ter to Saturn, half, and thence to
the zodiac, sesquiple.'

'Thus there are made _seven tones_, which they call a _diapason_
harmony, that is, an _universal concent_, in which Saturn moves in the
Doric mood, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and in the rest the like.'

'Those sounds which the seven planets, and the sphere of fixed stars,
and that which is above us, termed by them Antichton [opposite the
earth], make, Pythagoras affirmed to be the Nine Muses; but the
composition and symphony ... he named Mnemosyne [Memory, the Mother of
the Muses].'

Censorinus, a Roman Grammarian, B.C. 238, in his book De Die Natali,
says--

'To these things we may add what Pythagoras taught, namely, that the
whole world was constructed according to musical ratio, and that the
seven planets ... have a rhythmical motion and distances adapted to
musical intervals, and emit sounds, every one different in proportion
to its height [Saturn was said to be the highest, as it is the
farthest away, and was supposed to give the gravest note of the
heavenly Diapason, which note was therefore called Hypate, or
'highest'], which sounds are so concordant as to produce a most sweet
melody, though _inaudible to us by reason of the greatness of the
sounds_, which the narrow passages of our ears are not capable of
admitting.'

These extracts fairly represent the ancient opinion about the Music of
the spheres. There was a strong tendency last century to revive the
notion, and even to our modern ideas, with our Copernican astronomy,
there remains at least the possibility of drawing fantastical
analogies between the proportionate distances of the planets and the
proportionate vibration numbers of the partial tones in a musically
vibrating string or pipe.

The idea of the musical Chorus or dance of the heavenly bodies was
perfectly familiar to all writers in the 16th and 17th centuries. An
excellent example is in Paradise Lost, Book V., in the twelve lines
beginning 'So spake the Omnipotent.' Even finer is the 13th verse of
the Nativity Hymn.

'Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your nine-fold harmony,
Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.'

No one could help thinking of the text in Job xxxviii. 7, 'When the
morning stars sang together,' in