Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 16
Scan 16
The violin, how to make it, 1880
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1ment of the eighteenth century, and which was known under the name of the Viol d'Amour. It was a delicate and sweet-toned instrument, and had five strings formed of wire, although latterly a good many modifications in the form of the instrument took place. It appears, also, to have erroneously passed under the name of the Psalter, to which it certainly bore no resemblance, and was publicly used in London about 1720; and in Edinburgh, mention is made of it in 1750. In 1752, Passerini, a teacher of music in Edinburgh, is mentioned as having been an excellent player upon the Viol d'Amour; and a few years later, another Italian performer, Pasquali, gave a concert, in which this instrument took a prominent position. About 1800 it was almost disused, as there is but little reference made to it in public concerts after this time, neither is there mention made of any celebrated performer.
3We now arrive at the most perfect instrument of all, and which has aptly been denominated "the king of instruments"—the Violin. At what time this elegant instrument came first into use, or emerged from the workshop, it is impossible to mention; but it must be universally admitted that to Italy it derives its progress, about the middle of the sixteenth century, although it is to India we must look for not only the origin of the Violin, but for being the birth-place of all the arts and sciences. Long anterior to the days of the famous Greek architect Archimedes, did the ancient Brahmins discover hydrostatics and the properties attributed to the Grecian, viz., that every body plunged in water loses of its own weight a weight equal to the volume displaced. They also calculated the velocity of light, and from the writings of Surya—Sidhartha—we learn they knew and calculated the force of steam. They formed the most marvellous language in the world,—the Sanscrit,—from which the greater part of the idioms of the Orient, and Indo-European countries are derived. They invented the gamut with its difference of tones and semitones long before Gui d'Arezzo. The Hindu scale runs thus:—Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, Ni, Sa.
5Let the truthful, unbiassed, and earnest student search where he may through the archives of history, and he will find that there is not a fragment of modern philosophy, whether Newtonian, Cartesian, Huxleyian, or any other, but what
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