MUSEUMS. 309 



tnen, 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 



