306 Bev. H. It. Hmveis [Feb. 20, 



Taking a violin and tearing it open, the lecturer continued: — 

 " The violin is made of fifty-eight or seventy pieces. It is a miracle 

 of construction. It is as light as a feather and as strong as a horse. 

 Wood about as thick as a half-crown, by exquisite adjustment, resists 

 for centuries a pressure of several hundred-weight. The belly of soft 

 deal, the back of hard sycamore, are united by six ribs of sycamore, 

 supported by twelve blocks with linings. The sound-bar running 

 obliquely under the left foot of the bridge is the nervous system of 

 the violin, the sound-post supporting the bridge is the soul, through 

 it pass all the heart-throbs or vibrations generated between the back 

 and the belly ; on its position depends mellowness, tightness, or 

 intensity of sound. The prodigious strain of the strings is resisted 

 first by the arch of the belly, then by the ribs, strengthened with the 

 upright blocks, the pressure among which is evenly distributed by the 

 linings which unite them, and lastly by the supporting sound-bar and 

 sound-post and back." 



After describing the other parts of the instrument, Mr. Haweis 

 alluded to the Cremona varnish, which he described after Mr. 

 Charles Reade as probably a heterogeneous varnish, first of oil 

 with gum in solution, then of colour evaporated in spirit. "A 

 red and a yellow gum appear to have been used and combined. 

 Although it was said that the secret was now lost, Dod, as late as 

 1830, who employed the Fendts and Lett and always varnished 

 with his own hand, had the receipt for something very like the Cremona 

 varnish ; and, lately, Mr. Perkins has not only analyzed the varnish 

 of Joseph Guarnerius and found amber in it, but has himself produced 

 varnish ol an extraordinary quality. 



" The supreme interest of the violin is not far to seek. It lies not 

 only in its simplicity, beauty, strength, subtlety, and indestructibility, 

 which fit it for the cabinet of the collector, but it is the king of 

 instruments in the hands of the player. It combines accent with 

 modification of sustained tone. The organ has sustained tone without 

 accent, the piano accent without sustained tone, the violin accent and 

 sustained tone modified at will. Within its limits it is scientifically 

 perfect; it has all the sensibility and more than the compass, 

 execution, and variety of the human voice. The violin is not an 

 invention, it is a growth ; it has come together, it is the survival of 

 the fittest. On the screens you see its rough elements, which had to 

 be collected from the rebek, the crowth, and the rotta or guitar tribe. 

 About the eleventh century an instrument of the viol tribe emerged 

 with frets, but 150 years were required to get rid of these marplots 

 before even a step towards the true viol could be made. Before the 

 end of the fourteenth century viols were made in great profusion of 

 every size and shape — the knee viol, the bass viol, viol de Gamba, of 

 which certain South Kensington specimens are before you. But the 

 rise of the true violin tribe begins with the rise of modern music. 

 About the time when Carissimi and Monteverde — 1585-1672 — dis- 

 covered the true octave and the perfect cadence, part singing received 



