For an appreciative description of the beauties of the Salabue we may quote an enthusiast, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, whose writings and lectures upon his favourite study have made the name of Stradivari familiar to thousands of the English-speaking people. Mr. Haweis, referring to the exhibition of the instrument in London, in 1872, wrote—“It is for the first time unveiled in all its intact glory to the gaze of thousands to whom for years it has been a kind of myth. It is as though the ivory Minerva of Phidias, that stood once in the Parthenon, should be discovered hidden away with the utmost care in some deep dry and hermetically-sealed sepulchre of the East, and brought over scatheless to be set up amidst the Elgin fragments. So stands this matchless new violin amidst its time-worn, rubbed, and fractured brethren. It is of the grand pattern; it is massive without looking massive; its strength is hidden beneath its grace. The back is in two parts; the wood very choice. The fine graining of the flat belly is remarkable. The holes are delicately cut, the left =f= a shade lower than the right; a practice so common that it must have been intentional with Stradivarius, his fine eye not tolerating even there a suspicion of mechanical work. We see in this violin what the perfect Stradivari corners were. In almost every other known specimen the corners and the wood are both rubbed. In Le Messie they are untouched and clean-looking; wondrously sharp and wide awake, yet without vulgarity, and of a perfect finish. The ease and neatness of the purfling is incomparable, and over the whole instrument lies a thick rich red brown varnish wondrous to behold; the washing of it is level and lavish, and unworn by time or use. The brush seems to have left it about a week. The neck has been lengthened by M. Vuillaume. The head is light and graceful rather than heavy or powerful, the scroll thrown off like a ribbon lightly curled round the finger and drawn in; one side of the scroll is slightly lower than the other, the fluting smooth, with a surface like that of clear still water, and the lines of the scroll picked out with a thick rim of black varnish that serves to accentuate the outlines of the head, just as purfling calls attention to the contour of the back and belly. In nearly every other violin this black head-rim has been almost entirely effaced, but in Le Messie it remains to show us the maker’s intention. He meant you to take up his violin and see at a glance its whole outline traced and emphasized by a sharp purfling carried out in the head by a deep rim of black varnish. This brooding over the beauty of curves, this anxiety that they should be manifest to all men is most instructive and touching; neither the purfling nor the black varnish added to the tone, nor even the preservation of the instrument—it was the art instinct of the old makers piercing the manufacture.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------