The spirit and honesty of Viotti’s character are not ill shewn in the following anecdote. Giuseppe Puppo, who possessed no mean command over the violin, and whose talents were acknowledged by Viotti with the readiest candour, cherished the more than foolish vanity of boasting himself a scholar of the great Tartini, which was known to be an untruth, or, as a French term leniently expresses such deviations, “une inexactitude.” On some public occasion, when M. Lahoussaye chanced to be present (who was really a disciple, and an enthusiastic one, of Tartini’s), Viotti begged him, as a favor, to give him a specimen of Tartini’s manner of playing. “And now,” said he, in a tone loud enough to be heard by all the company—“now, Signor Puppo, listen to my friend, Monsieur Lahoussaye, and you will be enabled to form an idea as to how Tartini played!” Viotti’s stay in Paris was abruptly terminated by the bursting of the revolutionary storm in 1790, which drove him to England. His début in London, at the memorable concerts under the management of Salomon, was as brightly marked as it had been in Paris. The connoisseurs were delighted by his originality and felicitous boldness, tempered as these qualities were by a pure and exalted taste. In the years 1794 and 1795, he had some share in the management of the King’s Theatre, and subsequently became leader of the band in that Temple of (occasional) Concord. But, as an ancient author has said, success is a thing of glass, and, just when it begins to wear its brightest looks, it provokingly meets with a fracture. The quiet and blameless habits of life of the great musician had not sufficed to exempt him from the officious visitations of political suspicion, prompted, it has been supposed, by some whispering tale of slander, from professional envy. The result was, that poor Viotti suddenly received an order from the Government to leave England immediately. By what subtle ingenuity of apprehension, the proceedings of a violin-player came to be associated, at the Home-Office, with the Revolutions of Empires, is as yet a mystery more dark than Delphos. Possibly some future D’Israeli, enquiring for “farther particulars within,” may find the means of enlightening the world on this transaction, which certainly does seem, at present, to afford scantier material for the historian than for the epigrammatist.