a German state, and it is not uncommon there for one man
to construct every part of a piano,--a work of three or four months. Mr.
Steinway the elder has frequently done this in his native place, and
could now do it. A great number of excellent instruments are made in
Germany in the slow, patient, thorough manner of the Germans; but in the
fashionable houses of Berlin and Vienna no German name is so much valued
as those of the celebrated makers of Paris. In the London exhibition of
1851, Russian pianos competed for the medals, some of which attracted
much attention from the excellence of their construction. Messrs.
Chickering assert, that the Russians were the first to employ
successfully the device of "overstringing," as it is called, by which
the bass strings are stretched over the others.

The piano, then, one hundred and fifty-seven years after its invention,
in spite of its great cost, has become the leading musical instrument
of Christendom. England produces thirty thousand every year; the United
States, twenty-five thousand; France, fifteen thousand; Germany, perhaps
ten thousand; and all other countries, ten thousand; making a total of
ninety thousand, or four hundred and twenty-two for every working-day.
It is computed, that an average piano is the result of one hundred and
twenty days' work; and, consequently, there must be at least fifty
thousand men employed in the business. And it is only within a few years
that the making of these noble instruments has been done on anything
like the present scale. Messrs. Broadwood, of London, who have made in
all one hundred and twenty-nine thousand pianos, only begin to count at
the year 1780; and in the United States there were scarcely fifty pianos
a year made fifty years ago.

We need scarcely say that the production of music for the piano has kept
pace with the advance of the instrument. Dr. Burney mentions, in his
History of Music (Vol. IV. p. 664), that when he came to London in 1744,
"Handel's Harpsichord Lessons and Organ Concertos, and the two First
Books of Scarletti's Lessons, were all the good music for keyed
instruments at that time in the nation." We have at this moment before
us the catalogue of music sold by one house in Boston, Oliver Ditson &
Co. It is a closely printed volume of three hundred and sixty pages, and
contains the titles of about thirty-three thousand pieces of music,
designed to be performed, wholly or partly, on the piano. By far the
grea