This superb instrument, bequeathed to the city of Genoa by Paganini himself, has been most carefully preserved by the civic authorities. It has only twice been heard in public--once at the 1882 celebrations--since Paganini's death, and on both occasions it was played by his favourite pupil Sivori. It was carefully examined and photographed by Mr. Edward Heron-Allen in 1885, and a very interesting account was given by him[59] of the manner in which the violin was worn away by Paganini's peculiar method of playing. After describing its general condition he says, "The patch by the side of the tailpiece and the large wear on the back tell of the force with which he held the instrument in those high and pizzicato passages, which account for the long groove down the side of the fingerboard and the broad patch at the side of the neck, on the table of the instrument. The wearing away of the edges in the curves of the instrument bear a striking testimony to the force with which he sawed the gut in his bravura passages on the first and fourth strings." In the same glass case as the violin is placed the medal presented to Paganini by the Decurional Council of Genoa in 1834. On the reverse it bears this inscription:-- Nic. Paganino, Fidicini, cui nemo par fuit civique bene mecrenti A.D. MDCCCXXXIIII. Such outward honours as the world gives to its dead have indeed been offered to the memory of Paganini; but it is doubtful whether the higher honour of a frank recognition by the musical world of the work that he did for it, has ever been his. Unlike the great composer the instrumentalist leaves behind him no visible proof of the part he has played in the development of his art. And the world has easily forgotten that from the day of Paganini not only was the violin transformed into a new instrument, not only were its capabilities, previously undreamt of, newly revealed, but also in other branches of musical art, in orchestral music especially, a fresh field was opened up before the composer. It is scarcely too much to say that the scores of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss could not have been written, had Paganini never lived. We do not desire to see another Paganini, so complete a slave to his instrument, albeit its master; we do not desire to see another such life, with bodily health and moral vigour sacrificed to so absorbing a devotion to one single end. We would fain believe that Nicolo Paganini did not live in vain, that like a real artist he had and fulfilled his mission, that the evil he did died with him and that the good lives on to benefit the world. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [58] Reproduced on page 144. [59] _The Musical Times_, May 1st, 1886. APPENDIX. NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME. _Plate 1_--Frontispiece. Portrait of NICOLÒ PAGANINI, by Maurin, a French Artist. Free from caricature, it is probably the most authentic picture of the great virtuoso. It appeared in the seventh volume of the "Revue Musicale."