aid
bare. Many years ago a friend owning a fine Cremonese viola asked me
to open it and find out the cause of some buzzing or rattling within
that had not been evident till that time. After an examination, finding
that opening it would be absolutely necessary, I asked him whether he
would like to see the interior of what he had paid so much for; it might
not prove an enjoyable sight from the roughness and dirt of ages in
combination with clumsily executed repairs while in unskilful hands;
being unaccustomed to such sights he wisely restrained his curiosity
and waited till all was placed right again.

But to our dealer and workman again; the former, taking up the two
portions alternately, at last makes the remark, "Clean work, James,
inside as well as out, good tool work, they had some steel in those
days, plenty of glass-papering here apparently, unlike some others
made at the same period, time seems to have been no object. Possibly
the maker was well paid for his work, if not he ought to have been."
To these observations the workman only gives a sniff in reply. He thinks
that all this can be quite equalled at the present day, if a fellow
is really well paid; but this is reckoning with only a part of the
subject. A further exclamation of admiration comes from his
chief--"Think, James, what a wonderful draughtsman this old Italian
was; mind you, this is not a copy, traced from something else as we
should do now-a-days, but a first idea, an original design; it is in
some respects a departure from the man's best known patterns, good as
them, however, although differing; look at the way those lines run from
point to point, what ease! the tenderness with which the sound holes
are drawn, the lightness and freedom! that man was a born artist if
ever there was one!" Another sniff from James, who doesn't believe in
born anything, but that good work comes with good tools and a reasonable
prospect ahead of good remuneration for extra trouble. "Don't see, sir,
why we can't put a bit of purfling round as clean as that! some of those
French copies are as cleanly purfled as any part of this!" He is
released from the necessity of further illustration by his chief
interposing: "Quite true, James, and if these mechanical copyists had
put as much energy into efforts at truly original and artistic designs
as they have in copying that which seems to have been laid down for
their guidance, they would have advanced very many steps further tha