ansposed half a note, a
whole note, or a flat third lower at pleasure, without the embarrassment
of different notes or clefs, real or imaginary."

The same sprightly author tells us of "a fine Rucker harpsichord, which
he has had painted inside and out with as much delicacy as the finest
coach, or even snuff-box, I ever saw at Paris. On the outside is the
birth of Venus; and on the inside of the cover, the story of Rameau's
most famous opera, Castor and Pollux. Earth, Hell, and Elysium are there
represented; in Elysium, sitting on a bank, with a lyre in his hand, is
that celebrated composer himself."

This gay instrument was at Paris. In Italy, the native home of music,
the keyed instruments, in 1770, Dr. Burney says, were exceedingly
inferior to those of the North of Europe. "Throughout Italy, they have
generally little octave spinets to accompany singing in private houses,
sometimes in a triangular form, but more frequently in the shape of an
old virginal; of which the keys are so noisy and the tone is so feeble,
that more wood is heard than wire. I found three English harpsichords in
the three principal cities of Italy, which are regarded by the Italians
as so many phenomena."

To this day Italy depends upon foreign countries for her best musical
instruments. Italy can as little make a grand piano as America can
compose a grand opera.

The history of the piano from 1710 to 1867 is nothing but a history of
the improved mechanism of the instrument. The moment the idea was
conceived of striking the strings with hammers, unlimited improvement
was possible; and though the piano of to-day is covered all over with
ingenious devices, the great, essential improvements are few in number.
The hammer, for example, may contain one hundred ingenuities, but they
are all included in the device of covering the first wooden hammers with
cloth; and the master-thought of making the whole frame of the piano of
iron suggested the line of improvement which secures the supremacy of
the piano over all other stringed instruments forever.

Sebastian Erard, the son of a Strasbourg upholsterer, went to Paris, a
poor orphan of sixteen, in the year 1768, and, finding employment in the
establishment of a harpsichord-maker, rose rapidly to the foremanship of
the shop, and was soon in business for himself as a maker of
harpsichords, harps, and pianos. To him, perhaps, more than to any other
individual, the fine interior mechanism of the piano is