a long-handled hammer. This instrument was a
signal advance toward the grand piano. It _was_ a piano, without its
machinery.

The next thing, obviously, must have been to contrive a method of
striking the strings with certainty and evenness; and, accordingly, we
find indications of a keyed instrument after the year 1300, called the
Clavicytherium, or keyed cithara. The invention of keys permitted the
strings to be covered over, and therefore the strings of the
clavicytherium were enclosed _in_ a box, instead of being stretched _on_
a box. The first keys were merely long levers with a nub at the end of
them, mounted on a pivot, which the player canted up at the strings on
the see-saw principle. It has required four hundred years to bring the
mechanism of the piano key to its present admirable perfection. The
clavicytherium was usually a very small instrument,--an oblong box,
three or four feet in length, that could be lifted by a girl of
fourteen. The clavichord and manichord, which we read of in Mozart's
letters, were only improved and better-made clavicytheria. How affecting
the thought, that the divine Mozart had nothing better on which to try
the ravishing airs of "The Magic Flute" than a wretched box of brass
wires, twanged with pieces of quill! So it is always, and in all
branches of art. Shakespeare's plays, Titian's pictures, the great
cathedrals, Newton's discoveries, Mozart's and Handel's music, were
executed while the implements of art and science were still very rude.

Queen Elizabeth's instrument, the Virginals, was a box of strings, with
improved keys, and mounted on four legs. In other words, it was a small
and very bad piano. The excellent Pepys, in his account of the great
fire of London of 1666, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking
in goods, and good goods swimming in the water; and only I observed that
hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the goods of a house in it,
but there were a pair of virginalls in it." Why "a pair"? For the same
reason that induces many persons to say "a pair of stairs," and "a pair
of compasses," that is, no reason at all.

It is plain that the virginals, or virgin's clavichord, was very far
from holding the rank among musical instruments which the piano now
possesses. If any of our readers should ever come upon a thin folio
entitled "Musick's Monument," (London, 1676,) we advise him to clutch
it, retire from the haunts of men, and abandon himself to the del