on or about the violin family, their makers,
their players, and the music prepared for the
same, may not be altogether untimely. A
compendious and well-executed little book*—one
of the best, as well as most unpretending, book
of its kind that I know—of has reminded me of
a few old tales and truths, and encouraged me
to string together a few of these in a desultory
fashion.

* Violins and Violin Makers, &c. &c. By Joseph
Pearce, Jun. Longman and Co.

How many centuries have passed since the
world was first edified by the sounds of a fiddle?
is a question for the Dryasdusts;—not to be
dismissed lightly here. Old painters—how far
inspired by tradition or not, who shall say?—have
put it into the hands of Apollo on the hill of
Parnassus; and, following their example, the
other day, Mr. Leighton, in his Picture of Music,
put it into the hands of Orpheus as the magical
instrument by which Eurydice was given back
to life. Certain it is that, about the eleventh or
twelfth centuries, the violin had taken its present
form, and many antiquarians, the diligent and
erudite Mr. William Chappell among the number,
are satisfied that this form was of northern
rather than southern origin. The Welsh, those
dear lovers of pedigree, and who have asserted
(it has been humorously said) that the primeval
language spoken by Adam and Eve was theirs,
have laid claim to it. One of the lozenges in the
quaint painted roof of Peterborough cathedral,
showing a bare-legged man dancing to his kit
(date the twelfth century), has a curiously modern
air, so far as the shape of the instrument is
concerned; but it was not perfected till the sixteenth
century, when Amati of Cremona, and Di Salo
of Brescia, gave models which have been slightly
varied; which such notable artificers as Stradivarius,
Guarnerius, Steiner, and others, but never
unmade; nor, indeed, have essentially changed.
Since their day, no improvements have been
effected, save in the making of the bow—a
condition of things without parallel in the fabrication
of musical instruments—which has been
universally a story of discovery aud progress.
Think of a Broadwood, or an Erard Concert
Grand Pianoforte, as compared with the meek
and weak little clarichord, which sufficed to
Sebastian Bach; think how the powers of King
David's instrument, the harp, have been
extended by pedals and "double-action" since the
days of the bards, nay, and even of such modern
celebrities as Krumpholtz, and Madame de
Genlis, and Madame Spohr the first. Think of
what has. happened to "the German Flute"
since Frederick the Great bored his court of wits
and philosophers, and the ears of his patient
concert-master, Herr Quanz, by playing his three
nightly concertos. Think how all the
mechanical appliances of the Organ, as the lightening
of touch, and the easier combinations of register,
have been improved during the past century and
a half, since Christian Müller, the maker of the
Haarlem organ. Gabelaar, and Silbermann, and
Father Schmidt built their instruments, still
magnificent, in respect of their sonority, but
comparatively rude in structure. No fate of
the kind has befallen the violin. The best workmen
are those who best imitate the men who
wrought three hundred years ago.  In its form, in
proportion, in the addition to its means, no
improvement has been made; and less so in some
points of decoration which assist in the preservation
of the instrument. The secret of the old
varnishes, which are as essential to the well-being
of a violin, as is manipulated clay of delicate
quality to the texture of china, seems, if we are
to believe common testimony, irrecoverably lost.

Few who see that simple-looking toy, out of
which such admirable music is drawn, have an
idea of its delicate complexity of structure. A
well-made violin contains more than fifty
different pieces of woods, the woods being three:
maple, red deal, and ebony. The wood must be
thoroughly seasoned, especially the red deal;
and the only artist of modern times who is said
to counterfeit the works of the great Italian
makers, M. Vuillaume, of Paris, has done so
mainly by a most careful selection of materials.
Many a roof and panel from Swiss châlets have
found their way into his workshop. Be the
grain ever so good, the material must have
undergone the slow action of time. Some have
thought to supersede this by the use of acids
and by artificial heat. But these expedients, I
am assured, have only a short-lived success.
The violins thus forced deteriorate steadily;
whereas the good instruments become more
mellow and precious in sound year by year. It
seems agreed that the amount of sonority in
the violin partly depends on the flatness or
otherwise of its form. How it should be that
no change of any importance has been made
since the days of Di Salo and Amati, presents,
I repeat, one of the most singular anomalies in
that history of anomalies the lovely art of
Music. But the Violin is nothing without its
bow; and the perfected bow is an invention
dating nearly two centuries later than the
perfection of the instrument which it "bids to
discourse." Here is a second anomaly.

A third is, that the instrument was brought
to perfection before any music was produced
worth performing on it (as we understand
matters). Corelli and Scarlatti were not
writing when Amati, and Stradivarius, and
Guarnerius were producing their masterpieces, which
sufficed to the Paganinis of modern times for
the execution of their stupendous feats of
volubility and brilliancy. In truth, till the beginning
of the last century, the music written for the
violin was mere child's play—the works of one
wonderful man excepted—John Sebastian Bach.
This great genius, who divined so much, and the
value of whose experiments to the world of
musical poets has only come to be appreciated
within a comparatively recent period, can have
encountered no one, I suspect, in the least able
to present on the violin his difficult and recondite
fancies. His Sonatas, Chaconnes, Variations, as
good as buried till Mendelssohn disinterred them,
tax a player to the amount which few players,