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Scan 122
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 108. See the scan on archive.org.
1above him; grown a young man, he attracts also the attention and sympathy of the women among whom his circumstances lead him, and ultimately marries the wrong one—the one least fitted to assist him in, or render pleasant to him, the path of life which he had chosen. The various familiar scenes of such a human tragedy follow in due succession—domestic discord, irregular and wandering life, debt, imprisonment, madness, and a miserable death. One cannot help speculating on what his fate might have been had he married Nicolas Amati's daughter instead of the village belle who, perhaps, in their after misery, bore his children with a grudge.
3There can scarcely be any doubt now that Italy was the birthplace and centre of violin making, and these, perhaps, premature exertions of the art to force itself beyond this its first natural radius were only partially and temporarily successful; for Jacob Stainer seems to have been a violin maker by accident, and, but for his physical weakness, would probably never have adopted the profession. That he was a man of undoubted originality and intelligence, who could equally well have suited himself to any other branch of art industry fitted for his constitution, is undeniable, but that the Upper or German Tyrol should have produced such a violin maker at all would have been, to say the least, curious, had he not been trained in Cremona, for it is, or was, the most unmusical portion of Europe, at least, in the sense in which Italy, Germany, France, and our own country can be called musical. On not a few occasions the Tyrolese have proved themselves a very noble, hardy, independent, and faithful people, a notable example
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