That busy stir of life has gone past, faded now into the viewless air, to be seen no more by man; the dryads and the naiads, the satyrs and the fauns left their dedicated haunts, and the muses too all vanished, all hushed silently away, what time the,— “great Apollo Let his divinity o’erflowing die In music, through the vales of Thessaly.” The fateful land remains as of old, remains unchanged through milleniums of change,—the traveller to-day may see the lofty Delph glistening white with snow and great Parnassus towering high above it; may visit grand Olympus, find the goats browsing yet upon Mount Helicon, watch the bees gathering honey from the creeping thyme upon Hymettus, or stop to gaze on the wonderful purple glow that comes over it at evening light; Hippocrene, faithful to its ancient renown, runs cool and bright, that whoso will may drink therefrom and pause to meditate on Time’s concurrent freshness, ever-passing: the ear is charmed with sounds, the winds waken the soft susurrus from the pine-forests on the heights, it wanders down the pathways of the hills to mingle with the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkling of the goats bells, and with luscious song of hidden nightingales in pale green olive groves. The land we look upon is the same; it is man’s world therein that has changed, sadly changed. From the white mountains to the valleys, ruin calls to ruin; linger as you will in shade or sun, “Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot,” his music is now unheard,—in his own land his lyre unknown. CHAPTER XXVI. How the Music Grew. IN THE DAYS OF A THOUSAND YEARS. “Most things in Greece are subjects of dispute,” so wrote Pausanias, and his word for it may be accepted freely. As it was in his day (writing in 174 A.D.) so it is in ours; learned authorities so differ on simplest points that the wayfarer asking questions has no little difficulty in deciding whom he shall heed, whose directions he should follow. The evolution of the musical scale should be of interest even to musicians who would not make the subject a study. How step by step our diatonic scale developed, how it has become what it is gradually by slow degrees—does anybody know? Certainly. Wise men in their libraries find much; the erudition is deep and they can expound it in their own way, but it is the way for the plodding student, not intended to attract the general reader. Moreover the wise men do not agree, and the wayfarer in literature after reading many books fails to obtain the clear account which he has been seeking. Having had occasion to go into the matter of the Greek system on the historical side, I saw how confused it was, and how necessary to examine author against author, to try to arrive at some orderly assignment of steps and changes made in those distant times, and to endeavour to bring home to the mind the conception of a chain of historic facts.