THE PIANO IN THE UNITED STATES. Twenty-five thousand pianos were made in the United States last year! This is the estimate of the persons who know most of this branch of manufacture, but it is only an approximation to the truth; for, besides the sixty makers in New York, the thirty in Boston, the twenty in Philadelphia, the fifteen in Baltimore, the ten in Albany, and the less number in Cincinnati, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco, there are small makers in many country towns, and even in villages, who buy the parts of a piano in the nearest city, put them together, and sell the instrument in the neighborhood. The returns of the houses which supply the ivory keys of the piano to all the makers in the country are confirmatory of this estimate; which, we may add, is that of Messrs. Steinway of New York, who have made it a point to collect both the literature and the statistics of the instrument, of which they are among the largest manufacturers in the world. The makers' prices of pianos now range from two hundred and ninety dollars to one thousand; and the prices to the public, from four hundred and fifty dollars to fifteen hundred. We may conclude, therefore, that the people of the United States during the year 1866 expended fifteen millions of dollars in the purchase of new pianos. It is not true that we export many pianos to foreign countries, as the public are led to suppose from the advertisements of imaginative manufacturers. American citizens--all but the few consummately able kings of business--allow a free play to their imagination in advertising the products of their skill. Canada buys a small number of our pianos; Cuba, a few; Mexico, a few; South America, a few; and now and then one is sent to Europe, or taken thither by a Thalberg or a Gottschalk; but an inflated currency and a war tariff make it impossible for Americans to compete with European makers in anything but excellence. In price, they cannot compete. Every disinterested and competent judge with whom we have conversed on this subject gives it as his deliberate opinion that the best American piano is the best of all pianos, and the one longest capable of resisting the effects of a trying climate; yet we cannot sell them, at present, in any considerable numbers, in any market but our own. Protectionists are requested to note this fact, which is not an isolated fact. America possesses such an astonishing genius for inventing and combining labor-saving machinery, that we could now supply the world with many of its choicest products, in the teeth of native competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which double the cost of producing. The time may come, however, when we shall sell pianos at Paris, and watches in London, as we already do sewing-machines everywhere.