"SIR,--As you have devoted a paragraph to this Violin, which it well deserves, permit me to add a fact which may be interesting to amateurs, and to Mr. George Hart, the late purchaser. M. Vuillaume, who could not speak English, was always assisted in his London purchases by the late John Lott, an excellent workman, and a good judge of old Violins.[13] The day after this particular purchase, Lott came to Vuillaume, by order, to open the Violin. He did so in the sitting-room whilst Vuillaume was dressing. Lott's first words were, 'Why, it has never been opened!' His next, 'Here's the original bass-bar.' Thereupon out went M. Vuillaume, half-dressed, and the pair gloated over a rare sight, a Stradivari Violin, the interior of which was intact from the maker's hands. Mr. Lott described the bass-bar to me. It was very low and very short, and quite unequal to support the tension of the strings at our concert pitch, so that the true tone of this Violin can never have been heard in England before it fell into Vuillaume's hands. I have known this Violin forty years. It is wonderfully preserved. There is no wear on the belly except the chin-mark; in the centre of the back a very little, just enough to give light and shade. The corners appear long for the epoch, but only because they have not been worn down. As far as the work goes, you may know from this instrument how a brand-new Stradivari Violin looked. Eight hundred guineas seems a long price for a dealer to give: but after all, here is a Violin, a picture, and a miracle all in one; and big diamonds increase in number; but these spoils of time are limited for ever now, and, indeed, can only decrease by shipwreck, accident, and the tooth of time.--I am, your obedient servant, "CHARLES READE. "19, ALBERT GATE, _May 9, 1878_." [Footnote 13: The hero of Mr. Read's "Jack of All Trades, a Matter-of-fact Romance."] LEIGH HUNT ON PAGANINI. "'I projected,' says Leigh Hunt, 'a poem to be called "A Day with the Reader." I proposed to invite the reader to breakfast, dine and sup with me, partly at home, and partly at a country inn, to vary the circumstances. It was to be written both gravely and gaily; in an exalted, or in a lowly strain, according to the topics of which it treated. The fragment on Paganini was a part of the exordium:-- "So played of late to every passing thought, With finest change (might I but half as well So write!) the pale magician of the bow," &c. I wished to write in the same manner, because Paganini with his Violin could move both the tears and the laughter of his audience, and (as I have described him doing in the verses) would now give you the notes of birds in trees, and even hens feeding in a farmyard (which was a corner into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. The phrase of _smiting_ the chord--