Such was the character of church music when the song school of St. Gall was started. The monks had already been so fortunate as to secure one of the two Gregorian antiphonaries sent by Pope Adrian to the Emperor Charles the Great. The occurrence was curious enough to be chronicled, and the story merits our own repetition. Metz had been the German music centre, but when the French music clashed with that which was considered the correct and Gregorian method, Charles again solicited from the Pope two priests who were thorough musicians, and should put Metz and her school above criticism. These two men, by name Peter and Romanus, set out thereupon, but took a heavy cold between them at Lago Maggiore (_aere Romanis contrario quaterentur_). Peter soon recovered, but Romanus advanced from a mere cold into an actual fever, and remained at St. Gall with one of the antiphonaries, while the disgusted Peter, who claimed both copies, was forced to proceed alone and with a single manuscript to Metz. St. Gall was sufficiently attractive to Romanus for him to make no effort to leave it when he grew convalescent. And these compositions and melodies of his were the foundation upon which, in later years, Notker and Hartmann and the others built their sequences. That which Maengal now effected was the real beginning of that system of music which is so elaborately treated by Dr. Neale in his preface to the second volume of Daniel’s _Thesaurus_. Perhaps more has been made of it there than it really deserves. It is certainly too far out of the line of this inquiry of ours for us to discuss the point technically. One of the best definitions of the sequence is, however, that of Mabillon, who calls such compositions “rhythmical prayers” (_rythmicae preces_). Notker became easily—so Ekkehard asserts—the finest musician about the abbey. He was also a bright and rather witty man. When Augustine was asked what God was doing before He created the world, he replied that He “was building hell for such vain and frivolous spirits” as that of his questioner. The chaplain of Charles the Fat put a similar inquiry to Notker, and got quite as brief a retort. He asked, “What is God doing now?” And Notker stammered out, “Just what He has always done and always will do; He is putting down the proud and exalting the humble!”