unbelievable that people of intelligence, as most of the early New Englanders were, should be so utterly callous to ear-splitting discords of that kind, but the testimony of their own pastors puts the matter beyond doubt. Now much of this extraordinary chaos in the congregational singing of the seventeenth century New England colonists was probably due to the prevailing doubt as to whether singing was, after all, quite proper to the worship of God. Until well into the eighteenth century the propriety of singing psalms in church was a subject of heated controversy. John Cotton published a tract in defense of the custom in 1647 ('Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance'), and, as late as 1723, a number of clergymen published a tract called 'Cases of Conscience about Singing Psalms, briefly considered and resolved,' in which we find the proposition: 'Whether you do believe that singing Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs is an external part of Divine Worship, to be observed in and by the assembly of God's people on the Lord's Days, as well as on other occasional meetings of the Saints, for the worshipping of God....' Those who had taken singing in church as a matter of course, and had made of it such a cacophantic horror as is described by Eliot, Walter, and others, characteristically championed their own style of singing, which they called 'the old way,' and zealously opposed any attempt to sing by rule as a step toward Popery. But, apart from all differences of opinion upon church singing as such, no people who were in the habit of practising music, even in the most elementary way, could make such a hopeless mess of ensemble singing in unison, when the tunes were so old and familiar and the number of them so limited. Ensemble singing by a mixed gathering of untrained people is likely to be pretty bad in any case, but even among a heterogeneous and untutored crowd there are always a number whose accuracy of ear and intonation suffices to keep the others more or less close to the melody--especially when it is a familiar one. Among New England colonists, however, the ability to sing must have been about as common as the ability to dance on the tight rope. The Rev. Thomas Symmes assures us that he was present 'in a congregation, when singing was for a whole Sabbath omitted, for want of a man able to lead the assembly in singing.' Certainly the good people of that congregation on the whole must not have counted singing among their diversions--if they had any. We have no ground for stating flatly that the New Englanders of the seventeenth century absolutely abstained from singing on all occasions; but if they did sing it was in a most primitive and haphazard fashion.