324 On the Music of the Middle Ages. 
duced. This consists of various signs or marks, termed newmes, 
resembling somewhat in appearance the characters of short-hand. 
These newmes were not always uniform, but varied considerably from 
each other, and although many of them can be deciphered with 
tolerable accuracy, still the exact nature and value of them has 
yet to be discovered; and to a person haying leisure, I know of no 
more interesting object of antiquarian investigation than this one 
branch. The task of unravelling the secrets of Egyptian Hiero- 
glyphics was infinitely more hopeless than the one I have suggested, 
and who knows that there may not be a Rosetta Stone in store 
for some future student of Saxon and Lombardic Notation? As it 
is, we know the exact meaning of several of the signs: we can dis- 
tinguish the ascending from the descending passages, and tell the 
precise number of notes in each; but our difficulty lies in ascer- 
taining the relative position of the whole tones from the half-tones, 
because there is no Key or Clef, shewing either on what note the 
Music commences or terminates, so that even Guido, living in the 
eleventh century, when this Notation was in use, compares it to 
water in a well, which we see, but are unable to reach, for want of 
a bucket. 
‘Quasi funem dum non habet puteus, 
Cujus aque, quamvis multe, nil prosunt videntibus.” 
Independently, however, of these newmes merely designating 
certain notes, it has been recently suggested by M. Coussemaker, 
that they indicated also the value of each note in point of duration, 
just as the grave and acute accents marked the measure and beat 
in classic poetry; a suggestion which must not be lost sight of in 
future investigations of this interesting subject. 
We may easily imagine the difficulties in the way of the singer, 
during the existence of this system of Notation, and of the immense 
facilities imparted to musical art by Guido’s invention of lines and 
spaces, in the eleventh century. These lines consisted of four: one 
being coloured red, to mark the note F, and the other green, to 
mark the note C; the other lines were not coloured, but at their 
commencement he put two other letters of the Scale, so that each one 
of these lines having its letter or its clef mark, the notes which were 
placed, either on the lines or in the spaces, were at first sight so 
