"An Italian composer, named Peregrini, was a fellow-student of Mastai Ferretti, now the occupant of the Papal chair. Since their quitting college, Fortune abandoned the _maestro_, whilst she smiled upon the priest. One day Pius IX. received the following letter:--'Most Holy Father,--I know not if you recollect that I had the honour of being your fellow-student at College, and that your Holiness has done me the honour of playing duos with me on the Violin; and that the execution of them was not always irreproachable, at least on my part, which so displeased your Holiness at the time that you deigned to apply certain corrections to my fingers. I have taken the liberty of revealing myself to your recollection, and to pray you to take under your protection one who can never cease to remember the happy moments he has passed with him whose apostolic virtues have raised him to the throne of St. Peter.' The Pope replied, 'I have never forgotten your name, my son; come to me at Rome, and we will again play duets together, and if you have not progressed in your studies, I shall know how again to correct you.'"--_Hogarth's Musical Herald_. OLE BULL AND FIDDLE VARNISH. "A man who had a patent varnish for Violins, brought his invention to Ole Bull, and begged him to try it. He said that it gave ordinary instruments the sweet quality of a Cremona Fiddle. Ole Bull tried it, and found that it improved the tone, and promised to use a Violin prepared with it at a concert he had to give at the house of the Duke of Riario. There was a great deal of fashionable company at this concert, and the heat of the room melted this famous varnish, which was really a preparation of asafoetida. The smell which it exuded was so maddening that an ordinary man would have stopped and excused himself; but Ole Bull merely closed his eyes, turned his face away, and played with an energy which became more frenzied the more intolerable the stink became. He enjoyed an overwhelming success, and the Duke rushed forward to seize his hand in congratulation. The appalling odour of asafoetida struck him in the face, and Ole Bull had to explain in what agony he had been performing."--_Ole Bull's_ "_Breve i Uddrag_," _by Jonas Lie, Copenhagen_, 1881. ON THE TREATMENT OF THE VIOLIN. _In a Letter from the celebrated Tartini_. The letter here presented to my readers was translated and published by Dr. Burney, in 1779, under the following title: "A Letter from the late Signor Tartini to Signora Maddalena Lombardini (afterwards Signora Sirmen). Published as an important lesson to performers on the Violin. "'PADUA, _March_ 5, 1760. "'MY VERY MUCH ESTEEMED SIGNORA MADDALENA,