er than an instrument of torture. One reason for this
aversion is that, in the great majority of cases, the household
instrument is not kept in tune. Probably it is not too much to say
that the man who would invent a sound cottage piano which would remain
in tune would do more for the improvement of the national taste in
music than the largest and finest orchestra ever assembled. The
constantly vitiated sense of hearing, which is brought about by the
continual jangle of notes just a fractional part of a tone out of
tune, is responsible for much of the distaste for good music which
prevails among the people. When the domestic instrument is but
imperfectly tuned, it is natural that those pieces should be preferred
which suffer least by reason of the imperfection, and these, it need
hardly be remarked, generally belong to the class of music which must
be rated as essentially inferior, if not vulgar.

The device of winding a string round a peg and twisting it up on the
latter in order to obtain tension for a vibrating note is thousands of
years old. It was the method by which tension was imparted to some of
the earliest harps and lyres of which history is cognisant; and it is
still to be found to-day in the most elaborate and costly grand piano,
with but few alterations affecting its principle of action. The
pianoforte of the future will be kept in tune by more exact and
scientific methods, attaining a certain balance between the thickness
of the wire and the tension placed upon it by means of springs and
weights.

Besides the ravages of the badly-tuned piano, much suffering is
inflicted by the barbarous habit of permitting a sounding instrument
to be used for mere mechanical exercises. The taste of the pupil is
vitiated, and the nerves of other inmates of the house are subjected
to a source of constant irritation when long series of notes,
arranged merely as muscular exercises, and some of them violating
almost every rule of musical form, are ground out hour after hour like
coffee from a coffee-mill. The inconsistency of subjecting the musical
ear and taste of a boy or girl to this process, and then expecting the
child to develop an innate taste for the delicacies of form in melody
and of the beauty of harmony, is almost as bad as would be that of
asking a Chinese victim of foot-binding to walk easily and gracefully.

The use of the digitorium for promoting the mechanical portion of a
musical education by the training o