for us "the
atmosphere in which Antonio Stradivari worked for more than half a
century.

"I stood in the open loft at the top of his house, where still in the
old beams stuck the rusty old nails upon which he hung up his violins.
And I saw out upon the north the wide blue sky, just mellowing to rich
purple, and flecked here and there with orange streaks prophetic of
sunset. Whenever Stradivarius looked up from his work, if he looked
north, his eye fell on the old towers of S. Marcellino and S. Antonio;
if he looked west, the Cathedral, with its tall campanile, rose dark
against the sky, and what a sky! full of clear sun in the morning, full
of pure heat all day, and bathed with ineffable tints in the cool of
the evening, when the light lay low upon vinery and hanging garden, or
spangled with ruddy gold the eaves, the roofs, and frescoed walls of
the houses.

"Here, up in the high air, with the sun, his helper, the light, his
minister, the blessed soft airs, his journeymen, what time the workaday
noise of the city rose and the sound of matins and vespers was in his
ears, through the long warm days worked Antonio Stradivari."

[Illustration: Stradivarius. From painting by E. J. C. Hamman.]

Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman, who painted the picture of
Stradivarius--deep in thought amid his violins--which accompanies this,
was a Belgian. Born at Ostend in 1819, and a pupil of De Keyser, he
lived a long time in Paris, won many medals and other honours, and died
in 1888, leaving behind him numerous pictures, several of which are
reproduced in this book. His "Erasmus Reading to the Young Charles V."
is in the Luxembourg, and the Brussels museum has his "Dante at
Ravenna," and the "Entry of Albert and Isabella into Ostend." Besides
these he produced "The Mass of Adrien Willaert," "The Childhood of
Montaigne," "Shakespeare and his Family," "Vesalius," "Hamlet," and
"Murillo in his Studio." One of his paintings, entitled "The Women of
Siena, 1553," shows the women of that city working on the
fortifications intended to resist the besieging army of Charles V., and
another depicts Columbus first sighting land on October 12, 1492.

TARTINI.

A few years ago the Istrian town of Pirano unveiled a statue, not
exactly to _one_ of its illustrious sons, but to the _only one_ of its
children who ever became famous, so far as we know. The pedestal of
the statue is inscribed.

_Istria to Giuseppe Tartini, 1896._

The adm