Thus, through a considerable tract of indefinite time, and a succession of definite changes, we reach the matured and accomplished instrument, the _Violin proper_; and then, if we recur to the question, to _whom_ does it belong? the answer becomes less difficult. It is to this instrument, this perfected production, that the Italians may, I think, exultingly point as their own; and, in doing so, they may well afford to be indifferent to all disputes about the title to those earlier apparitions, those crude and half-made-up resemblances to the fiddle, that were but as the abortions which, in human experience, sometimes precede a perfect birth. It is of sufficient notoriety that the earliest instruments _of excellence_, bearing the name of Violin, as well as the earliest players of eminence, were Italian. The Cremona fiddles of Hieronymus Amati (to go no farther back) were sent into this breathing world about two centuries and a half ago; and Baltazarini, the earliest great player of the genuine Violin on record, is known to have been imported as a curiosity from Italy, by Catherine de Medicis, in 1577. It is tolerably clear, too, that, as a _court_ favourite, the Violin began its career in Italy—its progress, in that capacity, having been, as Burney observes, from Italy to France, and from France to England. But the tie of Italian connection may be drawn more closely than this. Galilei, in his Dialogues (p. 147), states that both the Violin and the Violoncello were _invented_ by the Italians; and he suggests more precisely the Neapolitans, as the rightful claimants of this honor. Dr. Burney, who does not attempt to settle the point, quotes the passage, to the above effect, from Galilei, and admits his own inability to confute it. Montaigne, whose travels brought him to Verona in 1580, has recorded, that there were _Violins_ as well as organs there, to accompany the mass in the great Church. Corelli’s Violin, an instrument specially Italian, which afterwards passed into the possession of Giardini, was made in 1578, and its case was decorated by the master-hand of Annibale Caracci, probably several years _after_ the instrument was finished; as Caracci at that date had numbered but eight of his own years.