Clois 2-2-37 33511 PREF A C E. IN N the Preface to our Ninetieth Volume, we took a cursory retrospect of the principal events that had diftinguished the year 1791. From the fingular importance of these, it did not require the aid of divination, to look forward to the fucceeding year for tranfactions ftill more fingular and momentous. That year is just elapfed; and its eventful history seems to be unparalleled in the annals of the world. To our historical narration we have, in courfe, given particular attention; recording each event, in regular order, with dif crimination, exactnefs, and fidelity. A neighbouring country has exhibited the moft awful fcenes: maffacres, profcriptions, anarchy, and all the dreadful concomitants of civil difcord, raging uncontrolled. Scarce is a new constitution established, when it is deftroyed by an unexpected revolution. Their fovereign is fufpended, dethroned, imprisoned, and brought to a public trial. A monarchy, which had fubfifted, from the time of Hugh Capet, near eight hundred years, and, from that of Pharamond, upward of thirteen hundred, is abolished by a single decree, and the nation declared one immenfe republic. Powerful armies of disciplined veterans, under the first generals in the world, invade the country, and are compelled to retreat with difgrace. The invaded, despised as deficient in every military requifite, and headed by chiefs without a name, have poured, in their turn, like a torrent, into the territories of their neighbours, and with their political Koran in one hand, and the sword in the other, are propagating their new doctrines of liberty, equality, and confraternity! This happy country, on the contrary, has rifen to a great height of national fplendour. Our victorious arms have compelled the Tyrant of the Eaft to accede to a peace, in which the fignal advantages we have obtained are not more confpicuous than the wifdom and moderation of the illustrious general by whom the war is terminated. At home, indeed, fome agitations have been experienced, like what often results, in the natural world, from diftant explosions. On the fuppofition that attempts would be made to introduce the raging democracy into this country, government have acted with a forefight, a vigilance, and a fpirit, that have met with almost the universal approbation of the nation; the fenfe of which has appeared in declarations from all quarters, of attachment to our own most excellent conftitution, under which the glorious revolution in 1688 was effected-" a constitution 66 wifely framed for the diffufion. of happiness and true "liberty, and which poffeffes the distinguished merit that it "has on former occafions been, and we truft will in future "be, found competent to correct its errors and reform its "abuses."-With this declaration we moft heartily concur. A love and veneration for this excellent conftitution, it shall be our conftant endeavour to inculcate; expreffing our unceafing wishes in the dying prayer, which the celebrated Paul Sarpi uttered for the liberty of his country-ESTO PERPETUA. January 1, 1793. THE THE UNIVERSAL MAGAZINE OF KNOWLEDGE AND PLEASURE, FOR JANUARY, 1793. VOL. XCII. Obfervations on the Music of the ANCIENTS: Illuftrative of a beautiful Frontispiece, reprefenting EUTERPE, the Muse of Harmony. When Mufic, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece the fung, The Paffions oft, to hear her fhell, MUSIC is as ancient as the world. It feems to have been born with man, to accompany him in his painful career, to fweeten his labours, and charm away his cares. This was its firft employment. It was afterward confecrated to divine fervice; and having thus rifen in dignity, it became of principal account among the people, in accompanying the traditional narratives, relative to the characters and exploits of their ancestors. Hence it came to be the frft science wherein their children COLLINS. were inftructed. Mufic, and poetry its ally, accompanied all their studies. They even deified thofe, who were firft diftinguished in it. Apollo was of this number. Orpheus, Amphion, and Linus, for their eminent talents in this art, were accounted more than men. Philofophers applied themselves to it. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, recommended it as worthy of being cultivated, not only by their difciples, but by the best regulated ftates. The Grecians, and, parti cularly, the Arcadians, enacted the ftudy fudy of it by law; regarding it as indifpenfably neceflary to the common welfare. A fcience fo generally cultivated, fhould have arrived at perf:ction very early; yet did it continue in a state of imbccility, and without principles, till the times of Pytha goras. Till the time of this philofopher, mulic was fo vague and uncertain, that it required an extraordinary effort of genius to reduce it to method and order. He precifely determined the proportions which founds bear to each other, and regulated harmony upon mathematical principles. But he let the precifion of his mind carry him too far, in fubjecting mufic to the judgment of reafon alone, and admitting no paufes or refts, but fuch as had an arithmetical or geometric proportion in them. Ariftoxenes, the difciple of Ariftotle, thought, on the contrary, that this fubject came intirely within the verge of hearing, and that the ear was the only judge of founds. He therefore regulated the order, unifon, and break in tones, folely by the judgment of the ear, and his fyftem prevailed, for fome time, in Greece. Olympus, a Phrygian, came foon after to Athens: he invented a ftringed inftrument, which gave the femi tones, whereby he introduced fo many new graces into mufic, as gave it entirely another air. He joined Ariftoxenes, appealing for the merit of his fyftem to the decifion of the ear. At length, the famous Ptolemy appeared, and, with fuperior fpirit, equally difclaimed the partiality of both fides. He took a middle course; afferting, that fenfe and reafon had a joint right to judge of founds. He accufed the Pythagoreans of fallacy in their fpeculations, with refpect to proportions; as well as of folly, in fo difregarding the decifions of the ear, as to refuse it that kind of harmony which was agreeable to it, merely because the proportions did not correspond with their arbitrary rules. And he charged the partizans of Ariftoxenes with an abfurd neglect of reafoning, in that, though they were convinced of the difference of grave and acute tones, and of the proportions fubfifting between them; and that thofe proportions invariably depended upon the feveral lengths of the mufical chords; yet they never took the trouble of confidering this, fo as to enter into the reafon of it. He determined, therefore, in deciding upon the principles of harmony, to make ufe, not only of reafon, but alfo of the ear, as being of affistance to each other; and, in confequence of this, he laid down a certain method of finding the proportions of founds. Had the ancients proceeded no farther, mufic must be infinitely more indebted to them than it poffibly could be to their fucceffors. The ancients have the fole merit of having laid down the first exatt principles of mufic; and the writings of the Pythagoreans, of Ariftoxenes, Euclid, Ariftides, Nicomachus, Plutarch, and many others, even fuch of them as ftill remain, contain every theory of mufic hitherto known. They knew, as well as the moderns, the art of noting their tones, performed by means of entire letters, either contracted or reverfed, placed on a line parallel to the words, and ferving for the direction, the oue of the voice, and the other of the inftrument; and the fcale itself, of which Guy Aretin is the fuppofed inventor, is no other than the ancient one of the Greeks a little enlarged, and what he may have taken from a Greek manufcript, above 800 years old, which Kircher fays he faw at Meffina, in the library of the Jefuits, and in which he found the hymns noted in the very manner of Aretin. With respect to the manner of performing mufic among the ancients, it has been alleged that their inftruments were not fo complete as ours, and that they were unacquainted with those divifions of harmony that enter into our concerts; but this feems to be a groundlefs objection. The lyre, for in dance, was certainly a very harmonious inftrument; and, in the time |