Edward John Payne

“ Held in check in Europe, where power tenaciously clung to the machinery of feudalism, they fermented in, and began to permeate, social strata on which that machinery rested with crushing weight, and produced those revolutionary and socialistic doctrines which have so largely affected modern European society, but have found less favour in America. The emigrant in the New World was conscious of breathing different air. In this spacious continent much seemed trifling, and even ridiculous, which had commanded his respect, and even devotion, at home. ”

“ The foremost scholar of the Renaissance tenders to the Portuguese King the thanks of cultivated Europe. Not only have the Pillars of Hercules been left behind, and a raging ocean subdued, but the interrupted continuity of the habitable world has been restored, and a continent long abandoned to savagery, representing one-third of the habitable world, has been recovered for Christianity and civilisation. ”

“ In connexion with this, a good deal of enthusiasm has been lavished by connoisseurs on the beauty of design and varnish of the old Cremona Violins, and even in some useful and reputable works on this subject this enthusiasm has been carried to a point where it can only be described as silly and grotesque. A fiddle, after all, even a Stradivari, is not a work of pure art, like a piece of painting or sculpture: it is as merely a machine as a watch, a gun, or a plough. ”

“ From the untroubled early years of Henry VIII, when America, as yet wholly savage, and its discovery received conspicuous notice in a serious philosophical drama, to the marriage of Philip and Mary, when it stood forth in the eyes of Europe as the source of more wealth than the world had ever seen, the New World is scarcely mentioned in English literature, though the continental press teemed with accounts of it and allusions to it. But an old dramatist's picture of the new continent, as it presented itself to English eyes about 1515, becomes all the more striking through its isolation. ”

“ The ideas and expectations with which they approached this immense and unique field of enterprise were tinged with the arrogance of prolonged success. It was necessary, as a means to making themselves masters of the Eastern trade, before all else, not only to prove themselves masters of the Asiatic seas, but to be able to defy resistance on land, and to hold by military force whatever positions it might be desirable to occupy. For these purposes such demonstrations of force as had availed them on the African coast were insufficient. Society in the East rested everywhere on a military basis. ”

“ Most people are aware that 'an old fiddle is better than a new one.' This, as will appear further on, is not absolutely true; although probably the majority of the fiddles in use are not new, very many being one, two, and even three hundred years old. A violin, if it be only well-made to begin with, can by timely and judicious rehabilitation, be made to last practically for ever, or at least to outlast the lifetime of any particular possessor: and few things are more fascinating than putting an old disused Violin through this process, and reawakening its musical capacities. ”

“ The cry for reform thus became their natural expedient. Powerless to carry reform in the House, they sought to overawe parliament by external agitation, and formed the Society of the Friends of the People, destined to unite the forces of all the “patriotic” societies which already existed in the country, and to pour their violence irresistibly on a terrified parliament. Grey and his friends were enrolled in this portentous association, and presented in parliament its menacing petitions. ”

“ Feebly, indeed, and through the darkness of night, he says, blew the breeze of hope from the shores of the New Continent of knowledge and power towards him, as from his lonely elevation he eagerly watched for those cheering signals which he knew would sooner or later greet the patient eye of expectant philosophy, though he himself might not be destined to behold them. Those signals, he wrote, must one day come, unless his own faith in the future should prove vain, and men were content to remain intellectual abjects. ”

“ The duke of Wellington undertook the hopeless task of constructing a ministry which should pass a restricted or sham Reform Bill. The only man who could have made the success of such a ministry even probable was Peel, and Peel’s conscience and good sense forbade the attempt. He refused, and after a week of the profoundest agitation throughout the country, the king, beaten and mortified, was forced to send for Grey and Brougham. On being told that his consent to the creation of peers was the only condition on which they could undertake the government, he angrily and reluctantly yielded. ”

