_A Footman, to match._—“The following curiously illustrative anecdote may be relied on. A few days since, a footman went into Mori’s music-shop to buy a fiddle-string. While he was making his choice, a gentleman entered the shop, and began to examine various compositions for the violin. Among the rest, he found Paganini’s celebrated “Merveille—_Duo_ pour un _seul_ Violon,” and, perceiving the difficulties in which it abounded, asked the shopman if he thought that Mori himself could play it. The young man, a little perplexed, and unwilling to imply that his master’s powers had any limit, replied that he had no doubt he could perform it, _provided_ he practised it for _a week_; upon which the footman, who stood intent on the conversation, broke in on the discourse, and swore that Mori could do no such thing, for that he himself had been practising the piece for _three weeks_, and could not play it yet!”—(_Harmonicon_, _May, 1830_.) _A Royal “Whereabout.”_—Salomon, who gave some lessons on the violin to George the Third, said one day to his august pupil, “Fiddlers may be divided into three classes: to the _first_ belong those who cannot play _at all_; to the _second_, those who play _badly_; and to the third, those who play _well_. You, Sire, have already reached the _second_.” _Precocious Performers._—The violin, in the hands of _children_, has been often rendered the theme of astonishment. In the foregoing pages, many instances have been given of eminent players, whose powerful maturity was prefigured, in the display of genius made in their tender youth. Many blossoms there are, however, which _never_ pay their promise afterwards in fruit; and many an “acute juvenal, voluble and full of grace,” has made early flourishes on the fiddle, that have led to nothing of value in his fuller years. Apropos of this too commonly observable disproportion, a French writer has the following epigram:— SUR LES PRODIGES À LA MODE. Plus merveilleux que nos ancêtres, Ou peut-être plus singuliers, A dix ans nous avons des maîtres, Qui sont à vingt des écoliers! Which may be thus freely paraphrased:— Our’s is an age of wonders;—we behold Precocious prodigies, in passing plenty: We have our _masters_, now, at ten years old,— But then—they sink to _scholars_, when they’re twenty! The Germans have an expressive denomination for these very early and forced exhibitants. They style them _wunderkind_, or wonder-children. After hearing some violin variations rattled through at a Vienna Concert by a six-year old performer, son of a M. Birnbach, a prognosticator was heard to say, with a gravity that scarcely seemed unreasonable: “Well! I foresee that, before many years are passed, we shall have a symphony of Haydn’s performed by babes in swaddling-clothes!” As a matter of curiosity, I will here subjoin a few records of early feats, without attempting to distinguish those which may belong simply to the class of _wunder-kinde_.