“The _staccato_ runs, performed with the bow and concluded with a guitar note, are quite original with Paganini; and this is one of the few novelties in which he may find successful imitators. But his manner of producing the harmonic notes, which ascend to a height never before imagined, will probably remain a perpetual mystery[42]; it is not their least marvellous characteristic that, exquisitely attenuated as they are, the distinctness and strength of the sound is not, in the smallest degree, impaired. In performing on the fourth string only, he introduces the harmonics as part of the regular scale, thus obviating, in effect, all deficiency as to compass. The introduction of _pizzicato_ runs, on this solitary string, is another inexplicable mechanical feat.” And again, as to these wonder-working harmonics:— “Signor Paganini having, through vast exertion, procured himself the aid of two entire additional octaves with their half-notes, making in all 28 notes _on the fourth string_, by means of the harmonics, is able to execute pieces of a very extensive scale on that string alone. The labour he must have gone through, before he could so completely obtain the command of the harmonic notes, none but violin performers of experience can form a notion of. The most surprising part of the use he makes of them is in the clearness and strength of their tone, which render them as audible as the full notes, at any distance.” At his (so called) farewell Concert at the King’s Theatre, on the 20th of August, two of the pieces he selected for his display were especially remarkable in the treatment. One of them, a _fandango_ of very bizarre character, performed on the fourth string, consisted, in part, of a sort of whiningly amorous colloquy between two birds. An incidental _crowing_, like that of a cock, was privately conjectured, by one of the musical men present, to be the artist’s medium of conveying an oblique satire upon _the audience_, as the subdued vassals of his will. No impression of the kind, however, existed with _them_, for they demanded the repetition of the affair. The other piece was our National Anthem of God save the King, certainly an ill-selected subject for exhibition on a single instrument, and, in the treatment of it (if I may venture to advance my own impressions experienced at the time), too full of sliding, and, as it were, _puling_, to satisfy the pre-conceptions derived from the fullness, steadiness and grandeur, characteristic of the original composition. Indeed, as it appeared to my own humble judgment, there was intermixed in the general performances of this wonderful artist, “something too much” of this sliding and tremulous work, the result, seemingly, of an overstraining at expression—of an attempt, if I may so speak, to make the note carry more than it could _bear_. The effect, in such cases, was in some degree analogous to that of Velluti’s singing; it bespoke intentions outstripping the possibility of execution.