It was a new art which charmed and delighted men as they listened to the magic of the sounds evoked by the majesty of the compositions of Palestrina, or by the sweetness of the music of Marenzio. It is true, as I said, that certain grand forms of music loom out of the darkness of the remote past--shadowy forms--and the rare composers and writers of the music of the past are, as far as music is concerned, but the shadow of names now. I allude, as famous examples of these shadows of names, to names such as Gregory and Isidore, Hucbald and the eleventh-century _maestro_, Guido Aretino. With extraordinary rapidity developed the new craft. To give here some familiar landmarks-- Henry VIII. was reigning before Josquin Deprès, whom all musicians revere as one of the earliest, certainly the most renowned, of the pioneers of modern music, became generally known in Europe. Josquin Deprès was born somewhere about the year 1466, dying about 1515, some ten or fifteen years before Palestrina was born. Luther said of him, "Other musicians do what they can with notes; Josquin does what he likes with them." The Abbate Baini alludes to him as "the idol of Europe"; and again writes, "Nothing is beautiful unless it be the work of Josquin." The famous Roman School of music only dates from 1540. The oratorio, even in its more simple forms, made its appearance some seventy years later. Not until the last years of our Queen Elizabeth were the names of Palestrina and Marenzio, those great early composers, conspicuous, and the Queen so loved of Englishmen had long fallen asleep before Carissimi, the earliest master of the sacred cantata in its many forms, gave his mighty impulse to the new-born art; while the works of his world-famed pupil Scarlatti, and of our own English Purcell, belong to the art-records of the days of William and Mary and Queen Anne. See how the whole of the marvellous story of music--as we understand music--belongs to quite recent days! All through the eighteenth century, when the Georges reigned, architecture slept its well-nigh dreamless sleep. But the new art of music grew with each succeeding year, while the men whose names will never die lived and wrote. It was this eighteenth century which saw a Beethoven, a Handel, a Bach, a Haydn, and a Mozart. As masters of the new-born craft none can be conceived greater. The century now closing boasts, however, a long line of true followers and worthy disciples of those great ones, men whose names are household words in every European city.