he sides.]

In looking at a Violin we are struck with admiration at a sight of
consummate order and grace; but it is the grace of nature rather than
of mechanical art. The flow of curved lines which the eye detects upon
its varied surface, one leading to another, and all duly proportioned
to the whole figure, may remind us of the winding of a gentle stream,
or the twine of tendrils in the trellised vine.

Often is the question asked, What can there be in a simple Violin to
attract so much notice? What is it that causes men to treat this
instrument as no other, to view it as an art picture, to dilate upon
its form, colour, and date? To the uninitiated such devotion appears
to be a species of monomania, and attributable to a desire of
singularity. It needs but little to show the inaccuracy of such
hypotheses. In the first place, the true study of the Violin is a
taste which needs as much cultivation as a taste for poetry or any
other art, a due appreciation of which is impossible without such
cultivation. Secondly, it needs, equally with these arts, in order to
produce proficiency, that spark commonly known as _genius_, without
which, cultivation, strictly speaking, is impossible, there being
nothing to cultivate. We find that the most ardent admiration for the
Violin regarded as a work of art, has ever been found to emanate from
those who possessed tastes for kindred arts. Painters, musicians, and
men of refined minds have generally been foremost among the admirers
of the Violin. Much interest attaches to it from the fact of its being
the sole instrument incapable of improvement, whether in form or in
any other material feature. The only difference between the Violin of
the sixteenth century and that of the nineteenth lies in the
arrangement of the sound-bar (which is now longer, in order to bear
the increased pressure caused by the diapason being higher than in
former times), and the comparatively longer neck, so ordered to obtain
increased length of string. These variations can scarcely be regarded
as inventions, but simply as arrangements. The object of them was the
need of adapting the instrument to modern requirements, so that it
might be used in concert with others that have been improved, and
allow the diapason to be raised. Lastly, it must be said that, above
all, the Violin awakens the interest of its admirers by the tones
which it can be made to utter in the hands of a skilful performer. It
is, without doubt,