Cremona, we must transport ourselves to the house No. 1239, in the Piazza S. Domenico, at Cremona, and imagine that (now) carpet warehouse changed into an old workshop like that described at the commencement of this chapter. There lived and died Antonius Stradiuarius, known to all men, respected as one of the oldest inhabitants, and envied by not a few as the most celebrated lute-maker in Italy. We cannot join hands with him through any living person who has seen him, but we can almost. Bergonzi, grandson of the great Carlo Bergonzi, who died only a few years ago, at the age of eighty, used to point out the house of his grandfather's contemporary. And old Polledro, late chapelmaster at Turin, describes Antonius as an intimate friend of his master, and we shall get no nearer to Antonius than the description he has left of him. He was high and thin, and looked like one worn with much thought and incessant industry. In summer he wore a white cotton nightcap, and in winter a white one made of some woollen material. He was never seen without his apron of white leather, and every day was to him exactly like every other day. His mind was always riveted upon his one pursuit, and he seemed neither to know nor to desire the least change of occupation. His violins sold for four golden livres a piece. and were considered the best in Italy, and as he never spent anything except upon the necessaries of life and his own trade, he saved a good deal of money, and the simple-minded Cremonese used to make jokes about his thriftiness, and not perhaps without a little touch

of envy, until the favourite proverb applied to a prosperous fellow-citizen used to be "As rich as Stradiuarius!"

And now it may be thought that enough has been said concerning violins and their makers, but in truth we have only come to the threshold of the subject, and the mysteries of the manufacture remain to be expounded. This it would be exceedingly difficult to do without the aid of a great many diagrams, and indeed without presupposing the reader to have acquired some practical knowledge of the art. I must here confine myself to a few leading points.

It has been sometimes said that the merit of a violin is not so much in the make as (1.) in the age, and (11.) the quality of vibration produced in the wood by incessant use. It may be answered, first, that no doubt age improves violins, but age will never make a good violin out of a bad one; witness the host of violins that were made in the time of Stradiuarius by makers whose names are either known as greatly inferior to his, or forgotten altogether. Again, that using a violin keeps it in good condition is no doubt true; but, that much using a bad one will make it good, is not certainly the case: for, how many bad fiddles are there that have been scraped assiduously for ages, and are still as bad as can be?

Fig. 4 is copied from a very perfect and powerful instrument in the writer's possession, bearing a label with the master's seal: "Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis faciebat anno 1712."

Thus it would appear that the secret of excellence lies neither in age nor use, but must be sought elsewhere.

The excellence of a violin depends, roughly speaking, upon two ranges of qualities-1. The thickness, density, and collocation of the various woods. 2. On the nature and direction of the curves.

1. The front of a violin is of soft deal, the back and sides are of maple. Now it is well known that a piece of wood, like a string in tension, can be set in vibration, and will then yield a certain musical note the pitch of that note will depend upon the length, thickness, and density of the wood-and that note will be generated by a certain number of soundwaves or vibrations. Now, when the back or front of a violin is covered with fine sand, and struck, or otherwise caused to vibrate, the sand will arrange itself in certain lines, corresponding to the waves of sound which generate the note belonging to the back or front, as the case may be. M. Savart maintains that after testing a great many of Stradiuarius's violins in this way, he found that all the finest gave the same note, but that in no case was the note of the front the same as the note of the back. Further experiment showed that in the finest violins there was a whole note between the back and the front, and that any departure from this rule was accompanied with injury to the tone. There is probably a general kind of truth at the bottom of these remarks, although suspicion has been thrown on the worth and extent

of M. Savart's experiments by some of our experienced makers; however, the following facts, stated necessarily with considerable roughness, may be relied

It

For the front of the violin you must choose a very light, soft, and porous wood-there is nothing better in this way than common deal. When dry, if you cut a section and look at it through the microscope, you will see it to be full of little hollow cells, once filled with the sap; the more of such cells there are, the more quickly will the wood vibrate to sound. Of such wood, then, we make the table of harmony, or sound-board, or belly of our violin. But in proportion to the quickness will be the thinness and evanescence of the sound, and if the back vibrated as quickly as the front, the sound would be very poor. Accordingly we take maple wood for the back. is a harder wood, containing less sap, and consequently fewer hollow cells when dry. It therefore vibrates more slowly than deal: the effect of this is to detain the waves of sound radiating from the deal, and to mix them with slower vibrations of the back in the hollow of the instrument. The ribs or sides of the violin, which are also made of maple, serve to connect the quickly vibrating belly with the slowly vibrating back, and hold them until both throb together with full pulsation and body of sound. But we must not omit to mention a little bit of stick called the sound-post, which is stuck upright inside the violin, just under the bridge, and helps the front to

support the strain put upon it by the strings. This insignificant little post, connecting as it does the inside roof of the belly directly with the back, is so important in helping to communicate and mix the vibrations, that the French have called it the "soul of the violin;" indeed, by moving it only a hair's breadth a sensible difference in the quality of the tone is produced, and a whole morning may be sometimes wasted in putting it up and shifting it about from one side to the other. The best possible advice to all amateurs is, when your sound-post is up, leave it alone; but if it is evidently in the wrong place, don't attempt to alter it yourself, but have it set right by some first-rate violin doctor.

But we have not quite done with the vibratory qualities of the wood. Great skill must be exercised in the choice of woods. You might cut up a dozen maple trees without finding a piece of wood so smooth and regular in grain, and of such even density as some of the Stradiuarius backs; and then, although deal is more porous than maple, yet all deal has not the same porousness, nor is all maple equally closegrained. Consequently, two pieces of deal of equal dimensions will not give the same note.

How did Stradiuarius find out the notes of his wood?-how did he measure its vibration ?-was he aware of the interval between the notes of his fronts and his backs? How much he knew we shall perhaps never be able to ascertain. His experiments in sound have not been handed down to us, any more than