In the present century the musical education of women has made great strides. Every opportunity has been taken for latent talent to develop by means of the best instruction. The academies and schools of music have raised the standard of private teaching, besides directly educating vast numbers of students. The result is an ever-increasing number of really able performers and teachers, but very few composers. To the executive power of women there is no limit beyond that of the instrument. With regard to vocalism, there is the barrier of climate. We are not a nation of vocalists, and though there is a very large amount of respectable talent it is seldom that England produces a great singer. One proof of the advanced musical education of women is to be found in their frequent presence as performers in high-class orchestras. It used to be a rare thing to see a woman appear on a concert platform in any capacity but that of vocalist or pianoforte player. Now she takes her place quite naturally among the “strings.” To play in concerted music means a wider training, and one that has only become possible to women in recent times. The English have always been a music-loving nation. The records of early times show in what esteem music was held. The harp was the favourite instrument of our forefathers. The possession of a harp was one of the three things necessary to a gentleman or a freeman in Wales, and slaves were not permitted to play on it. A gentleman’s harp was never seized for debt, because he would then have been degraded to the rank of a slave. The minstrel was as essential to English social life in the middle ages as the cook or the henchman. A writer in the thirteenth century speaks of the good singers in England at the court of Henry II. Erasmus in the sixteenth century remarks of the English:-- “They challenge the prerogative of having the most handsome women, of keeping the best table, and being most accomplished in the skill of music of any people.” At that time everybody, high or low, delighted in music. It was as much a part of education as reading and writing, and there was never a festival or entertainment of any kind without music. Curiously enough, ladies then played the bass viol, thought by some to be an “unmannerly instrument for a woman.” The virginal, or as it is generally called the virginals, a sort of pianoforte; the cittern and the gittern, which were varieties of the lute and the guitar, were the instruments most in use by gentlewomen.[62] The virginal is said to have received its name from being played by young girls, or, according to some authorities, because it was an instrument used by the nuns in their hymns to the Virgin. It was expected of every lady that she must be able-- “to play upon the virginals, lute, and cittern; and to read prick song (_i.e._ music written or pricked down) _at first sight_.”