it is quite uncertain how far the modern chanting of the Jews—whether Oriental, Ashkenazic, or Sephardic3—represents the original melodies, is on various accounts to be regretted. For—independently of the interest attaching to the earliest development of sacred music—if these melodies had been preserved, we should be able to understand the reasons of various musical changes, of which we have to take account, but for the introduction of which we can at present only offer conjectures. One marked peculiarity