The perfect instrument which we now delight to honor by the name of the violin—the instrument complete in form and qualities—“totum in se teres atque rotundum”—appears to have been the result of a highly interesting series of improvements in the art of producing musical sounds from strings. How long a duration of time was occupied by the elaboration of these improvements respectively, is not readily to be ascertained, nor, perhaps, would the enquiry repay the trouble—but the general order of progression in the improvements themselves, is as clear as it is agreeable to contemplate. The first great advancement consisted in the _sounding-board_, by means of which invention a tone was produced, through the vibration of the wood, that was incomparably better and fuller than what was previously procured, through the mere vibration of the strings. As the human voice is evolved from the mouth under a concave roof, which serves it as a sounding-board, and gives additional grace and vigour to its inflections, so does the upper shell of the violin add a power of its own to the language of the strings. The next improvement in the instrument, thus extended in capability, was the _neck_ or _finger-board_, which increased the range and variety of the sounds, by giving to each string the power of producing a series of notes. The _bow_ was the next great step of advancement; and this, like other important inventions, has provoked much learned dispute as to the time and place of its origin, which however we shall not here more particularly revert to, for indeed, “non nostrum tantas componere lites.” With all these additions and appliances, we come not yet to the instrument _par excellence_, the true violin; for an intermediate and inferior state remains to be gone through. The consideration of that state brings us to the regular construction of the several instruments known by the general name of _viol_ (for we pass by the _rebec_, as being only a spurious or illegitimate kind of fiddle), that were in the most common use during the 16th, and till about the middle of the 17th, century. These were similar to each other in form, but in size were distinguished into the treble-viol, tenor-viol, and bass-viol. They had six strings, and a finger-board marked with frets, like that of the lute or guitar[2]. Finally, as the crowning change, the glorious consummation, came the conversion of the _viol_ into the _violin_, effected by a diminution of size, a reduction of strings, from six to four, and the abolition of those impediments to smoothness, and helps to irritation, the _frets_. The same reformation attended the other instruments of the viol tribe, which now became, _mutato nomine_, the viola and the violoncello. In former days, we had the _viol_ in, ’Ere the _true_ instrument had come about: But now we say, since _this_ all ears doth win, The _violin_ hath put the _viol out_.