zation; they had a granite heart, and a suspicious eye for
music. Here is a cheerful example of congregational lyricism, and a
lofty inspiration for musical treatment (the hymn refers to the fate
of unbaptized infants):

"A crime it is! Therefore in Bliss
You may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
The easiest room in Hell."

It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that singing by
note began to supplant the "lining-out" barbarism, and to provoke such
fierce opposition as this:

"First, it is a new way--an unknown tongue; 2d, it is not so
melodious as the old way; 3d, there are so many tunes that
nobody can learn them; 4th, the new way makes a disturbance
in churches, grieves good men, exasperates them, and causes
them to behave disorderly; 5th, it is popish; 6th, it will
introduce instruments; 7th, the names of the notes are
blasphemous; 8th, it is needless, the old way being good
enough; 9th, it requires too much time to learn it; 10th, it
makes the young disorderly."

At the time when such puerility was disturbing this cradle of freedom
and cacophony, Bach and Haendel were at work in their contrapuntal
webs, the Scarlattis, Corelli and Tartini and Porpora were alive.
Peri, Josquin and Willaert and Lassus were dead, and the church had
had its last mass from the most famous citizen of the town of
Palestrina. Monteverde was no longer inventing like an Edison; Lulli
had gone to France and died; and Rameau and Couperin were alive.

At this time in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over
the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to
treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at
such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It
must be enough for me to say that the throttling hands of Puritanism
are only now fully loosened. Some of our living composers recall the
parental opposition that met their first inclinations to a musical
career, opposition based upon the disgracefulness, the heathenishness,
of music as a profession.

The youthfulness of our school of music can be emphasized further by a
simple statement that, with the exception of a few names like Lowell
Mason, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Stephen A. Emery (a graceful writer as
well as a theorist), and George F. Bristow, practically every American
composer of even the faintest importance is now living.

The