se had the pentatonic scale,
approximately the same as that of the black keys of the piano. Later
it was enlarged to seven notes in the octave, and it is claimed by
some that long before the Christian era they had a complete chromatic
scale of twelve tones in the octave. The evidence upon this point,
however, is insufficient. And even if they had this musical resource
at so early a period the fact counts very little to their credit,
since at best the chromatic scale is only an impure harmonic
compromise, which they have never learned to use understandingly.
Chinese music has always been monodic, and they use a great variety of
melodic shadings composed of intervals of small fractions of a step.
These they call lu. There are movable bridges which can be placed in
such way as to divide the strings of the ke at proper proportions of
its length for producing the lu. The places for the fingers upon the
finger board are marked by small brass points. Besides the intonations
due to stopping the strings, the players upon the ke are in the habit
of adding expression in a manner analogous to that of the _tremolo_ of
the modern violinist. With the left hand he touches the string beyond
the bridge and pulls it slightly, thus imparting to the tone a sliding
intonation upward or downward, familiar to all who have experimented
with strings. This habit the Japanese still have in playing their
ko-ko, and the results are said to be not unpleasing. The volume of
tone in the ke is very light, but the quality is sweet.

As a natural consequence of the long existence of this nation and
their commercial relations to the other parts of the world, which with
all their care they have never been able wholly to avoid, the Chinese
have many other varieties of instruments, including many trumpets; an
unexampled wealth of instruments of percussion, and a few of the
ruder types of the violin kind, which seem to have come in from India
or Thibet by the way of the Buddhist monks. The ravanastron is a
common instrument with the mendicant friars of this order. The
characteristic instrument of the Chinese, however, the one which
stands as the representative of all their higher musical culture, is
the ke.

In common with all other nations of antiquity, and with some of the
present day, the Chinese have always held strong conservative
opinions. The principle has been held among them from the earliest
times that the pattern of a good thing, whether a religio