“ The French Protestants, who felt that the course of God's dealings with man must on the whole be in their favour, were the first to think of a new career, in a new world perhaps revealed for the purpose, as the beginning of a better order of things, if not as the fulfilment of the destiny of the Reformed faith; and, as the triumph of the Catholic party in France became more and more probable, Protestant leaders cast anxious eyes towards the American shore, as a possible place of refuge for their people, should they be worsted in the struggle. ”

“ If all Tenor-players were of the herculean proportions of Mr. Ritter, the great Tenor might perhaps be revived: but human beings of ordinary stature are quite incapable of wrestling with such an instrument: to which it may be added that the singular and beautiful tenor tone, resulting from the necessary disproportion between the pitch and the dimensions of the instrument, is now too strongly identified with it to admit of any change. ”

“ Ever since Da Gama's great voyage Southern and Eastern Asia, comprising then as now the most populous nations on the globe, have been gradually falling under the sway of the European powers, who have first appropriated their foreign trade, making permanent settlements on their coasts in order to secure it, thence advanced to controlling their administration and usurping their government, and in some varying degree have succeeded in the more difficult task of gradually changing their habits of life and thought. ”

“ The scrupulous uprightness of Grey’s political and private character completed the ascendancy which he gained; and no politician could be named who, without being a statesman of the highest class, has left a name more enviably placed in English history. ”

“ Clearly Providence forbade Spain to cherish the hope of succeeding in any further attempt to subjugate Florida. France, though ambitious as ever, was hopelessly entangled in civil broils. Everyone expected Elizabeth, who was in truth no bigot, to found colonies in this vast and fertile tract, so near to England and so easily reached from it; where, perhaps, her Catholic and her Protestant subjects might settle in peace, each group respectively occupying some large and well-defined district of its own. ”

“ It is often supposed that early violinists were not sufficiently masters of their instrument to command the higher positions. Nothing can be more absurd. In addition to what has been stated under the head Shift, it may be observed that many existing compositions for the Viola da Gamba prove that very complicated music was played on that instrument across the strings in the higher positions, and the transfer of this method of execution to the violin obviously rested with individual players and composers. Bach's Violin Solos represent it in the hands of one of transcendant genius ”

“ Not merely were the Spaniards by this time actively preparing for the exploration and effective occupation of their newly acquired transatlantic islands; but Englishmen, who had so long been prosecuting westward discovery, and whose king, Henry VII, had barely missed the prize which had fallen to the lot of Spain, now bestirred themselves once more. Bristol was at this time one of the most considerable ports in Europe; its merchants and seamen vied with those of Genoa and Venice, and skilled navigators from those great ports here found ready employment. ”

“ Industry ensured subsistence, even to the poorest: security of subsistence led by an easy transition to competence, and often to affluence. In all these stages a general sense of independence was fostered, felt in different degrees in different parts, but common, to some extent, to the Spanish landowner among his Indian serfs, the sugar-planter among his slaves, the missionary among the converts he was reclaiming from savagery, and the peasant wrestling with the forest and turning it into an expanse of fertile fields. ”

“ Nothing but continuous use in professional hands in the orchestra will keep a musical instrument from going out of fashion: and it invariably happens that the disuse of instruments in the orchestra only shortly precedes their disuse in chamber music. The practical extinction of these instruments is to be regretted. Originally invented as a means of augmenting the tone of the Viol, they acquired a character entirely unique, and are undoubtedly capable of further development. ”

“ The Society of the Friends of the People was originally an after-dinner folly, extemporized at the house of a man who afterwards gained an earldom by denouncing it as seditious. Fox discountenanced it, though he did not directly condemn it; but Grey was overborne by the fierce Jacobinism of Lauderdale, and avowed himself the parliamentary mouthpiece of this dangerous agitation. But Pitt, strong in his position, cut the ground from under Grey’s feet by suppressing the agitation with a strong hand. ”

