be transplanted to the scene in which I heard it, and to
feel all the enthusiasm that such a moment inspired." It was a similar
delightful experience which, according to Rossini's statement, first
suggested to that great composer his immortal opera, "Guillaume Tell."

Among many interesting anecdotes current of Viotti, and one which
admirably shows his goodness of heart and quickness of resource, is one
narrated by Ferdinand Langle to Adolph Adam, the French composer. The
father of the former, Marie Langle, a professor of harmony in the French
Conservatoire, was an intimate friend of Viotti, and one charming summer
evening the twain were strolling on the Champs Elysees. They sat down on
a retired bench to enjoy the calmness of the night, and became buried
in reverie. But they were brought back to prosaic matters harshly by a
babel of discordant noises that grated on the sensitive ears of the two
musicians. They started from their seats, and Viotti said:

"It can't be a violin, and yet there is some resemblance to one."

"Nor a clarionet," suggested Langle, "though it is something like it."

The easiest manner of solving the problem was to go and see what it was.
They approached the spot whence the extraordinary tones issued, and saw
a poor blind man standing near a miserable-looking candle and playing
upon a violin--but the latter was an instrument made of tin-plate.

"Fancy!" exclaimed Viotti, "it is a violin, but a violin of tin-plate!
Did you ever dream of such a curiosity?" and, after listening a while,
he added, "I say, Langle, I must possess that instrument. Go and ask the
old blind man what he will sell it for."

Langle approached and asked the question, but the old man was
disinclined to part with it.

"But we will give you enough for it to enable you to purchase a better,"
he added; "and why is not your violin like others?"

The aged fiddler explained that, when he got old and found himself
poor, not being able to work, but still able to scrape a few airs upon a
violin, he had endeavored to procure one, but in vain. At last his good,
kind nephew Eustache, who was apprenticed to a tinker, had made him one
out of a tin-plate. "And an excellent one, too," he added; "and my poor
boy Eustache brings me here in the morning when he goes to work, and
fetches me away in the evening when he returns, and the receipts are
not so bad sometimes--as, when he was out of work, it was I who kept the
house going."

"Well