Probably we must go back to our charming old friends, the cavaliers of Virginia, with their 'chests of viols' and their compositions of Boccherini and Vivaldi, to find the beginnings of chamber-music in America. Undoubtedly small private ensembles antedated orchestras in this country as they did everywhere else. We know that at Governor Penn's house in Philadelphia Francis Hopkinson and his friends met together frequently for musical entertainment, and such gatherings must have been numerous in New York, Boston, Charleston, and other colonial centres of culture. However, we must grope along until well into the nineteenth century before we find a public appearance in America of a chamber music ensemble. The pioneer, as far as we can discover, was a string quartet brought together in 1843 by Uriah C. Hill, founder of the New York Philharmonic. Samuel Johnson, an original member of the Philharmonic, writes about this quartet as follows: 'A miserable failure, artistically and financially. It would be gross flattery to call Mr. Hill a third-rate violinist; Apelles was a good clarinet, but a poor violinist.... Lehmann was a good second flute; Hegelund was a bassoon player and naturally best adapted to that instrument; he was a very small-sized man, with hands too small to grasp the neck of the 'cello. The whole enterprise was dead at its conception.' But perhaps Mr. Johnson did not like Mr. Hill. Richard Grant White said that the _soirées_ of the Hill Quartet 'were well attended and successful.'