num
mysterii_, the interior of the marvellous fabric--point out to you, as
plainly as though you were gifted with clairvoyance, the position and
adaptation of the various linings, the bearings of the bass-bar, that
essential adjunct to quality of tone--_twang_--and the proper position
of the sound-post. Lastly, he will show you, by means of a small
hand-mirror throwing a gleam of light into its entrails, the identical
autograph of the immortal maker--Albani, Guarneri, or Amati, as the
case may happen--with the date printed in the lean old type and now
scarcely visible through the dust of a couple of centuries, '_Amati_
Cremonae fecit 1645,' followed by a manuscript signature in faded ink,
which you must take for granted.

"Borax has but one price; and if you do not choose to pay it, you must
do without the article. The old fellow is a true believer, and is
accounted the first judge in Europe; Fiddles travel to him from all
parts of the Continent for his opinion, bringing their fees with them;
and for every instrument he sells, it is likely he pronounces judgment
upon a hundred. It is rumoured that the greatest masterpieces in being
are in his possession.

"A dealer of a different stamp is Michael Schnapps, well known in the
trade, and the profession too, as a ravenous Fiddle-ogre, who buys and
sells everything that bears the Fiddle shape, from a Double-Bass to a
dancing-master's pocketable Kit. His house is one vast warehouse, with
Fiddles on the walls, Fiddles on the staircases, and Fiddles hanging
like stalactites from the ceilings. To him the tyros resort when they
first begin to scrape; he will set them up for ten shillings, and swop
them up afterwards, step by step, to ten or twenty guineas, and to ten
times that amount if they are rich enough and green enough to continue
the experiment. Schnapps imports Fiddles in the rough, under the
designation of toys, most of which are the production of his
peasant-countrymen bordering on the Black Forest; and with these he
supplies the English provinces and the London toy and stationers'
shops. He is, further, a master of the Fiddle-making craft himself,
and so consummate an adept in repairing that nothing short of
consuming fire can defeat his art. When Pinker, of Norwich, had his
Cremona smashed all to atoms in a railway collision, Schnapps rushed
down to the scene of the accident, bought the lot of splintered
fragments for a couple of pounds, and in a fortnight had resto