“ The original plan of campaign was still adhered to. Whatever the cost, the Moors must be dislodged from Calicut, the resistance of the native king broken, and the control of the trade transferred to the Portuguese, whose king the Zamorin must acknowledge as his sovereign. Beaten at every point in fair fight, the Zamorin maintained his ground by fraud and treachery. The stream of wealth still poured into Portugal through Cochin and Cananor, immensely augmented by the spoils of captured Moorish vessels, but the Zamorin still held his ground. ”

“ What if the condition of man in America were that for which the Creator designed him? What if those omnipotent powers, law and custom, as at present constituted, were impudent usurpers, destined one day to decline under the influence of right reason, and to give place, if not to the original rule of beneficent Nature, at least to something essentially very different from the systems which now passed under their names? Montaigne puts these questions very pointedly. ”

“ Nothing else in the career of either Grey or Brougham leads us to suppose them capable of the moral baseness of yielding up the helm of state, in an hour of darkness and peril, to reckless and unskilled hands. ”

“ The Violin is the most popular and useful of all portable instruments, and indeed of all instruments except the pianoforte, and it has considerable importance as being the principal instrument in the orchestra, the main body of which is composed of violins, in their three sizes of trebles, altos or tenors, and basses. It is nearer to the human voice in quality, compass, and facility of execution than any other instrument; few are simpler in construction, and none is so cheap or so easily mastered, provided the learner sets rightly about it. ”

“ A voyage from Lisbon to India was by far the greatest feat of seamanship ever attempted; even its first portion, the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, which it was proposed to make as directly as possible from the Cape Verde Islands across the open ocean, avoiding the circuitous route by the Guinea coast and the mouth of the Congo, was a far greater undertaking than the voyage of Colombo. The discoverer of America had but to sail 86 days, with a fair wind, to traverse the 2,600 miles between Gomera and the Bahamas. The distance from the Cape Verde Islands to the Cape was 3,770 miles. ”

“ At this point, where France retires for a time from the stage, leaving England to enter upon it and open the drama of Anglo-American history, we drop the thread of events to resume our survey of the effect produced by the discovery and unveiling of the New World on European ideas and intellectual habits. The complete revolution in geography, which now suddenly revealed to man his gross ignorance in the most elementary field of knowledge—the earth beneath his feet—had a wider effect. ”

“ The Violin thus enjoys a sort of mysterious immortality, the effect of which is often enhanced by the groundless idea that no good fiddles have been made since the golden age of the Cremona makers, which terminated 120 years ago, and that the secrets of violin-making are lost. ”

“ Humanity had waited long ages for the accomplishment of Seneca's prophecy—a prophecy which was in every mouth at the Discovery, and of which Bacon, like all his contemporaries, hailed the Discovery as the destined fulfilment ”

“ Its main excellences are purely mechanical, and though most good fiddles are also well-designed and handsome, not a few are decidedly ugly. Leopold Mozart, in his Violin-School, has some pertinent remarks on this fallacy. To choose a fiddle for its outward symmetry and varnish, he says, is like choosing a singing bird for its fine feathers. ”

“ Competent musicians, who are masters of the piano, attracted by the simplicity of the tenor part in most quartets, often take up the Tenor with but little knowledge of the violin. This is a mistake: it is usually found that the Tenor can only be properly played by a practised violinist. The Violin and Tenor make an effective duet; witness the charming works of Haydn, Mozart, and Spohr, and the less known but very artistic and numerous ones of Rolla, by the aid of which any competent violinist will soon become master of the Tenor. Mozart wrote a concerto for Violin, Tenor, and Orchestra. ”

“ They hunted their neighbouring tribesman for his flesh, and, like others among the more advanced American peoples, were cannibals—a name which Montaigne used as the title of the laudatory tractate here quoted. What of that? Civilised man, says the philosopher, who practically enforces servitude on nine-tenths of the human race, consumes the flesh and blood of his fellow-man alive. Is it not worse to eat one's fellow-man alive, than to eat him dead? These Americans torture their prisoners, it is true; worse tortures are inflicted in civilised Europe, in the sacred names of justice and religion. ”

