"We see that music maintained its ground in this country even after the invasion of the English, but its style suffered a change; for the sprightly Phrygian gave place to the grave Doric, or the soft Lydian measure. Such was the nice sensibility of the bards, such was their tender affection for their country, that the subjections to which the kingdom was reduced affected them with the heaviest sadness. Sinking beneath this weight of sympathetic sorrow, they became a prey to melancholy: hence the plaintiveness of their music: for the ideas that arise in the mind are always congenial to, and receive a mixture from the influencing passion. Another cause might have occurred in the one just mentioned, in promoting a change in the style of our music; the bards often driven together with their patrons, by the sword of oppression, from the busy haunts of men, were obliged to lie concealed in marshes, and in glyns and vallies resounding with the noise of falling waters, or filled with portentous echoes. Such scenes as these, by throwing a settled gloom over the fancy, must have considerably increased their melancholy; so that when they attempted to sing, it is not to be wondered at that their voices, thus weakened by struggling against heavy mental depression, should rise rather by minor-thirds, which consist but of four semitones, than by major-thirds which consist of five. Now almost all the airs of this period are found to be set in the minor-third, and to be of the sage and solemn nature which Milton requires in his IL PENSEROSO."[3] [Footnote 3: See Hist. Mem. of the Irish Bards.] To illustrate his position, Mr. Walker introduces the following anecdote: "About the year 1730, one Maguire, a vintner, resided near Charing Cross, London. His house was much frequented, and his skill in playing on the harp was an additional incentive: even the duke of Newcastle and several of the ministry sometimes condescended to visit it. He was one night called upon to play some Irish tunes; he did so; they were plaintive and solemn. His guests demanded the reason, and he told them that the native composers were too deeply distressed at the situation of their country, and her gallant sons, to be able to compose otherwise. But, added he, take off the restraints under which they labour, and you will not have reason to complain of the plaintiveness of their notes. "Offence was taken at these warm effusions: his house became gradually neglected, and he died soon after of a broken heart. An Irish harper who was a cotemporary of Maguire, and like him, felt for the sufferings of his country, had this distich engraven on his harp: Cur lyra funestas edit percussa sonores? Sicut amissum sors diadema gemit.