirs of colonial villages and towns like wild-fire, and was called "fuguing." Mr. Billings' "Fuguing Psalm Singer" was published in 1770. It is a dingy, ill-printed book with a comically illustrated frontispiece, long pages of instruction, and this motto:-- "O, praise the Lord with one consent And in this grand design Let Britain and the Colonies Unanimously join." The succeeding hymn-books, and the patriotic hymns of Billings in post-Revolutionary years have no hint of "Britain" in them. The names "Federal Harmony," "Columbian Harmony," "Continental Harmony," "Columbian Repository," and "United States Sacred Harmony" show the new nation. Billings also published the "Psalm Singer's Amusement," and other singing-books. The shades of Cotton, of Sewall, of Mather must have groaned aloud at the suggestions, instructions, and actions of this unregenerate, daring, and "amusing" leader of church-singing.