MUSEUMS. 309 
then, I stop; for I can go on no farther. I can no 
more explain, by the agency of my pen, how to 
make the thousand and one little touches which are 
necessary to insure success, than a fiddler can con- 
vey instructions by letter to one who has never 
used the bow. He may tell him, forsooth, to draw 
the horse-hair at right angles over the catgut ; and 
and he may add directions how the learner is to 
stop and shift, and stop and shift again, until he 
shall produce delightful music. But this will avail 
him nothing. The lad will scrape and scrape again, 
for want of personal instructions, till at last the 
man who is doomed to be punished by his grating 
will cry out, — 
* Old Orpheus play’d so well, he moved Old Nick ; 
But thou movest nothing but thy fiddle-stick.” 
I have turned this new discovery ten thousand times 
over in my mind, and I invariably come to the same 
conclusion ; viz., that I cannot give sufficient in- 
struction by means of the pen alone. I am placed 
in a situation somewhat like that of the French 
cook, who was ordered by his king to make a dish 
out of that which put his culinary powers utterly at 
defiance. ‘I have turned it every way, an’t please 
your Majesty,” said he; “ and I have tried it with 
every kind of sauce ; but, positively, I cannot make 
a dish of it.” Neither can I effect, through the 
medium of the pen, that which I could wish to do 
in this case. Wherefore, I beg to inform the reader 
that it requires the dissecting hand of the instruc- 
tor, and from two to three weeks of actual work 
a 
