French "La Viole d'Amour" is the Love Viol, so called from the soft and tender quality of the tone produced from it. Beneath the catgut strings there are usually wire strings, which, being tuned in accordance, vibrate sympathetically when the catgut strings are bowed. This is in obedience to a well-known law of physics, according to which a body set in vibration will cause another body having the same frequency of vibration to sound when within reach of its influence. In the beautifully carved and inlaid instrument here drawn, a perfect viola d'amore in form, surmounted by a lovely head with bandaged eyes, the sympathetic strings are absent, and if they were ever attached the peg-box has since been altered. But it has the "flaming sword" sound-holes invariably found in a viola d'amore, and also the addition, not unfrequent in that viol, of a rose immediately under the finger-board. Meyerbeer has revived the use of the viola d'amore by writing for it the delicious _obbligato_ to Raoul's song, "Ah! quel spectacle enchanteur," in _Les Huguenots_. In the present day Mr. Carli Zoeller has come forward in England as the regenerator of the viola d'amore. He has published an instruction-book, with an historical introduction of value, and has also composed for the instrument. The following interesting passage occurs in John Playford's _Musick's Recreation on the Viol Lyra-way_, London, 1661:--"The first authors of inventing and setting lessons this way to the Viol was Mr. _Daniel Farunt_, Mr. _Alfonso Ferabosco_, and Mr. _John Coperario_ alias _Cooper_. The first of these was a person of much ingenuity for his several rare inventions of instruments, as the Poliphant and the Stump, which were strung with wire; and also of his last, which was a _Lyra Viol_, strung with Lute strings and Wire strings, the one above the other; the wire strings were conveyed through a hollow passage made in the neck of the Viol and so brought to the tail thereof, and raised a little above the belly of the viol by a bridge of about 1/2 an inch. These were so laid that they were equivalent to those above, and were tun'd unisons to those above, so that by striking of those strings above with the bow, a sound was drawn from those of wire underneath, which made it very harmonious; of this sort of Viols I have seen many, but Time and Disuse have set them aside." This description may have referred to the Viola Bastarda, with the invention of which Praetorius credits England. A great authority on this subject, Mr. E.J. Payne, writing in Sir George Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ (article Violin), says the principle of sympathetic vibration was applied to several Viols, even the little Sordino. The Viola Bastarda was the Viola da Gamba with wire strings added. In the same way the Tenor Viol became the usual Viola d'Amore. But the latter has varied in construction, the name being applied by Mattheson (1713) to a Viol with four metal strings