uld have been thus glorified, hardly admits of wonder.
Enthusiasm is a noble passion, when tempered with reason. It cannot be
said, however, that the necessity of this qualification has been
invariably recognised by enthusiastic inquirers into the history of
instruments played with a bow. We have a curious instance of its
non-recognition in a treatise on the Viol,[1] written by a
distinguished old French Violist named Jean Rousseau. The author, bent
upon going to the root of his subject, begins with the Creation, and
speaks of Adam as a Violist. Perhaps Rousseau based his belief in the
existence of Fiddling at this early period of the world's history on
the words "and his brother's name was Jubal; from him descended the
Flute players and Fiddlers," as rendered by Luther.

[Footnote 1: "Traite de la Viole," Paris, 1687.]

The parts Orpheus and Apollo have been made to play in infantile
Fiddle history have necessarily been dependent upon the licence and
the imagination of the sculptor and the medallist. Inferences of
antiquity, however, have been drawn from such representations.
Tracings of a bow among the sculpture of the ancients have been sought
for in vain: no piece is known upon which a bow is distinguishable. A
century since, an important discovery was thought to have been made by
musical antiquarians in the Grand Duke's Tribuna at Florence, wherein
was a small figure of Apollo playing on a kind of Violin with
something of the nature of a bow. Inquiry, however, made it clear that
the figure belonged to modern art. Orpheus has been represented
holding a Violin in one hand and a bow in the other; inquiry again
showed that the Violin and the bow were added by the restorer of the
statue.

The views held by musical historians regarding the origin of the
Violin may be described by the terms Asiatic and Scandinavian. The
Eastern view, it need scarcely be said, is the most prolonged,
exceeding some five thousand years along the vista of time, where
little else is discoverable but what is visionary, mythical, and
unsubstantial. It is related--traditionally of course--that some three
thousand years before our era there lived a King of Ceylon named
Ravanon,[2] who invented a four-stringed instrument played with a bow,
and which was named after the inventor "the Ravanastron." If it were
possible to identify the instrument of that name, now known to the
Hindoos, as identical with that of King Ravanon--as M. Sonnerat
declares