what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process. Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary, it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical souls of a melody by Mozart. And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music. Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art. Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for that it is now; but the parts moved without any aesthetic relation to each other, and with the same independence of the aesthetic effect of the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go