Queen Elizabeth's instrument, the Virginals, was a box of strings, with improved keys, and mounted on four legs. In other words, it was a small and very bad piano. The excellent Pepys, in his account of the great fire of London of 1666, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and good goods swimming in the water; and only I observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in it, but there were a pair of virginalls in it." Why "a pair"? For the same reason that induces many persons to say "a pair of stairs," and "a pair of compasses," that is, no reason at all. It is plain that the virginals, or virgin's clavichord, was very far from holding the rank among musical instruments which the piano now possesses. If any of our readers should ever come upon a thin folio entitled "Musick's Monument," (London, 1676,) we advise him to clutch it, retire from the haunts of men, and abandon himself to the delight of reading the Izaak Walton of music. It is a most quaint and curious treatise upon "the Noble Lute, the best of instruments," with a chapter upon "the generous Viol," by Thomas Mace, "one of the clerks of Trinity College in the University of Cambridge." Master Mace deigns not to mention keyed instruments, probably regarding keys as old sailors regard the lubber's hole,--fit only for greenhorns. The "Noble Lute," of which Thomas Mace discourses, was a large, heavy, pot-bellied guitar with many strings. We learn from this enthusiastic author, that the noble lute had been calumniated by some ignorant persons; and it is in refuting their calumnious imputations that he pours out a torrent of knowledge upon his beloved instrument, and upon the state of music in England in 1675. In reply to the charge, that the noble lute was a very hard instrument to play upon, he gives posterity a piece of history. That the lute _was_ hard once, he confesses, but asserts that "it is now easie, and very familiar." "The First and Chief Reason that it was Hard in former Times, was, Because they had to their Lutes but Few Strings; viz. to some 10, some 12, and some 14 Strings, which in the beginning of my Time were almost altogether in use; (and is this present Year 1675. Fifty four years since I first began to undertake That Instrument). But soon after, they began to adde more Strings unto Their Lutes, so that we had Lutes of 16, 18, and 20 Strings; which they finding to be so Great a Convenience, stayed not long till they added more, to the Number of 24, where we now rest satisfied; only upon my Theorboes I put 26 Strings, for some Good Reasons I shall be able to give in due Time and Place." Another aspersion upon the noble lute was, that it was "a Woman's Instrument." Master Mace gallantly observes, that if this were true, he cannot understand why it should suffer any disparagement on that account, "but rather that it should have the more Reputation and Honour."