solemnities of public worship, all that was _best_ in vocal and instrumental skill. Vociferated dissonance, exempt from rule, and from accompaniment, has _their_ approval, far above any tempered and balanced harmony; because (as _they_ persuade themselves) the one comes from the heart, and the other does _not_. To such persons, I can only (in the words of the Archbishop of Granada to Gil Blas) wish all happiness, and a little more _taste_—regretting that the influence of what I conceive to be their _mistake_ should have helped, with the other cited causes, to lessen the diffusion among us of the most delightfully recreative of all the arts, which, thus discouraged, has been driven to become the spoiled favourite of the great and rich, instead of being the constant friend and solace of the whole community. Adverting now specifically to the English School of the violin, I would remind the reader of what has been previously observed respecting the very low estimation in which that instrument was for some time held, after its first advent to this country. To raise it into favorable regard, and to stimulate the efforts of our native professors, successive importations of foreign talent (chiefly from Italy) were required, and supplied. Our debt of this kind to the Italians has been larger than that of our continental neighbours, either of France or of Germany. Indeed the very fact of our possessing a School of our own, in this branch of art, has, I believe, been commonly overlooked by the musical writers of the continent: nor is this very surprising, when it is considered how the great masters from Italy, taking the lead in concerts and public performances, became “the observed of all observers,” and the sole marks, or at least the principal ones, for the pen of the writer. It may be demonstrated, nevertheless, that we, too, as violinists, have our separate credit to assert for the past, and yet more for the present, though we may not aspire to an equal amount of merit, in this sense, with Germany or France. We have certainly not caught, so effectually as the French, the various dexterities and felicities of execution; but it is perhaps not too much to say that we possess more “capability” for the development of the graver and better sort of _expression_. Your Englishman, with all his lumpish partiality for beef and pudding, is generally allowed to be a being of profounder sensibilities than your Frenchman. He is a better recipient of the more intense emotions that lie within the province of the “king of instruments,” although its more brilliant characteristics are less within his reach. The violin is a _shifting Proteus_, which accommodates itself to almost every kind and shade of emotion that may actuate the human mind: but then, the lighter emotions more frequently dispose us to seek the aid of music for their audible sign, than the graver ones: therefore your Frenchman, “toujours gai,” is oftener impelled to