TOL. LX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 11 



for doors, windows, chimneys, &c. which in many instances looked like real 

 sculpture, and seemed to be formed of the purest Carrara marble. 



Mr. Raspe adopts the opinion that all white marble is a precipitate from water 

 like the tophus of the hot springs above mentioned. 



VI H. Account of a Very Remarkable Young Musician. By the Hon. Daines 



Barrington, F.R.S. p. 54. 



Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was born at Saltz- 

 bourg in Bavaria, on the 17th of Jan. 1756. 



Mr. B. was informed, by a most able musician and composer, that he fre- 

 quently saw him at Vienna, when he was little more than 4 years old. By this 

 time he not only was capable of executing lessons on his favourite instrument the 

 harpsichord, but composed some in an easy style and taste, which were much 

 approved of. His extraordinary musical talents soon reached the ears of the 

 empress dowager, who used to place him on her knees while he played on the 

 harpsichord. 



This notice taken of him by so great a personage, together with a certain con- 

 sciousness " of his most singular abilities, had much emboldened the little mu- 

 sician. Being therefore the next year at one of the German courts, where the 

 elector encouraged him, by saying, that he had nothing to fear from his pre- 

 sence; little Mozart immediately sat down with great confidence to his harpsi- 

 chord, informing his highness, that he had played before the empress. At 7 

 years of age his father carried him to Paris, where he so distinguished himself 

 by his compositions, that an engraving was made of him. 



On leaving Paris, he came over to England, where he continued more than a 

 year. As during this time Mr. B. was witness of his most extraordinary abilities 

 as a musician, both at some public concerts, and by having been alone with him 

 for a considerable time at his father's house, he gives the following account, 

 amazing and incredible almost as it may appear. He carried to him a manu- 

 script duet, which was composed by an English gentleman to some favourite 

 words in Metastasio's opera of Demofoonte. The whole score was in 5 parts, 

 viz. accompaniments for a 1st and 2d violin, the 2 vocal parts, and a base. Mr. 

 B.'s intention in carrying with him this manuscript composition, was to have an 

 irrefragable proof of his "abilities, as a player at sight, it being absolutely impos- 

 sible that he could have ever seen the music before. The score was no sooner 

 put upon his desk, than he began to play the symphony in a most masterly 

 manner, as well as in the time and style which corresponded with the intention 

 of the composer. The symphony ended, he took the upper part, leaving the 

 under one to his father. His voice in the tone of it was thin and infantine, but 

 nothing could exceed the masterly manner in which he sung. His father, wha 



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