use to
wear down their freshness, strings of a larger size may be used with
advantage, and particularly when such instruments are in use for
orchestral purposes.

[Illustration: _Plate III_. VIOLONCELLO BY ANTONIO STRADIVARI.
PRESENTED TO SIGNOR PIATTI BY GENERAL OLIVER. (Herr Robert
Mendelssohn.)]

Vast improvements have been effected in the stringing of Violins
within the last thirty years. Strings of immense size were used alike
on Violins, Violoncellos, Tenors, and Double Basses. Robert Lindley,
the king of English Violoncellists, used a string for his first very
nearly equal in size to the second of the present time, and the same
robust proportion was observed in his other strings. The Violoncello
upon which he played was by Forster, and would bear much heavier
stringing than an Italian instrument; and, again, he was a most
forcible player, and his power of fingering quite exceptional.
Dragonetti, the famous Double-Bass player, and coadjutor of Lindley,
possessed similar powers, and used similar strings as regards size.
Their system of stringing was adopted indiscriminately. Instruments
whether weakly or strongly built received uniform treatment, the
result being in many cases an entire collapse, and the most
disappointing effects in tone. It was vainly supposed that the
ponderous strings of Dragonetti and Lindley were the talisman by use
of which their tone would follow as a matter of course, whereas in
point of fact it was scarcely possible to make the instruments utter a
sound when deprived of the singular muscular power possessed by those
famous players. After Lindley's death his system passed away
gradually, and attention was directed to the better adaptation of
strings to the instrument, and also to the production of perfect
fifths.

We have now only to speak of covered strings, in which it is more
difficult to obtain perfection than in the case of those of gut. There
are several kinds of covered strings. There are those of silver wire,
which are very durable, and have a soft quality of sound very suitable
to old instruments, and are therefore much used by artistes; there are
those of copper plated with silver, and also of copper without
plating, which have a powerful sound; and, lastly, there are those
which are made with mixed wire, an arrangement which prevents in a
measure the tendency to rise in pitch, a disadvantage common to
covered strings and caused by expansion of the metals; these strings
al