allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the
traditional forms or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is
allowed in these arts nor in music at all. And you will find that
their works of art are painted or modeled in the same forms that they
were 10,000 years ago. This is literally true, and no exaggeration--their
ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than
those of to-day, but are with just the same skill." This, which Dr.
Draper calls the "protective idea," was undoubtedly the cause of their
little progress.

In another place Plato gives a very interesting glimpse of the
Egyptian method of education, and describes something having in it
much the spirit of the modern kindergarten. He says ("Laws," Jowett's
translation, p. 815): "In that country systems of calculation have
been actually invented for the use of children, which they learn as a
pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands,
adapting the same number to either a larger or less number of persons;
and they distribute to pugilists and wrestlers, or they follow one
another, or pair together by lot. Another mode of amusing them is by
taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and
mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying,
they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this
way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and
movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a
household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake."
This, together with the well known expectation of the Egyptians to be
judged after death according to the "deeds done in the body," as our
sacred writings have it, affords a high idea of their serious and
lofty turn of mind, as well as of the great advance they had made
toward a true notion of the means of education.

CHAPTER II.

MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS.

Second in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes
the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria
and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The
place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and
important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music
into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a
progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this
people. As they were when first we meet th