Meanwhile the construction of the instruments has advanced to an unexampled perfection. It is only a hundred years since Stein began his laborious attempts on the new pianoforte. To-day a network of factories is spread over the whole world, in which innumerable faultless instruments are made, which put to use all the results of experience in the treatment of wood and wires. The modern pianos have already attained so completely the ideal of the hammer-mechanism that we are beginning to hark back to the forgotten tones of the cembalo. In Paris these aims have their strongest support in Diémer, who plays his Couperin on clavecins, and at the same time wins new renown for the oboe d’amour and the viol da gamba in the chamber-concert. Already quill-claviers are being more frequently constructed, and the reaction against the predominance of the pianoforte finds its satisfaction in their sweet and thrilling sounds. It is impossible to review all the piano-factories of both hemispheres, or to register all their innovations. I must content myself with mentioning the system of “overstringing,” invented simultaneously by several persons; the felting of the hammers, introduced by Pape; the third pedal of Steinway which holds on single tones without affecting the others; the use of a cast-iron frame and of cast-steel strings; and the vertical stringing of the upright “cottage” piano, which is developed out of older forms. Bechstein’s factory in Berlin stands at the head of German manufacture; but there are also Duysen, Blüthner, Schiedmayer, Irmler, Westermayer, Kaps, Ibach, and innumerable others; Bösendorfer in Vienna, Knabe in Baltimore, and Steinway in New York, who have succeeded to the renown of Chickering; besides the many other older-established firms. Bechstein, so fundamentally sound; and Steinway, with his patent fulness of tone, are the two rivals for the laurel at the end of the century.