Scan 39
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1upon its varied surface, one leading to another, and all duly proportioned to the whole figure, may remind us of the windings of a gentle stream or the twine of tendrils in the trellised vine.
3Often is the question asked, What can there be in a simple Violin to attract so much notice? What is it that causes men to treat this instrument as no other, to view it as an art picture, to dilate upon its form, colour, and date? To the uninitiated such devotion appears to be a species of monomania, and attributable to a desire of singularity. It needs but little to show the inaccuracy of such a hypothesis. In the first place, the true study of the Violin is a taste which needs as much cultivation as a taste for poetry or any other art, a due appreciation of which is impossible without such cultivation. Secondly, it needs equally with these arts, in order to produce proficiency, that spark commonly known as genius, without which cultivation, strictly speaking, is impossible, there being nothing to cultivate. We find that the most ardent admiration for the Violin regarded as a work of art has ever been found to emanate from those who possessed taste for kindred arts. Painters, musicians, and men of refined minds have generally been foremost among the admirers of the Violin. Much interest attaches to it from the fact of its being an instrument hitherto incapable of improvement as relates to its form or any material feature. The sole difference between the Violin of the sixteenth century and that of the nineteenth lies
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