The first to make pianofortes in Germany was the famous Freiberg organ-builder and clavichord maker, Gottfried Silbermann. He submitted two pianofortes to the judgment of John Sebastian Bach in 1726, which judgment was, however, unfavorable; the trebles being found too weak, and the touch too heavy. Silbermann, according to the account of Bach's pupil, Agricola, being much mortified, put them aside, resolving not to show them again unless he could improve them. We do not know what these instruments were, but it may be inferred that they were copies of Cristofori, or were made after the description of his invention by Maffei, which had already been translated from Italian into German, by Koenig, the court poet at Dresden, who was a personal friend of Silbermann. With the next anecdote, which narrates the purchase of all the pianofortes Silbermann had made, by Frederick the Great, we are upon surer ground. This well accredited occurrence took place in 1746. In the following year occurred Bach's celebrated visit to Potsdam, when he played upon one or more of these instruments. Burney saw and described one in 1772. I had this one, which was known to have remained in the new palace at Potsdam until the present time unaltered, examined, and, by a drawing of the action, found it was identical with Cristofori's. Not, however, being satisfied with one example, I resolved to go myself to Potsdam; and, being furnished with permission from H.R.H. the Crown Princess of Prussia, I was enabled in September, 1881, to set the question at rest of how many grand pianofortes by Gottfried Silbermann there were still in existence at Potsdam, and what they were like. At Berlin there are none, but at Potsdam, in the music-rooms of Frederick the Great, which are in the town palace, the new palace, and Sans Souci--left, it is understood, from the time of Frederick's death undisturbed--there are three of these Silbermann pianofortes. All three are with unimportant differences having nothing to do with structure, Cristofori instruments, wrest plank, sound-board, string-block, and action; the harpsichord scale of stringing being still retained. The work in them is undoubtedly good; the sound-boards have given in the trebles, as is usual with old instruments, from the strain; but I should say all three might be satisfactorily restored. Some other pianofortes seem to have been made in North Germany about this time, as our own poet Gray bought one in Hamburg in 1755, in the description of which we notice the desire to combine a hammer action with the harpsichord which so long exercised men's minds.