“During the first years of King Charles’s reign all the Musick in favor with the _beau-monde_ was in the French style, which at that time was rendered famous throughout Europe by the works of Baptiste Lully, a Frenchified Italian and master of the Court Musick at Paris, who enriched the French Musick by Italian harmony which greatly improved their melody. His style was theatrical; and the pieces called _branles_, or _ouvertures_, consisting of an _entrée_ and a _courante_ will ever be admired as the most stately and complete _mouvements_ in Musick. All the composers in London strove hard to imitate Lully’s vein. However, the whole tendency of the air affected the _foot_ more than the _ear_; and no one could listen to an _entrée_ with its starts and leaps without expecting a dance to follow. “The French instrumental music, however, did not make its way so fast as to bring about a revolution all at once; for during a great part of this King’s reign the old Musick was still used in the country and in many private meetings in London; but _the treble viol was discarded and the violin took its place_. “It may be ascribed to the peculiar pleasure which King Charles II received from the gay and sprightly sound of the violin that this instrument was introduced at Court and the houses of the nobility and gentry for other purposes than country-dances and festive mirth. Hitherto there seems to have been no public concerts and in the Musick of the chamber, in the performance of _Fancies_ on instruments which had taken the place of vocal madrigals and motets the violin had no admission, the whole business having been done by viols. “The use of the violin and its kindred instruments, the tenor and violoncello, in Court was doubtless brought from Italy to France and from France to England; for Charles II, who, during the Usurpation had spent a considerable time on the Continent, where he heard nothing but French Musick, upon his return to England, in imitation of Louis XIV, established a band of violins, tenors and basses, instead of the viols, lutes and cornets of which the Court band used to consist.” Anthony Wood, that quaint old English writer, also throws a light on the question of violin-playing in England at that time. “The gentlemen in private meetings,” he writes, “which A. W. frequented, played three, four and five parts with viols as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon, joined with them; and they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler and could not endure that it should come among them for fear of making their meetings to be vaine and fiddling. But after the Restoration of Charles I, viols began to be out of fashion and only violins used, as treble violin, tenor and bass violin; and the King, according to the French mode, would have Twenty-Four Violins playing before him while he was at meals, as being more airy and brisk than viols.”