At that time the Queen had not lost the charm of youth, and in her splendid dress, with her head down-bent, her figure at the quaint virginal against the rich and sombre colors of the room, must have looked charming, and the silent Scotch gentleman just inside the doorway listening in rapt attention: it is so poetic a picture of the time that we can almost hear her music, and if we read on a little further, we see that the Queen, suddenly seeing Sir James, came forward, remonstrating with him for having come in, for, she said, she was not used to play before people, but only to "shun melancholy." Then she sat down upon a low cushion, and honest Sir James, according to the custom of the time, fell upon his knees before her. The Queen, with a truly feminine spirit, inquired whether he thought she or Mary Queen of Scots played the best. Sir James said that his sovereign played "reasonably, for a queen." This answer would not serve to-day, as the Queen of England is one of the most perfect of amateur musicians.
ITALIAN SPINET, ORNAMENTED WITH PRECIOUS STONES.
The virginal and spinet belong to the same period. From them, as need of a more elaborate performance grew, we have the harpsichord. A very fine harpsichord looked something like a grand piano, but it had two rows of keys, one upper and one lower. I shall not here go into a description of the harpsichord. It is only needful to say that it was the outgrowth of clavichord and virginal and spinet, and had some of the defects as well as the good points of all three.
HANDEL'S FAVORITE HARPISCHORD.
Our great-grandmothers played upon harpsichords. They were tinkling little affairs, yet I fancy that Mozart's and Haydn's music must have sounded very quaint and pleasing upon them. Where have they all vanished to, I wonder?—along with the flowery brocaded gowns, the slender fans, the powder and patches and paint, of that dear old time?
In an old house I once visited, a harpsichord of seventeen hundred and something used to stand neglected and disused in an upper hall. Sometimes we children thrummed waltzes upon it; sometimes I remember our getting out a faded old music-book with the picture of a shepherdess on it, and picking out the funny little songs that were printed there a hundred years ago. On the fly-leaf of the book was written in a very flourishy hand, "To Isabel, from J——." Who was Isabel, and who was J., we used to wonder.
I can fancy that the music she played to please her mamma and papa, and perhaps her uncles and aunts, was of a very primitive order, for when harpsichords were used, young ladies were not at all proficient. Music was then considered a "genteel" sort of accomplishment, and good masters were very rare, and never tried to make their pupils do more than strike the notes correctly and in good "dum-dum" sort of time. Consider our advantages now, and yet I fancy those young people of "Isabel's" day valued their musical instruction much more than we do ours.