“ It may be observed that the development of musical instruments has always been from small to large and from high to low: the ear, it would seem, seeks ever more and more resonance, and musical requirements demand a larger compass: but the development of the Song in the hands of the Troubadours affords an adequate explanation of the fact that the fiddle-maker about this time strove to make his resonant box larger. But there is an obvious limit: if the belly is greatly widened the bow cannot be made to touch the strings without making the bridge of inordinate height. ”

“ Still larger accessions to the mineral wealth of Europe followed the discovery and conquest of Peru—especially after the Spaniards became masters of the mines of Potosi—and of New Granada, where an almost savage people had laid up great quantities of the precious metals in the form of utensils and rude works of art: and from the discovery and conquest of these richly endowed countries, and the plunder of their stored-up wealth, date the serious efforts of European nations other than Spain and Portugal to acquire territory in the New World. ”

“ The five-stringed Treble Viol survived longest in France, where it was called 'Quinton' or 'Pardessus de Viole': and from the very numerous specimens which were sent forth in the last century from the workshops of Guersan and other Parisian makers, there can be no doubt that it was a fashionable instrument, in fact probably a musical toy for ladies of quality. The stop being an inch shorter than that of the Violin, and the tuning by fourths and a third entirely obviating the necessity of employing the fourth finger, it is easily played by small and comparatively unpractised hands. ”

“ There is good reason to conclude that the peoples and tribes of low stature who still occur sporadically in various parts of America, represent the earliest immigrants. At the Discovery tribes and nations of tall stature, great physical strength and endurance, and a certain degree of advancement in the arts of life, were dominant in all the districts most favourable for human habitation; and it is possible in some measure to trace the movements by which their migrations had proceeded, and the steps by which they acquired dominion over lower or less powerful peoples in whose midst they settled. ”

“ Mozart's Trio for piano, clarinet, and viola, one of the most beautiful and effective works in the whole range of chamber music, affords admirable illustrations of its general capacities when used without a violoncello.
Brahms's Quintet in B♭, and one of his string quartets, will afford good examples of the prominent use of the viola, and the special effect produced by it. It is interesting to observe that the modern chamber string quartet, of which the Tenor is so important a member, is based, not on the early chamber music, but on the stringed orchestra of the theatre. ”

“ They were rather a people permanently enjoying the fabled Golden Age of ancient poetry; strangers to the toils, diseases, social inequalities, vices, and trickeries which chiefly made up civilised life; dwelling together in vast common houses, though the institutions of the family were strictly preserved, and enjoying with little or no labour, and no fears for the future, all the reasonable commodities and advantages of human life, while knowing nothing of its superfluities ”

“ In other respects the arts of life were better developed: and to the superficial observation of the Conquistadores the large territory dominated by the Lake pueblos had an aspect sufficiently civilised to justify them in giving it the name of "New Spain." What was of most importance in the eye of the European invaders, it possessed stores of the precious metals, which had been accumulating in the hands of dominant tribes for seven centuries. Immense quantities of treasure steadily poured henceforth into Spain; and America assumed an entirely new aspect for the nations of Western Europe. ”

“ The history of Christendom down to the Discovery of America is in the main one long series of more or less successful applications of this perfectly intelligible principle to the general conduct of human affairs. Had it not been for the New World, the Old World might perhaps to this day have been governed in accordance with it. ”

“ Whatever is valuable is held as it were on lease from the community, on condition of making such use of it as shall enure for the public benefit. The family is patriarchally governed; there is no coinage; gold and silver are not used as ornaments, but are only applied to the basest purposes, and precious stones serve only to adorn children. The energies of the Utopians, released from the empty employments of Old World life, are concentrated on the development of learning and science. Many of them worship the heavenly bodies and the distinguished dead, but the majority are theists. ”