Before touching upon that scientific development of the art, which, broadly speaking, began with the advent of the Flemish School and reached its culminating point within the rounded walls of Bayreuth, we may well give a moment's consideration to those melodies, which travelled their unwritten way through the early Middle Ages, and which we know, by the few examples that have come down to us, to have been racy of the soil that gave them birth; the folk song of the country is more characteristic of its people, of their temperament and psychology, than any other attribute of their national existence. We, in England, have little enough to point to in this way; in a sense there is nothing peculiarly individual in our music as a whole. But with the old melodies of Ireland, that ever seem to tremble between a tear and a smile, and in the quaint pathos of Scotland's airs, and the well-defined beauty of typical Welsh songs, we recognise the true speech of the heart and the outpouring of the natural man. Germany is still richer in its folk music, and the Pole and the Russian, the Hungarian and the Gaul, can each point to a mine of original melody which has provided latter-day composers with the basis of their most beautiful works. Nor must the importance of the Troubadours and Minnesingers be overlooked in reference to this interesting phase of musical art. They it was who kept alive and spread abroad the traditional songs of the people, and by their accomplishment actually worked as an educational force on the people themselves. Readers of Chaucer will bear in mind many an allusion to the minstrel's art of his period, and well through the Norman and Plantaganet epochs. "With minstrelsy the rafters sung, Of harps, that from reflected light From the proud gallery glittered bright To crown the banquet's solemn close, Themes of British glory rose; And to the strings of various chimes Attemper'd the heroic rhymes." To the Flemish, or Netherland School of music we owe an art system, that exercised a potent influence on every form of composition, and counterpoint was the especial study of its followers, until, as invariably happens, technical skill was regarded with a greater degree of favour than genuine inspiration. But the School unquestionably produced a vast number of very fine masses, motets, and much fine service music. Then from Belgium the musical spirit travelled to Italy, and before the 16th century had fulfilled half its appointed course, the powers of Palestrina had indelibly stamped Italian art, and his genius had elevated the ecclesiastical music of the age, to the lofty standard of its associations. Then such musicians came to mind as Monteverdi and Carissimi, the latter of whom made clear the path, for those great writers of oratorio, whose names we hold in such reverence, and whose works we love with such unwavering devotion.