In 1768 in the _Boston Chronicle_ appears the advertisement of John Harris, recently from England, “that he makes and sells all sorts of Harpsichords and Spinets,” and in 1769 the _Boston Gazette_ says, “A few days since was shipped for Newport a very curious Spinet, being the first one ever made in America, the performance of the ingenious Mr. John Harris.” In 1770 the same paper praises an excellent “spinet” made by a Bostonian, “which for goodness of workmanship and harmony of sound is esteemed by the best judges to be superior to any that has been imported from Europe.” This would seem to indicate that a tone of superiority in musical matters was assumed by Boston at an early date. The statement with regard to the first spinet made in America is incorrect, for over twenty years earlier, in 1742, Hasselinck had made spinets in Philadelphia. In the Essex Institute of Salem is a spinet made by Samuel Blythe of Salem, the bill for which, dated 1786, amounts to eighteen pounds. The harpsichord, so named from its shape, was the most important of the group of contemporary instruments, the virginal, spinet, and harpsichord, the tone of which was produced with the quill and jack. The harpsichord had two strings to each key, and the instrument occupied the relative position that the grand piano does to-day, being much larger and having more tone than the spinet. Like the spinet, its manufacture ceased with the eighteenth century. Illustration 283 shows a harpsichord formerly owned by Charles Carroll, who was so eager to identify himself as a patriot, that he signed his name to the Declaration of Independence as Charles Carroll of Carrollton. This harpsichord was discovered twenty-five years ago in the loft of an old college building in Annapolis, where it had lain for fifty years. The Carroll coat of arms, painted upon porcelain and framed in gold, is fastened above the keyboard. The inscription upon this instrument is “Burkat Shudi et Johannes Broadwood, patent No. 955 Londini, Fecerant 1789, Great Poulteney Street, Golden Square.” There are two banks of keys, with a range of five octaves, and three stops, which were intended to change the tone, two of them being marked harp and lute. The case is quite plain, of mahogany, with a few lines of inlaying above the keyboard and a line around the body and top. It is owned by William Knabe & Co. of Baltimore, and is one of fourteen Broadwood harpsichords known to exist. That the harpsichord was not an uncommon instrument in this country during the latter half of the eighteenth century is shown by the number of advertisements of the harpsichord and its teachers.