The romances of real life are generally allowed to be far more amazing than anything fiction can create. Perhaps though, when all is said and done, the most sentimental or interesting happenings are not those which lie concealed in reality or myth, but in the unwritten something which clings about the antique treasures we prize--“Those certain things” which Oliver Wendell Holmes calls “good for nothing unless they have been kept for a long while.” That old oak chair is more precious than a modern production, not because the wood is better or the make more solid, but for the misty reminiscences of lace and buskin, Cavalier and Puritan, in which it is steeped. This exquisite brocade is valued not so much for its rich texture as for the memory of the shapely shoulders of a Du Barry, or a Castlemaine, which it once graced. This china vase: this tapestry: this antique ring--we have but to look at them and they tell us many an unwritten story, impossible to repeat, and appealing to us alone. Of all the mute romancers carefully preserved from time’s destructive grasp, none can tell such tales as do the grand old fiddles. Those constant yielding companions of generations passed away have served as confessional boxes for so many centuries that each curve and bend teems with a secret. Take this masterpiece of Andrea Amati for instance (p. 114). Made in Cremona by a man of the mature age of fifty-two or thereabouts, the impulsive hazard of his youthful efforts had long since passed away: definite aim had developed his gifts, and ripe experience had given his hand an exquisite cunning. Little did he think as he sat in his sunny Cremona workshop, smoothing the back of this violoncello, bending the ribs, letting in the purfled edges, while he chatted now and again with a neighbour who dropped in, that he was building a monument to his own memory. [Illustration: THE ‘KING’ VIOLONCELLO BY ANDREAS AMATI, 1572.] Sent with its fellows to the French court, this violoncello arrived, with the painted armorial bearings of Charles IX., exquisitely pure and fresh in colour, upon its back and sides. It was relegated to the King’s “Chapelle,” or private oratory, doubtless occupying a humble position in the band where the Duiffoproucart viol was prominent: feeling the touch of fresh fingers, as the old ones lost their skill: seeing the intrigues of the court life: hearing the cries of, “The King is dead! Long live the King!” observing each phase of human love and folly, and watching the vagaries of Princes for over two hundred years. Truly your tales would outrival Balzac himself could you speak, and your royal title--“the King”--is but a well-deserved panegyric.