the guidance of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed

the use of an organ, an invention of the second century of our era
which consisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and

a pair of bellows.
Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman

musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going
from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for

pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat.
But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities

of the late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musicians.
Instruments like the horn, which had been used only

as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled
until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the

dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with
horse-hair was used to play the old-fashionedguitar and before

the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument
(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back

to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-
stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-

makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of perfection.
And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-

spread of all musicalinstruments, which has followed man into
the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland.

The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the
performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one

who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by electricity.
The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less

circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils
of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century,

Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the
birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system

of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when
there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first

instrument with both keys and strings was built. It must
have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos

which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna,
the town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages

(who had been classed with jugglers and card sharps) had
formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288,

the little monochord was developed into something which we
can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway.

From Austria the ``clavichord'' as it was usually called in those
days (because it had ``craves'' or keys) went to Italy. There

it was perfected into the ``spinet'' which was so called after
the inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during

the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720,
Bartolomeo Cristofori made a ``clavier'' which allowed the

performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in
Italian, ``piano'' and ``forte.'' This instrument with certain

changes became our ``pianoforte'' or piano.
Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient

instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years
and did not need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and

was much pleasanter to the ears than the mediaeval tubas, clarinets,
trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given

millions of modern people their first love of music so did the
early ``pianoforte'' carry the knowledge of music into much

wider circles. Music became part of the education of every well-
bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained

private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering
``jongleur'' and became a highly valued member of the community.

Music was added to the dramatic performances of
the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern Opera.

Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the expenses
of an ``opera troupe.'' But as the taste for this sort of

entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where
Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the unlimited

joy of the whole community with the exception of a few
sects of very strict Christians who still regarded music with

deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to be entirely
good for the soul.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life
of Europe was in full swing. Then there came forward a

man who was greater than all others, a simple organist of the
Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian

Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from
comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of sacred

hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern
music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by

Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which
remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and

rhythm. Then came Ludwig van Beethoven, the most tragic
of men, who gave us our modern orchestra, yet heard none of

his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the result of a
cold contracted during his years of poverty.

Beethoven lived through the period of the great French
Revolution. Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had

dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived
to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon

was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam
engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that

had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony.
Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large

factories had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and
poetry and music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church

and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The

leaders of the new industrial world were too busy and had too
little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and bits

of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those
things, and who were of no practical use to the community in

which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened
to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste

for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry.
The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era.

Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings
had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And

music became a monopoly of a few ``virtuosi'' who took the
music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall.

But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into
their own. People begin to understand that Rembrandt and

Beethoven and Rodin are the true prophets and leaders of
their race and that a world without art and happiness resembles

a nursery without laughter.
COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A
GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMATION

ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT
WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS

AND A FEW APOLOGIES
IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of

the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course,
any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half

a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a
ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every

land during every century. But that was not the purpose of
the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history

that should have rhythm--a story which galloped rather than
walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that

certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the
dreary sands of long forgotten ages--that a few parts do not

make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veritable
jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I suggested

that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once
more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would

not allow.
As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-

written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them
to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice.

The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every
man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences.

They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared
to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most

belovedcriminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz
Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I

had tried very hard to be fair to Napoleon, but that in my
estimation he was greatly inferior to such men as George

Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi or
Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to

content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of
space. As for Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior

ability in the field of wholesale murder and I did not intend to
give him any more publicity than I could help.

``This is very well as far as it goes,'' said the next critic,
``but how about the Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary

of their arrival at Plymouth. They ought to have
more space.'' My answer was that if I were writing a history

of America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first
twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind

and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-
reaching international importance until many centuries later;

that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies
and not by a single one; that the most prominent leaders of the

first twenty years of our history had been from Virginia, from
Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than from

Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to content
themselves with a page of print and a special map.

Next came the prehistoricspecialist. Why in the name of
the great Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the

wonderful race of Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such
a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago?

Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take
as much stock in the perfection of these early races as some of

our most noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and
the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the ``noble