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To my great surprise, I found no less than six square piano-fortes belonging to different families in Reikjavik, and heard waltzes by our favourite composers, besides variations of Herz, and some pieces of Liszt, Wilmers, and Thalberg. But such playing! I do not think that these talented composers would have recognised their own works.

During this visit to Paris he writes in his diary: "Young Erard took me to-day to his piano-forte factory to try the new invention of his uncle Sebastian. This quicker action of the hammer seems to me so important that I prophesy a new era in the manufacture of piano-fortes. I admired the Erards, but am not thoroughly satisfied, and urged him to make new improvements."

Formerly, French commerce derived but very little advantage from articles relating to music; but the means employed by the Conservatory may probably turn the scale in favour of this country, as well as render it, in that respect, independent of foreign nations. Before the revolution, England furnished France with piano-fortes, the common price of which was from three to five hundred francs.

Here he remained until 1842, and then established himself in the building mentioned at the beginning of this article, where he continued to live until the final closing up of his business in 1869. It does not appear that Mr. Mickley was ever actively engaged in the manufacture of piano-fortes.

Among the songs I recognized the favorite, ``O Pescator dell' onda. It brought back to my mind piano-fortes, drawing-rooms, young ladies singing, and a thousand other things which as little befitted me, in my situation, to be thinking upon.

"I see almost nobody. I avoid sight, rather, and study to consume my own smoke. I wish you would build me, among your buildings, some small Prophet Chamber, fifteen feet square, with a flue for smoking, sacred from all noises of dogs, cocks, and piano-fortes, engaging some dumb old woman to light a fire for me daily, and boil some kind of a kettle."

But Rochester is for us, who don't know it at all, a city of any time or country, moonlit, filled with lovers hovering over piano-fortes, of a palatial hotel with pastoral waiters and porter, a city of handsome streets wrapt in beautiful quiet and dreaming of the golden age. The only definite association with it in our minds is the tragically romantic thought that here Sam Patch met his fate."

If the former, he may expect to be ushered into spacious and luxuriously-furnished parlors, where, seated in comfortably-padded rocking-chairs, and contemplating marble tables, on which gorgeously- bound volumes are artistically arranged; thousand-dollar piano-fortes, and mirrors capable of abashing a modest man to utter speechlessness, he will tarry the advent of stately dames, whose dresses rustle as with conscious opulence.

Nor will this appear surprising, as previously to the foundation of the Conservatory, the instrumental musicians, employed in the French regiments and places of public amusement, were mostly Germans. The French piano-fortes are now in request in most parts of Europe, and their price has, in consequence, increased from one thousand to two thousand four hundred francs.

For years attempts to carry out the new mechanism were so clumsy that good harpsichords on the wrong principle were preferred to poor piano-fortes on the right principle. But the keynote of progress had been struck, and the day of the quill and leather jack was swiftly drawing to a close.