Wilson had better have left this skit alone, for his friend was at no time guilty of giving his hearers too little information, and he was just now put upon his mettle to discuss the merits of the insulted trumpet under its three denominations according to the respective characters, in which the ancients employed, and have described it. The first of these, he told him, was the _tuba_, or straight trumpet, properly so called: the second was the _lituus_, or shrill-toned trumpet, curved at the extremity: the third and last the _cornuus_, or deep-toned horn, of natural conformation, curved throughout: of these the chief was the _tuba_ first named, which he informed him was unknown to the Greeks, though not to Homer, who did not employ it in his battles, knowing it was not then in use. He was right in not doing so, said Wilson; but if he had done otherwise, I, for one, should never have found him out. Whether Wilson imagined that his friend had done with his trumpets it is impossible to say, but it is very easy to believe that he was not aware how many he had in petto, for he seemed astonished when given to understand, that there were not less than six different sorts of the tuba, as classed by Eustathius into that of the Athenians, invented by Minerva; the Egyptian trumpet, contrived by Osiris, and employed in their sacrifices; the trumpet of the Gauls, with a peculiar mouthpiece, of a shrill tone, and by them called Carynx; the Paphlagonian trumpet, mouthed like a bull and very deep-toned; that of the Medes, blown with a reed, also of a deep tone, and lastly, the Tyrrhenian trumpet, extremely acute and high-pitched in conformity to which it is supposed the Romans modelled their’s.