letter D shape. It is depicted upon an ancient vase in the Munich

collection (Fig. 64). It is supposed to be in the hands of Erato, she holds it against her left shoulder, not as is the custom with our modern players of harps, resting on the right shoulder; obviously the custom in each case is the one best suited to the convenience of the player and to the different demands upon the instruments in ancient and in modern use. The vase is Etruscan, but the lyre is Egyptian in origin and Asian in style, witness the leopard skin spread upon the seat. The artist was at fault in his drawing. The lyre is of the Egyptian model, the bulk or thick portion of the boat-form being thrown upward above the shoulder, and this as a sounding-board should have been made plain. This particular development of style I should surmise to be Lydian, or perhaps, more southern in origin, possibly Assyrian.

Plato and Plutarch both comment upon many-stringed lyres, condemning their use and advocating a return to the ancient simplicity. Old Pausanias, who wrote at a much later period “a Description of Greece,” shews himself familiar with the many-stringed by a simile he uses, stating that “in Egypt he had seen the pyramids, had beheld with wonder the colossal statue of Memnon at Thebes, and had heard the musical sound, like the breaking of a lyre string, which the statue emitted at sunrise.” The breaking of strings is thus known to be an old-world trouble, and no doubt Pausanias had often heard the sound, else this reference would not have come to him so naturally as a fitting illustration; only a large or many stringed-lyre would give a noticeably musical sound; an instrument with short strings equal to our violin strings would give but a brief snap, not in any degree a musical sound. Desiring a personal experience I suggested to a friend a realistic test, and he kindly strained a string of his violoncello to breaking point. So we knew that the sound heard in this catastrophic incident of to-day, was certainly not of the nature that the great travellers of past days were attracted to as one of the wonders of the world. A many stringed harp somewhat of the capacity of modern harps would, however, under the shock communicate a thrill over the whole range, finding out a sympathetic resonance from vibration of those strings that happened to be in accord with the pitch of the sounding-body, and this kind of response on the breaking of a string was probably that which furnished old Pausanias’s memory with so pertinent a simile. Whoever has heard one of the higher pianoforte strings break will understand fairly enough the nature of the sound. The statue was 69 feet high, and it was reared by Amenhotep III., about 1450 B.C.

With testimony so absolute from an ear-witness, the Memnon is no fable. Silent that voice has been through many centuries, yet we may well believe that in older days, ere time had worked its inevitable changes, the sounds heard were in resemblance more truly vocal; and although then mysterious to hearers, now under science such musical vibrations are easy of explanation as a natural phenomenon.

The wonder-inspiring statue is still seated there,

“moulded in colossal calm,”

looking across that desert-destined land which remaineth for ever, as Shelley named it,—

“a desolation deified.”

Seeking an example of Apollo’s lyre, as it existed when Greek art was at its highest period, I found it, I think, in a marble relief carved by the hand of Praxiteles; it is an authentic witness of the form of the lyre in his day, and it seems to carry out the description given of the lyre discovered by Lord Elgin (see page 319). The artist gives a representation of the lyre as he saw it, and as no doubt used in the worship of the ever-youthful Sun-God.

This marble is in the National Museum at Athens. It was found at Mantinea, in Arcadia, and it represents the contest of Apollo and Marsyas; Apollo on the lyre and Marsyas on the flutes, or double pipes. The marble has been finely photographed by the well-known M. Rhomaides, of Athens, an enthusiast in his art. I copy this for the Apollo; the quiet dignity of the seated figure is remarkable. According to proportionate relation, the instrument may be estimated as being about twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in height, and the acting length of the strings about eighteen or twenty inches, the frame about two inches deep, with the interior hollow, so that although the strings should be only plucked by the fingers, the instrument we should expect would give a good and a rich resonance. The strings, seven in number, being each tuned separately by their rollers or rings.

The Apollo lyre was the nursling of the Greeks, never absent from the Greek life; present in the home and in the temple, heard in the green meadows, and upon the mountain-side, and by the sapphire sea, gladdening the heart at household feasts, and inspiring the voice on the great days of rejoicing.

Those vast processions carved upon marble friezes speak to us of an existent life when to the people Apollo was “an evident god”; days when through the shaded valleys, and along the terraced mountain-sides, young men and maidens with dance and song made a delighted way,—

“touched piously the Delphic lyre,”

and to the sacrificial altar eager throngs pressed onward and upward,—as in his word-magic Keats pictures it;—

“with trumpets blown Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival, Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir Of strings on hollow shells, ... ... and the mysterious priest, Leading that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest.”

That busy stir of life has gone past, faded now into the viewless air, to be seen no more by man; the dryads and the naiads, the satyrs and the fauns left their dedicated haunts, and the muses too all vanished, all hushed silently away, what time the,—

“great Apollo Let his divinity o’erflowing die In music, through the vales of Thessaly.”

The fateful land remains as of old, remains unchanged through milleniums of change,—the traveller to-day may see the lofty Delph glistening white with snow and great Parnassus towering high above it; may visit grand Olympus, find the goats browsing yet upon Mount Helicon, watch the bees gathering honey from the creeping thyme upon Hymettus, or stop to gaze on the wonderful purple glow that comes over it at evening light; Hippocrene, faithful to its ancient renown, runs cool and bright, that whoso will may drink therefrom and pause to meditate on Time’s concurrent freshness, ever-passing: the ear is charmed with sounds, the winds waken the soft susurrus from the pine-forests on the heights, it wanders down the pathways of the hills to mingle with the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkling of the goats bells, and with luscious song of hidden nightingales in pale green olive groves. The land we look upon is the same; it is man’s world therein that has changed, sadly changed. From the white mountains to the valleys, ruin calls to ruin; linger as you will in shade or sun,

“Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot,”

his music is now unheard,—in his own land his lyre unknown.