Books › the history of the violin, 1864 › scan 244
Scan 244
the history of the violin, 1864
2 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 222. See the scan on archive.org.
1pure and silvery, the form elegant, and the details most highly finished; the purfling a little removed from the edge and finely inlaid; the varnish of a transparent golden amber colour. Fetis says that only three instruments of this third period of Steiner are known to exist; namely, one given by the Empress Maria Theresa to the violinist Kennis, at Liege; another bought in 1771, for 3500 florins, by the Duke of Orleans, the grandfather of King Louis-Philippe, who, when he gave up playing himself, presented it to Navoigille the younger; and, in 1817, the instrument passed into the hands of Mons. Cartier; the third was in the cabinet of Frederic William II. of Prussia. A curious history has been told us of a Steiner violin, for which many years ago the father of General Morgan Neville, of Cincinnati, (the General himself having told our informant, Mr. James Forster, and the father having been aide-de-camp to General Lafayette in the revolutionary war,) gave 1500 acres of land, worth at that time a dollar per acre—a pretty large price even at that rate, though a much higher one than this has been given for a Stradiuarius violin. But what as to the value of these "dirty acres" now, when we understand that a large part of the city of Pittsburgh has been built on them! No marvellous reward given to a Roman professor on the flute, or to a marvel on the tight-rope, or flying trapeze will equal this. Sir F. M'Clintock, in his "Voyage of the Fox," relates an anecdote of an Esquimaux who gave a large quantity of whalebone for a fiddle to which he had taken a fancy; the fortunate seller afterwards disposed of this whalebone for upwards of a hundred pounds. Otto, in his work "On the Construction of the Violin," makes observations to the following effect, respecting the Steiner instruments. The upper plate is modelled higher than
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