The Psaltery was a plectrum instrument derived from the Arab Qan[=u]n; it is rarely absent in paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where musical instruments are represented. The same instrument, increased in the weight of stringing to resist the impact of hammers, is the familiar dulcimer, which, like the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipe, has seen better days. What was once thought of the dulcimer is shown by the painting that adorns the one drawn in Plate XVII. It seems almost vexatious that we do not know who first adjusted a key-board to a psaltery, and thus constructed a spinet. It was not earlier than the fifteenth century, but the name of the meritorious inventor has not come down to us, or where he lived. It seems most likely from the earliest name, clavicymbalum, being Latin, that the instrument was first contrived in a monastery. But we have, fortunately, in Plate VI., in an upright Spinet or Clavicytherium, one of the earliest existing specimens of the kind. It is a question not yet decided whether this rare instrument is of South German or North Italian origin. The reason is given for the former attribution in the description accompanying the drawing. Yet the Mantegnesque feeling is so strong in the decoration of the interior that we pause before accepting the Swabian origin as conclusively settled. Queen Elizabeth's Virginal (Plate VIII.), which has at last found a resting-place in the splendid collection of old musical instruments in South Kensington Museum, is not a virginal proper, but apparently an Italian spinet. It has been gloriously decorated, and it awakens an intense feeling of interest to reflect upon who may have played upon it and who may have stood by and heard the pleasing tones of an instrument once so much cared for. The Spinet was at that time beginning to gain upon the Lute. The power to perform part music with two hands, which the lute-player, having only one hand to stop with, could but imperfectly approach, was an endowment there was no gainsaying. We may see the contemporary prosperity of the great Venetian republic in the lutes, theorboes, and spinets that are now dispersed throughout Europe; and almost at the same time such instruments as the Ruckers Virginal (Plate XVIII.) and the Ruckers double Spinet (Plate XX.) bear witness for Antwerp as to the favour successful commerce has ever shown the Arts. The great English spinet-makers belong to the second half of the seventeenth century, and the first quarter of the eighteenth. Among them, Stephen Keene was in the foremost rank, and his work will still bear examination in the spinet drawn in Plate XXII. The eighteenth century was marked by a great advance in making the expressive Clavichord, which although perhaps the oldest key-board stringed instrument, had always had to give way before the louder and more graceful-looking spinet. Plate XXXII. displays the clavichord at its culmination, and the Chinese