The quasi bric-à-brac portion of the general dealer's stock is dexterously arrayed in his window, and not allowed to take up a prominent position among the wares displayed. To expose treasures would be a glaring act of indiscretion, inasmuch as it would tend to the belief that the proprietor was perfectly cognisant of the value of his goods, whereas he is imagined by the hypothesis to be profoundly ignorant on the subject. Pictures, bronzes, china, and Fiddles, with their extremely modest prices attached, lie half hidden behind a mountain of goods of a diametrically opposite nature. There they may rest for days, nay, weeks, before the individual with the educated eye, for the good of all men, detects them. Sooner or later, however, he makes his appearance, and peers into every nook of the window, shading his eyes with his hands. Something within arrests his attention; his nose gets flattened against the glass in his eagerness to get near the object. He enters the establishment, and asks to be allowed to look at an article quite different from the one he has been so intent upon; his object being that the dealer may not awaken to a sense of the coveted article's value by a stranger seeming to be interested in it. After examining the decoy bird, he returns it, and carelessly asks to look at the article. Whatever the value set upon it may be, he tenders exactly the half, the matter being usually settled by what is technically known as "splitting the difference." Delighted with his purchase, he carries it home, and persuades his friends he has got to the blind side of the dealer, and is in possession of the real thing for the fiftieth part of what others give for it. He proceeds to enlighten his friends on the subject, telling them to follow his example, which they invariably do.

Scarcely a day passes without my hearing of a Cremona having been secured in the manner I have attempted to describe. My experience, however, teaches me that the whole thing is a delusion, and that the thoroughbred Cremona does not fall away from the companionship of its equals, once in the space of a lifetime, and that when this does happen, the instrument rarely falls to the bargain-hunter.

The following exceptional incident will, I hope, not be found wanting in interest as bearing on this theme. A votary of the Violin purchased an old Fiddle for some two or three pounds from a general dealer in musical instruments in his neighbourhood. He was well satisfied with his acquisition; and after subjecting it to a course of judicious regulation, so great were the improvements effected that the vendor regretted having sold it for such a trifling sum, and the more so when it was whispered about that the instrument was a veritable Amati—a report, by the way, very far wide of the mark, as it was simply an old Tyrolean copy.

Some little time after the occurrence related, the lover of Violins heard that the same instrument-seller from whom he purchased the imagined Amati, had secured a job lot of some half-dozen old Fiddles, the remnant of an old London music-seller's stock, and that he was offering them for sale. Our hero decided to pay another visit, and judge of the merits of the new wares, with a view to a second investment. Upon presenting himself to the local seller of Violins, he was at once informed that if he selected any instrument from the lot, he must be prepared to pay £10, the dealer having no intention of again committing his former error in selling a Cremona for some forty shillings. Upon this understanding the visitor proceeded to examine the little stock, which he found in a very disordered condition—bridgeless, stringless, and dusty. Among the whole tribe, however, was a Violin which seemed to elbow its way to the front of the group, and clamour for the attention of which it appeared to deem itself worthy. Unable to resist its seeming appeal, the intending purchaser decided to remove it from the atmosphere of its companions, and begged that he might be permitted to take the importuning Fiddle and string it in order to test its qualities. His request being acceded to, he carried it away. Upon reaching home, he took it from its case, and gently removed the dust of years. The varnish appeared to him as something very different from any he had ever seen before on a Violin; and being an artist by profession, qualities of colours were pretty well understood by him. With the Violin poised on his knee, somewhat after the manner seen in the well-known picture of Stradivari in his workshop, he thus communed with himself: "I have never seen the much-spoken-of Cremonese varnish, but if this instrument has it not, its lustre must indeed be more wondrous than my imagination has painted." After again and again examining the Violin, he retired to rest, but not to sleep. The Fiddle persisted in dodging him whichever way he turned on his couch. At the dawn of day—five o'clock—he was up, with the Fiddle again on his knee, thinking he might have been labouring under some infatuation the night before which the light of day might dispel. Convinced he was under no such delusion, he soon made for the music-seller's establishment, whom he delighted by paying the price demanded for the Violin. It was now time, he felt, to obtain professional advice on the matter; in due course he paid me a visit. Upon his opening the case I was unable to restrain my feelings of surprise, and demanded if he had any idea of the value of the Violin. "None whatever," he answered. Without troubling the reader further, I informed him that his Violin was an undoubted Giuseppe Guarneri, of considerable value. He then recounted the circumstances attending its purchase, with which the reader is familiar.

DOMENICO DRAGONETTI—HIS GASPARO DA SALÒ.

Signor Dragonetti succeeded Berini as primo basso in the orchestra of the chapel belonging to the monastery of San Marco, Venice, in his eighteenth year. The procurators of the monastery, wishing to show their high appreciation of his worth, presented the youthful player with a magnificent Contra-Bass, by Gasparo da Salò, which had been made expressly for the chapel orchestra of the convent of St. Peter, by the famous Brescian maker.

Upon an eventful night, the inmates of the monastery retired to rest, when they were awakened by deep rumbling and surging sounds. Unable to find repose while these noises rent the air, they decided to visit the chapel; and the nearer they got to it the louder the sounds became. Regarding each other with looks of mingled fear and curiosity, they reached the chapel, opened the door, and there stood the innocent cause of their fright, Domenico Dragonetti, immersed in the performance of some gigantic passage, of a range extending from the nut to the bridge, on his newly-acquired Gasparo. The monks stood regarding the performer in amazement, possibly mistaking him for a second appearance of the original of Tartini's "Sonata del Diavolo," his Satanic Majesty having substituted the Contra-Basso for the Violin. Upon this instrument Dragonetti played at his chief concert engagements, and though frequently importuned to sell it by his numerous admirers, declined to do so; in fact, though for the last few years of his life he gave up public performance, he resolutely refused most tempting offers for his treasure—£800, to use an auctioneer's phrase, "having been offered in two places," and respectfully declined. In his youthful days he decided that his cherished Gasparo should return to the place from whence he obtained it, the Monastery of San Marco, and this wish was accordingly fulfilled by his executors in the year 1846. The occasion was one of much interest; it was felt by Dragonetti's friends and admirers that to consign the instrument upon which he had so often astonished and delighted them with the magic tones he drew from it, to the care of those who possibly knew nothing of its merits, was matter for regret.

Being desirous of furnishing the reader with all the information possible relative to Signor Dragonetti's instrument I communicated with Mr. Samuel Appleby, who was his legal adviser, and probably better acquainted with him than any other person in this country. He very kindly sent me the following particulars, which are interesting:—

"BRIGHTON, July 2, 1875.

"MY DEAR SIR,—