in the sounding table by silver buttons in copper-lined holes.
The present appearance of the instrument is this:

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

The Anglo-Saxons also were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth
century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to
them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The
Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the
new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the Gallic songs
previously used.

While few remains of the literature of the early English have come
down to us, we have enough from the period of the Venerable Bede and
the generation immediately following to give an idea of the vigor and
depth of the national consciousness here brought to expression. From
the seventh to the tenth centuries there was in England a movement
more vigorous, more productive and consequently more modern, than
anything like it in any other part of Europe for three centuries
later. The Saxon poets Caedmon, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, the friend,
teacher and adviser of that mighty genius Charlemagne, were minds of
the first order.

King Arthur the Great was an enthusiastic and talented minstrel. It is
told of him that in this disguise he made his way successfully into
the Danish camp, and was able to spy out the plans of his invading
enemies. The incident has also a light upon the other side, since it
shows the estimation in which the wandering minstrel was held by the
Danes themselves. King Alfred also established a professorship of
music at Oxford, where, indeed, the university, properly so-called,
did not yet exist, but a school of considerable vigor had been
founded. All the remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are full of allusions
to the bards, the gleemen and the minstrels; and the poems themselves,
most likely, were the production of poet-musicians classed under these
different names. Many additional reasons might be given for believing
that the art of music was more carefully cultivated in England at this
time than in any other European country. For instance, at Winchester,
in the year 900, a large organ was built in the cathedral--larger than
had ever been built before. It had 400 pipes, whereas most of the
organs previously in use had no more than forty or fifty pipes. There
is reason to believe that among the other musical devices here
practiced that of "round" singing was brought to a high degree of
popular skill. Apparently also