In pursuing the course of our subject, our inquiries have hitherto been mainly concerned with the leading instrument in a barbarous and semi-barbarous state. We now reach what may be termed the transition stage of the question. The information relative to the appearance of the Geige, or Violin tuned in fifths, is of the slenderest kind. To obtain evidence of much worth it is necessary to reflect upon the condition of instrumental music about the sixteenth century, together with the form and character of bowed instruments belonging to the same period. The manners and customs of peoples have also to be considered. We have hitherto found the Geige or Fiddle among minstrels and itinerant musicians in countries where music and minstrelsy had become an institution with the people. The instrument was rude and gross, and its office was to play extemporaneous accompaniments, with considerable licence. At length domestic music began to be zealously cultivated in Germany and the Low Countries, to which important circumstance the rapid development of stringed instruments is traceable. Viols of various kinds supported the voices, and an important manufacture of such instruments took root in Nuremberg and other German cities. In following the history of the Madrigal much light is thrown upon that of the Viol, to which it is necessary to give attention in order to follow in some degree the development of the Violin. The condition of music in Italy previous to the time when the father of the Madrigal, Adrian Willaert, followed in the steps of his countrymen and made Italy his home, presents a great contrast to the state of the art in Germany and the Netherlands about the same period. The love of music in these countries had been growing among the people from the days of their minstrel poets and their wandering musicians. In Italy minstrelsy received but little attention or encouragement. The effect of this was probably felt when that extraordinary love of culture and admiration for art manifested itself amid the courts of her princes, about the middle of the fifteenth century. The love of melody then, as now, was deeply rooted in the nature of her people. Musical composition, however, of a high order, and able executants, were to be found elsewhere, and in Flanders in particular, and there the principal music and musicians were sought by the Italian _dilettanti_. To this fortuitous combination of melody and musical learning we owe the greatest achievements in the art of music. Upon it was raised the work of Palestrina, Scarlatti, and Corelli, which their distinguished followers utilised with such judgment and effect. The progress and development of the Madrigal in Italy may be said to have been co-equal with that of the Viol, for which its music served, and to which the Italians gave the same beauty of form and exquisite refinement. The ingenuity and skilfulness of the early German Viol makers was not less speedily recognised by the Italians