Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 64
Scan 64
The violin and its music, 1881
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 42. See the scan on archive.org.
1full extent of growth in the soil upon which it fed, and needed transplanting to flower afresh; and no country was better adapted to nurture it than the Italy of the first half of the sixteenth century, where Macaulay tells us "knowledge and public prosperity continued to advance together. Both attained their meridian in the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent." "Restored to supreme peace and tranquillity, cultivated no less in her most mountainous and sterile places than in her plains and more fertile regions, and subject to no other empire than her own, not only was she most abundant in inhabitants and wealth, but in the highest degree illustrious by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendour of many most noble and beautiful cities, and by the seat and majesty of religion—she flourished with men pre-eminent in the administration of public affairs, and with genius skilled in all the sciences, and in every elegant and useful art."* Such was the condition of Italy when the musicians of the Netherlands flocked thither, and to its many princes both they and the musicians of after ages owed a debt of lasting gratitude, for the lustre which their munificent patronage caused to be shed upon their art. It was at the invitation of King Ferdinand that John Tinctor went to Naples in 1476, and assisted in establishing the School of Music. It was in Naples that he wrote the first
3* Essay on Machiavelli, Longfellow's translation of the passages of Thucydides.
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