304 On the Musie of the Middle Ages. 
Because if this question be answered, we have a key to the whole 
enigma. 
It is curious to observe how the mere suggestion, or suspicion 
of a difficulty, disturbs the exercise of well-directed inves- 
tigation. Instead of seeking for a solution of it in simple 
principles, or obvious facts, we fly off at once to the most improbable 
conjectures, sometimes even abandoning the inquiry altogether as 
hopeless. We all recollect how graphically Dickens, in his Pickwick 
Papers, describes the discovery of the stone on which Bill Stumps 
had carved his immortal name; and, as a matter of fact, there are 
probably none of us who have not searched for a lost object in every 
conceivable place except the one where it was most likely to be 
found. Such I imagine to have been the case with those who have 
tried to discover the rules which guided the singer in the execution 
of the Music now under consideration; and who seem to haye quite 
disregarded the following obvious considerations. 
In the first place, the organs of the human voice have always 
been the same, and the laws on which its various sounds depend are 
not susceptible of any change. Moreover some sounds are produced 
with less effort than others, and the motion from one sound to 
another is more or less difficult, according to the extent of the 
interval which separates them. 
Again when, in speaking, we wish to mark any particular word 
with peculiar emphasis we elevate our voice to a higher sound, 
dwelling longer on it than on others, and in the various inflexions 
we make we invariably find that the intermediate sounds are passed 
over rapidly. Independently of the final cadence at the end of the 
sentence, we have subordinate ones in its various members, 
accompanied by pauses more or less protracted. These simple 
principles, when applied to medieval Music, appear to me to solve 
the chief difficulties connected with it; because having established 
that it was rhythmical, consisting of a mixture of long and short 
notes, the only point we have to clear up is to show how the long 
and how the short notes are to be distinguished, and this is to be 
done, as I believe, by accenting them as we should the various 
inflexions in Oratory, making the highest note of each ascending 
or descending passage emphatic; treating the intermediate notes 
